Merry Christmas Eve!

We are gearing up for a mellow Christmas Eve celebration tonight. The girls are napping, shell is whipping up some tasty grub, and I am, er....blogging.

Momma is making the girls a special dinner tonight...fried rice!!! We, on the other hand, are having fillets which I will be grilling in the rain because that is just what you have to do up here in the soggy PNW.

Mannheim is on repeat, "A Christmas Story" marathon should be starting soon, and we are anticipating the arrival of our "exclusive" guests, Uncle Corey and Bern.

I need to purge my flash card to get ready for picture snappin' this afternoon/evening, so I placed a few new pics of the kids on my flickr page. Enjoy!

I hope all of our friends, family, co-workers, and everyone else out there has a great Xmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Fesitivus, or whatever it is you plan on doing throughout the remainder of this year. Just have fun, and enjoy everyone around you and everything you have to be thankful for.

Zoinks! It's S-s-s-s-anta!!

We scored at the Kitsap Mall in the beautiful parking lot known as Silverdale, WA! We got the classic screaming with Santa picture! The twins obviously *love* Santa. Maybe next year they won't think Santa is such a creepy loser.

As for me...only a couple of days of geeking out on code left until the annual holiday shutdown. My brain needs the rest.

Hopefully I will have the time to compile all the video footage I took in China into something, like, artistic or something. That and I want to spend some quality time with my wife and kids, and the TV. I have a ton of Battlestar episodes queued up for my viewing pleasure.

The rain, gray, gloom was in full effect today, and tonight is supposed to bring us another round of evil wind, so I figured I would blog just in case we don't have power for a few days again. Stupid wind!

Power Is Cool

We had fun over the last two nights of "house camping", but it is certainly a relief that we finally have POWER!!! The juice started flowing about 20 minutes ago.

It wasn't so bad since we have a propane fireplace, range, and enough candles to start our own wax museum. The only bad part was the cold nights since the temps dropped about 15 degrees from the night of the wind/rain storm to now. Tonight is supposed to be down in the high 20s.

Anyway, three cheers for electricity!

Wind Storm

We are in the early stages of a wind storm that is supposed to be fairly nasty up here in western WA. Lights have been flickering for hours now.

Earlier I missed the ferry due to the weather (heavy rain/wind) and just like a couple of weeks prior, a Seahawks game. Thanks, NFL.

I'm hoping we have power in the morning as the strongest of the winds are due to hit after midnight. It's already windy enough so my confidence in staying electrified throughout the night is low.

Twins...in...Space!!!

Thanks to the Bray crew, our little nuggets have begun to explore the universe in their new ROCKET SHIP!! Forget Big Big World (that sloth is lazy anyway), O & V are blasting off in style now, ready for their next mission. Just a little patting power, and they're off!

That's right, they are also Little Einsteins fanatics.

Ground control to O & V. Commencing count down, engines on.

Let It Snow

It's a little slushy, but we have been having snow flurries all afternoon and into the early part of the evening. More expected on Monday, but probably minimal amounts overall.

Happy Thanksgiving

It's mighty wet up here in the PNW. In fact, it is now the wettest November on record. Awesome. Apparently it is expected to hit the mid 80s down in the land of Positive Skittles (aka uncle Greg), and aunt Debbie. We are beaming our good vibes and Thanksgiving joy to you all (including Gong Gong and Grammy R)!

We are heading over to Mip and Pip's for Thanksgiving day festivities. This marks a change in the recent past which would find us whooping it up with our close friends; a more than 10 year tradition. Well, I hope the gang is having a great day, and I'm sure we will reconnect for another "Gutchgiving" in the future.

This will be the first Thanksgiving for O & V!

And now, off to stuff ourselves with food.

Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family down in California, in Seattle, in North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Idaho, and elsewhere!

November Rain

We've had a fair amount of rain this month. In fact, it's raining now, and a bit windy. This keeps us inside most of the time, which makes me wonder why I haven't posted since Halloween. Oh well, busy I guess.

Grammy Robinson came back to visit the kids (us too!). They were happy to see her, and so were we. Here is a cute shot of the girls and GR.

The first week of daycare went well. O & V like their new friends, and enjoy playing all day long, as well as grabbing food from the other kids.

That's all for now!

Halloween in NTW

Halloween in NTW is an event, not only for the hood, but for the entire freakin' island. You see, NTW is one of a handful of hoods where homes are close together like they are in the city. There are about 70 homes, so islanders who live on larger, more secluded lots will truck their kids in and unleash them on our hood.

This year there were roughly 250-300 kids roaming the streets in costume.

Last year, my lawn was destroyed by all the hooligans and their inability to follow the path to the the door. This year, I created a perimeter of tiki torches to help "illuminate" the path. It mostly worked, but there were still those kids who just didn't "get it" and decided to walk directly through the perimeter. Next year (per a neighbor's excellent suggestion) it's an electric fence.

