Recap

Christmas 2008 is in the books and we had a wonderful holiday. The best part is that Carrie and I still have a couple weeks off and lots of time coming up to spend with more extended family and friends. We are really looking forward to it. Just wanted to give a quick recap of the past few days' worth of events.



Carrie made a wonderful meal last night for her parents, my Mom, the two of us and Eleanor. It was a totally fantastic feast that she worked extremely hard on all afternoon. After it was over we were rewarded with Pork Roast with cider gravy, broccoli casserole, a Chevre/walnut salad, a Fennel dressing and rolls. It's making me hungry thinking about it right now. It was a great night with great company.



Eleanor sported her new shoes (from Auntie Sarah) and a new dress from Madison yesterday. As usual, she's carrying around "Sally" for the holiday season. I discovered yesterday that i've misinformed her and that this is Karen. I've only seen the cartoon 100 times, how did I mess that up??



She got a wooden counting clock that she really seems to like.



Her obligatory Paul's gift is a new saucer sled. I was tempted to get the sweet red steel American Flyer one but i distinctly remember from my childhood that metal saucer sleds pale in comparison to plastic ones for speed. We do want to get her a wooden toboggan however. We didn't use it today at Happy Hollow because it was like 50 degrees out and a slushy mess.



Eleanor got a really cool new kitchen to play with while at Grandma's house. She put dad's beer in the fridge for us. She really likes the kitchen and is VERY into "cooking" right now. She mainly makes toast.



This is her new dolly that she got from Grandma. She really likes it.



Another view of the gift opening at Grandma's house. You can see her new dish set in the foreground as well.



Here she is putting something in the frontloading washer.



Our annual Holiday shot.



This is my new favorite picture.




A video of Eleanor's new Christmas book reading.




Eleanor danced to Emmylou Harris (Light of the Stable) while I was next door delivering cookies to our neighbors. I'm glad Mom caught this on tape.

Hope you all had/have a wonderful, peaceful, happy and healthy holiday.

Playin' with Grammie

While we were in Madison this past weekend... Eleanor spent a weekend with Grammie. She got to do her first true snow romping and it appears that she even kept her new mittens on!

Christmas History

There are some really cool facts HERE about Christmas.
Pretty interesting reading.

Merry Christmas!

Holly-daze

There are some sweet ones in here.

LINK

Happy Holidays

We apologize for taking so long to get a post done. As it has been with most people, this time of year is very busy and hectic for us.

Over the past few weeks, the Holidays have taken hold and we've been quite busy. It's been really enjoyable this season as Eleanor is much more active and "into" the whole holiday scene.

This past Thanksgiving we traveled to the Chicago area to be with Carrie's family over the holiday. It was a very nice, laid-back and low stress number of days, with little to do and lots to eat. More than anything, it's just really fun spending a lot of time with Eleanor.

Grandma Sue got her this ultra-hip Cowboy outfit which she sported on the big day. She seemed to enjoy it and everyone else did too. It went really well with her cool new red leather booties that Carrie got her in New York.

Eleanor doesn't care about gender-stereotypes. Playing with firetrucks is fun no matter who you are.

She enjoyed playing with the Speranzas and Matt seems to think she's pretty cool.

In classic Eleanor fashion, she found it more fun to play with a metal pot with a set of plastic holiday flowers in it, than any of her toys or relatives.

Right away, after returning from Chicago, we headed to the Barnes Tree Farm on Dane Road to get this year's installment. The weather was really bad... windy, snowy and cold, but Eleanor did a really good job... even though she doesn't like to wear gloves.





Towards the end of the run, she was getting pretty upset and cold and was crying... you can't really tell that here because I was able, somehow, to get a laugh/smile out of her.




She likes to wear winter hats now and this one from Aunt Joyce is a particular favorite of hers and of ours.

Things have been going pretty well overall. Carrie is into a new term at school and is insanely busy as usual. Her nights and weekends are often spent preparing work for her classes. When we get a chance, we try to eat a meal together, watch some shows and enjoy each others' company. Work for me has also been very busy. Normally this time of year is a wind-down period (and the past few days that has actually begun) but things are really pushed back and out of whack this year with all of the flooding.

We are super excited to spend this Christmas in our new house and have things fully decorated! It's awesome to have stockings properly hung on a staircase (since we have no fireplace) and Eleanor has a super-sweet one that her mother made her. I am taking the entire week off between Christmas and New Year's for the first time in many years and am really looking forward to relaxing, watching football and getting some house projects done.

Eleanor is a whirlwind these days. She learns what seems like 5 new words a day and can just about repeat anything you say. She's saying lots of multi-syllabic words and is beginning to form her first crude sentences which is really fun to hear. She's all over the house, feeding her dolls, giving them drinks, climbing the stairs, "helping" in any way possible, brushing her teeth, and on and on. I have no doubt in my mind that by 2 she'll probably be taking care of us.

sick day/snow day

all three of us were home yesterday afternoon--I80 was a mess, so i skipped my lunch meeting on campus and rob stayed home sick. here's six minutes of eleanor being her smart, silly self.

caught red handed

eleanor was too sleepy (ie. cranky) to stay up for trick-or-treating on halloween, but she did help hand out candy to a couple of kids. here she is, already in her seasonal jammies (with ghosts, pumpkins and cats). you might think we caught her sneaking a treat in this shot, but she was just taking all of the candy out of the bowl piece by piece and putting it on the seat next to her. that's big fun for a 16-month-old!

