2006 rhymes with slicks!

One reason why I like New Years so much is for all of the lists & the year in review stuff. I decided it would be fun to get in on the action. I went through the pictures I've taken during this year, so here is a review of my top 5 favorite pictures from 2005.

Some funny pictures were taken right at the beginning of the year. Perhaps the funniest part was that they were taken during the biggest snow storm in a really long time, which fell on Kate's birthday, causing 5 or so people to get stranded at our apartment.

Number 1: Kate enjoying her birthday breakfast after waking up to 3 feet of snow.


Number 2: We hosted a "Funny t-shirt & Karaoke Party." This picture was taken as the night wrapped up, and people (Helen, Losure) began devouring Heekin & Losure's birthday cakes with their hands. Poor, innocent Gillian can do nothing but watch from the background.



Number 3: At Caitlin's graduation party this spring, Caitlin celebrated the way the Melias do best...with a bit of beer & then putting on the infamous jacket that her mom bought (and supposedly wore) in the 80s. The only sad thing about this picture is that you can't see the fringe hanging off the sleeves or the zebra print on the inside.


Number 4: One hot night this summer Losure, Pete, Caitlin, & I went to my house to swim. Losure revealed that he was in a sychronized swimming group as a young lad, and did his best to remember his "Little Mermaid" routine for us.


And finally,
Number 5: I fell asleep on the couch. I moved my foot into a lit candle. My blanket & sock caught on fire.

HAPPY 2006!

Who is the stupid now?

I miss college a lot.











Why does Losure look so bizarre in all of the pictures I have of him?

Grandma got run over by a reindeer

Tonight I discovered MySpace. Oh my god, that thing is cool. I don't like change...I had a hard time even looking around on the site because I'm a friendster & facebook kind of girl. But then I was stumbling on profiles of people I hadn't talked to in 6 years, and it was kinda of neat to see that people had changed since they were 17. I found some profiles of people I went to college with as well, and realized that people who were seniors when I was a freshman are 27 now. My mental math is horrible.

I must go drool over Tom Brady now.


We make a hot couple. And check out the bling he gave me!

Buddy the Elf, What's your favorite color?

Last night I got to sit back on the couch & watch the 11 o'clock news with my parents and a 40 year old Japanese woman.

Not only did I get to see footage of the aforementioned Mr. Day in court for his arraignment today (charges included lighting a cigarette in the bathroom, interfering with flight attendants, and kicking the backs of passengers' seats), but I was also surprised to see my town on all of the Boston news stations. I had missed all of the excitement, but my town is in a bit of a tiff right now.

Apparently, the administrators at the middle school are trying to "get rid of" Christmas. The principal got word of the selection of songs from Jesus Christ Superstar that were to be sung at the Winter concert this past week, and said that they couldn't sing them because they were religious. There was also some play put on by the middle school, and they made the students refer to the Christmas tree as a magical tree, and the elves in the play had to have their hats changed from red and green to white and green.

This whole issue makes my blood pressure go up more than...ummm, I can't think, but it goes up a lot. I completely see how people are annoyed with the administrators trying to avoid mention of Christmas in school stuff. Because the fact is, it's not a holiday tree, or a magical tree...it's a Christmas tree. I wrote about this whole thing when I first started my blog a year ago. I do like it when people acknowledge that not everyone celebrates Christmas, and are sensitive of that, but if you mean Christmas, you should say Christmas. When Kate and I bought our Christmas/holiday/magical tree a few weeks ago (at a church nonetheless), the guy selling it wished up Happy Holidays. Now theoretically, people buying Christmas trees celebrate Christmas. I think that's an ok time to wish people a merry christmas. But for a talk show host to show you how to make a red and green holiday wreath? That's clearly Christmas, so don't try to pass it off as recognizing all holidays.

So yeah, back to Medway. The whole thing could have been a lot more easily settled if they hadn't allowed them to put on a play that involved elves and a Christmas tree in the first place..because you know what? That's Christmas. So by trying to make kids call it a magical tree, and taking the red out of the red and green elf hats, you're really not fooling anyone, and obviously that's going to upset people. I think it was completely stupid, not to mention insensitive, to have a Christmas tree, elves, and Jesus Christ superstar in a winter concert anyway.

So now we've got live reports outside of my old school, while a group of kids and parents are standing out there with protest signs & singing christmas...er, magical carols. And to top it off, Jerry Falwell's group that's trying to protect Christmas (the liberty something or other) is getting involved too. Hooray for Medway.

