What Did You Do This Week, Fiona?

I had my first Christmas! And ate my first stocking...


I played in the snow on Mt. Hood!


I ate my first cereal! Yumm - I love this stuff.


I got another day more beautiful!

Who Are You Exactly?

Connor to mom:

I'm not a dude - I'm a guy!

Connor to Grammy:

I'm not a sweetie - I'm a man! Sweeties are girls.

Twinkle Toes

For a game recently I got to reveal my "dream job". It came out something like: a CIA operative, covering as a photojournalist, moonlighting as a ballerina. Ah, ballet. So graceful, so elegant. There are few things that a human can do that is as beautiful.

This last weekend, we had a rite of passage in our household. Trinity was now deemed old enough to go to The Nutcracker ballet.

*PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT - There is an appropriate age for taking children to events such as the ballet. This age may not be the same for all children, but please use wisdom. Nice lady three rows in front of us, I am so glad you are wanting to expose your two-year-old to the arts. Truly, I am. Listening to said child meow throughout the sword fight between the Nutcracker Prince and the Mouse King just does not fit the ambiance of the evening. THANK YOU*

So we dressed up in our pretty clothes and headed out for a Girls Night (read Trinity's account here - she's been quite the blogger lately). Besides the concern by my six-year-old that she was going to see Dew Drop's underwear with her too short skirt, and my concern about the...umm...anatomy lesson being revealed by the men in tights, the evening was a wonder.

*PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT #2 - The Nutcracker is not a sporting event. I repeat, The Nutcracker is not a sporting event. It is in extremely poor form to leave during the finale number. To the dozen or so people in our section who blocked our view while hastily retreating to the exit, I am sure that you saved yourselves a good five or ten minutes by beating the crowd out of Smart Park, but come on, people. Manners?? THANK YOU*

Back to my dream job. I fantasize that I could take a ballet class even now and be discovered as a natural. Couldn't you just see me up on stage next year as one of the snowflakes or one of the party attendees? I definitely can. I'll be sure to reserve you tickets. Bring lots of roses to throw on stage. Any color will do.

Let It Snow

I've been in a bit of a funk for a little while now. Holiday blues? No - this season brings me great joy. Post-partum hormonal fluctuations? Probably some. Sleep interruptions? Undoubtedly. One contributing factor has been snow. No, we haven't had any, that's true. I think tonight we are supposed to get blown out to the ocean with the newest storm. But no snow here. It's the stories I've been hearing coming out of the snow that make me melancholy.

I have resisted writing about the Kim family trauma as those of us on the West Coast have been saturated by the minute-by-minute accounts. For those of you in a far-off land, like Uganda or Texas, here's the story... A cute little family from San Fransisco went missing en route from Thanksgiving in Seattle back home via the Oregon coast. For nine days while stuck in the snow on an old washed-out logging road, mom kept her four-year-old and seven-month-old going by nursing them, even as she got weaker. After doing what they could to stay alive, including burning the car's tires, dad finally went out searching for help. The girls were rescued and for days we all hoped he would be, too. They have figured that he hiked for sixteen miles in the snow before finally dying of hypothermia. He was a true man, a hero to be sure, doing what he could to protect and save his wife and children. This story struck a painful spot in the collective hearts of our region.

Currently there is another snow adventure gone terribly wrong; one whose details resemble a picture that could belong to our own family, even as the Kim's story "could have been us". Even now searchers are desperately aching for a clearing in the weather to seek three climbers who have been lost on Mt. Hood for over a week. What a hard Christmas this will be for their families.

I don't have a great spiritual application to make of this. There's no neat little bow to tie together at the end. I know that there are risks in life - choosing to embrace those risks are what makes this a great adventure. I know life is short, which is why we need to live it to the fullest each day ("being ready" as I read in Mark today). I know and believe whole-heartedly that this life is not where it's at or what it's all about; we're just visiting until we can get home to heaven. I'm just a little sad as I read the paper these days, and I wanted to tell you about it.

Allan's Blog

After much painful labor (not that kind of painful labor), Allan has launched a new blog site. Take a look!