Happy Multi-Generational Halloween

Punkins!

We took our annual trip to the Kroul Family Farm pumpkin patch today to stock up on seasonal gourd action!

It was a beautiful day... almost too warm for me and Eleanor seemed to have a great time. She really enjoyed walking amongst the pumpkins and also checking out the small "petting zoo" that they have there. She seemed to particularly like a small pony (miniature horse) named SAM and the cows. The little pig and Elk babies she wasn't so sure about.

We came home with a 5 pumpkin haul and will hopefully be posting something about carving a couple of them soon.

Much Too Early

Two nights ago... a friend of mine and player on our City Sluggers softball team passed away while actually playing softball. Many of you know him as he was a 1985 (i believe) City High grad who owned the Heyns Ice Cream store on 1st Avenue in Iowa City. It was some really sad news and came as a complete shock. Paul was a really nice person and always seemed to have a good attitude about everything. The laid back way that he seemed to deal with things always made me a bit envious... it's a personality trait that I wish I showed more of. It seems cheesy and lame to express the same old things that everyone else is saying about him. Mainly what I know is that the world isn't as good a place without him in it. I'm sure things will really begin to settle in next year when he isn't around as the season begins.

His obituary can be found HERE

Times like this always make one reflect about things that they are thinking and doing at whatever point they might be at in their lives. I guess, simply, that's because we're all going to get to this point some day. Hopefully not as early and as tragically as Paul... but it's quite obviously inevitable.

The world is such and interesting and dangerous place right now. There is more apprehension and worry than I can ever remember... and probably more than many people far older than me can remember. People, economic markets, religions, governments, etc... are all in a state of flux, if not upheaval. It's hard not to feel like things are on a very dangerous precipice right now. Things like this, however unrelated, really make you think about all of these things.

I hope that Paul is in a better place and I hope that the ills of the world can slowly begin to right themselves and all of us can feel safer and more kinship to our fellow human beings.

My Daughter is Terrified of Herky!

For true effect, you'll need to blow the above picture up; but it pains me to say that my daughter is terrified of Herky! Eleanor attended her first Iowa Homecoming parade last Friday and it was fantastic. While she's not ready to gather bags full of candy yet (many other kids took care of that) she did enjoy herself for the most part. When it came time for the obligatory Herky photo shoot, however, she because quite terrified. It was sort of disturbing to see. As much as I love Herky, Eleanor finds him quite distasteful. Luckily, she finds tigerhawks and Herky images to be really interesting at home and enjoys pointing at them and saying Herky. That gives me hope for the future. The way that the football team is performing lately, I feel about like she does in this picture myself.

For most of the evening, she was looking around, checking everything out.

She even got to share some of Papa's chocolate chip cookies!

Another frightened shot.

We had makeshift dinners from the Co-Op.

Happy Anniversary

7 years, 2 days ago Carrie and I met. 3 years ago we were married. Here is a picture from our honeymoon shorty thereafter. This was taken at the tidepools where we used to play in Moss Beach, California (we meaning my siblings and I when we were kids.)

We are blessed with a wonderful life, a wonderful marriage and, best of all, a wonderful family and daughter.

XOXOXOXO

rotten to the core

ah yes, you know that the academic year has started up again when activity on this blog slows to a virtual standstill and blog rot sets in. i know i'm not alone in not being able to find the time to post once teaching starts up again, and like betsy, we keep this blog as a record of our little family for us as much as anyone else.
without any further ado, here's an update...

eleanor continues to grow bigger, cuter and smarter everyday (in our humble opinion). she enjoys getting into the cake pans and oven mitts that reside in the drawer under the stove.

she also likes feeding herself with her fingers. black beans and rice are a particular favorite...

this past weekend, betsy, henry and clara were in town. here are the girls with grammie.

rob, e, and henry horse around and are the very picture of inter-generational hawkeye fandom.
more love for the hawks on game day...

at the beginning of the month, rob and i traveled to edinburgh, scotland. it was our first trip without eleanor since she was born, which was sad, but we all did just fine. while i was at my conference/workshop, rob had time to do some sightseeing. he took many, many, many photos (this will not shock any who know him) and will likely post further about his adventures at a later date...
here he is at the top of arthur's seat in holyrood park at the end of the royal mile. it's quite a hike.
the lovely landscape at holyrood park. green urban spaces are pretty darn cool.

edinburgh castle was the main attraction for me when i visited for the first time in 1997 and rob spent most of a day there. this was our one sunny day...

an otter carved into a chair-arm in the thistle chapel at the high kirk of st. giles. the chapel is this amazingly, intricately carved space. you could spend hours there and still find new details to marvel over.

yes, we did enjoy some grown-up time in the pubs. this is deacon brodie's on the royal mile. check out the tartan carpet!

**Carrie forgot this pic!