Oh, we had some real winners from outside the hood this year. Some woman had the audacity to comment to her friend (while I was standing right there) that she didn't get our address numbers. They looked dyslexic to her. I turned to her and stated, "it's called 'Arts & Crafts'". She looked confused. One would think that common sense would tell you, A. A neighborhood full of only Craftsman homes is bound to have Arts & Crafts address numbers (which she obviously had no clue about), and B. Don't be an idiot and make such ignorant comments in front of the homeowner who is giving your kid free candy.

On a nice note, check out these cute kids in their kitty costumes! Vivienne and Olivia had fun making the rounds demanding candy from our neighbors. Mommy and daddy were lucky, too. At one house, we got a cocktail as our treat. Score!!

Autumn in NTW

Autumn in North Town Woods has arrived. The trees are rapidly dropping leaves, and the temps have dropped accordingly. It was cold enough yesterday that I had to empty the fountain, and cover it with trash bags, as well as cover the patio furniture. There was ice on the picnic bench! Brrr...

It's also dark here at around 5-5:30 pm. The peak will have us in the dark even earlier come winter.

I went around the hood the other day on a walk with the girls, and I thought this neighbor's tree was striking!

Baby Chucks

Along with the bitchin' Stones shirts, the girls insisted on sporting shoes just like their daddy. Since daddy is a sneaker freak, they naturally had to begin their shoe obsession with some killer All-Stars; in pink of course.

Vivienne is kickin' it here in her Chucks as she contemplates what to do with this sippy cup top.

Start Me Up

The girls were bummed that they didn't get to see the Rolling Stones when they hit Seattle the other day, so we got them these really cool Stones T-Shirts. You'll notice here that Olivia is attempting to stretch her mouth to the size of Mick Jagger's. They *totally* dig the Stones.

Fun With Boxes

The girls really like getting into boxes, and then demanding that daddy drag them around the floor as if they were driving or something. We did that with baskets while we were in China, and they obviously still enjoy it. Here is a nice shot of the girls riding in boxes sent by their generous Great Great (yes, two Greats) Uncle Carl and Aunt Sue.

The Great Pumpkin

The girls, Rachelle and I went to a pumpkin patch the other day in search of the great pumpkin. Unfortunately we didn't find it, although there was one time in my life that a couple of friends and I *did* find the great pumpkin. And...well, it wasn't with us for long, but that is a completely different story.

Anyway, we did find some good specimens to compliment the twin pumpkins that Mip and Pip brought over for the girls. Yeah, and where were our pumpkins, Mip and Pip? Heh, heh...

And yes, we did find a nice little mini pumpkin for Ophelia. We might carve it, and fill it full of catnip.

The girls seemed fascinated by the experience, and it was nice to be able to shoot over to a patch right on the island. It's nice that there is still so much rural land here. I fear it won't last for long.

Trash Sale

Man, poor Oscar the grouch. Today, we watched an episode of da street where Oscar had to make a decision whether to sell his trash or keep it. His pet elephant really needed the space to do his swing dancing, and Oscar wanted him to be happy, but sell all his trash!??! It was a tough decision...

I don't know ho it turned out, but I thought it was funny that as the story unfolded, I found myself watching alone while the kids busied themselves with throwing toys all over the house. Exciting Sunday afternoon!!

Speaking of exciting, I posted some Bay to Breakers pix from way back in 2003, just before we moved from SF to Seattle. We did this race a couple times, and it was a blast. The word "race" is merely ceremonial, btw.

Later...

More Pix on Flickr

I have been on a tear to get my older pix (2002-2004) up on my Flickr site! I have many photos to sort through, so stay tuned.

Carry on...

Joshua Tree Photos

I briefly posted back in January of this year about my solo trip to Joshua Tree National Park. Rachelle was in business meetings in Palm Springs (Indian Wells to be more precise), and I had a free day to do some adventuring.

Well, after nearly a year, I have finally processed the pix. Check them out on my Flickr site if you are interested. I think they turned out nicely.

Joshua Tree is a magical place, and I highly recommend visiting the park at the same time of year since the weather was perfect.

The China Group

Along with the red couch photo, I thought I would share a picture of our travel group. This was a really great group of folks, and we miss them already!

The Red Couch

Part of the China adoptive family tradition is to take a group photo of all the babies in your travel group. Since all American families go through Guangzhou to process the U.S. paperwork, they usually stay at the White Swan Hotel where the red couch lives.

This is our group photo.

Crazy Baby!

So I'm searching all over the net and I cannot find any reference to a show we loved while in Nanchang. It was called the "Crazy Baby!" show, and featured a wacked looking puppet (the Crazy Baby) and a dude that switched from Mandarin to English during the show, apparently as a means to teach young Chinese kids more English words.

Anyway, I really want to find some archives of the show, but I cannot find anything! It's making me a "Crazy Daddy!".