And as I reread this, I'm realizing this is a very negative way to go into Christmas eve, so I apologize. It's not that I dislike Christmas at all. I dislike the fact that I don't get to enjoy it the way I'd like to, and I know that makes me a little scrooge-like. But I've always been hyper-aware of people's attempt, or lack of attempt, to recognize other holidays. Hanukkah is not at all a major holiday. It is a little speckling of a holiday, and is really mostly for kids. Adults don't exchange presents typically. So I don't really care that Christmas gets all the hype around now...if not for the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans celebrate it, then because of the fact that it's a major holiday for Christians. But I just get upset when people are insensitive to the fact that I don't celebrate it. I get a little annoyed when I get cards, especially from people who know me, that wish me a Merry Christmas.


However, as it is 15 minutes until Christmas Eve, I do wish anyone who celebrate it a very merry Christmas. And if you don't, I wish you happy movies/Chinese food/skiing/or other ways to enjoy the usually crowded places minus the crowds.

"Burn dust, eat my rubber!"

Oh Howie, Howie, Howie. How far you've come since the days when you played at Union twice a year because no one had heard of you.
And now, making headlines on cnn.com. Way to go.


Howie Day arrested for in-flight rowdiness

Friday, December 23, 2005; Posted: 2:20 p.m. EST (19:20 GMT)

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Howie Day was arrested at Logan International Airport for rowdy behavior on a Boston-bound flight after he became intoxicated from a mix of alcohol and a sleeping pill.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Music/12/23/people.howieday.ap/index.html


I had a nice first week of vacation. I babysat a bit, did some shopping, & visited my first graders for "pajama day." I got to wear pajamas & my new pig slippers for the whole day, which is really the best way to work. The kids were cute & a few of my favorites told me not to leave again, & it was so much more fun being there and knowing I was just there visiting and not really working.

Christmas usually stresses me out, for completely different reasons from the way it makes most people stress, and I have to admit that it hasn't been as bad this year. I can't figure out exactly why, especially since the whole "season" started before Halloween this year. This week I got Gillian to watch one of my favorite movies with me, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. God, that movie will not get old. I can just sit here and think about certain scenes and start laughing. I did just that when I wrote the title to this post.

This post, by the way, is completely pointless. I thought I had something to write about, and now I can't think of it.

My parents get bored now that my brother & I have moved out, and they like to have foreign exchange students every once in awhile. So a few weeks ago I was talking to my mom, and she told me that they're going to have a Taiwanese student for a couple of weeks right around Christmas.

And that it's a forty year old woman.

I'm meeting my Medway friends for dinner tonight, and then heading home for a few days, so I should be arriving right around the same time as her. It should be interesting. She's a teacher in Taiwan, and my mom expects we'll have some things to talk about. Hoo-ray.

The coolest part though is that my parents just re-did my brother's bedroom to turn it into a guest bedroom. I'm not sure what they think this woman will do in there, but they don't want her to mess any of the new stuff up. So I get my brother's room while I'm home, and she gets my room. I'm thrilled that whatever messing up she was going to do in my brother's room, now she can do in mine.

And they wonder why I never seem to get along with the students they host.

Aloutte, something aloutte...aloute jounte plumeraaaaayyyyy (that's how it sounds in my head)

Today was my first day of vacation. I'm sort of on vacation until June. But don't tell my roommates, they hate me.

I finished my last day of first grade on Friday. Six and seven year olds are typically pretty self-centered, so I was really surprised that a lot of them seemed sad that I was leaving. They made a book for me with letters to me, which was really cute, and they made a wreath with their school pictures. Which is cute, but I'm not really sure what to do with it. Right now it's hanging in the living room. Pictures later perhaps.

The best part of Friday though was the gifts. I didn't get much...the school actually has a policy about giving gifts, and it's not allowed. A few parents broke the rule and gave me something little...but the best thing--the thing I've been looking forward to since I played school in our backyard shed when I was 7--was the "A + teacher" bag. With a shiny red apple on it. And a candle that says "teachers have class." I think I've officially made it into the education world.

So now I'm on vacay. I'm gonna do some subbing and some babysitting, and then I start classes at the end of Jan. And even then I'll have a weird, definitely non-working, schedule.

I celebrated today by getting absolutely nothing done. I found this neat website called futureme.org, where you can send emails to yourself or other people up to thirty years in the future. So I sent myself one, so I can be depressed when I haven't fulfilled any of my expectations. I also sent some emails to some friends, so 15 or 20 years from now you might be getting an email from you. I hope we haven't had a falling out, or that would be really awkward.

This weekend was sort of random. The "Holiday Soiree" we planned turned into some people coming over to hang out, and then we went to our new favorite bar, the Beacon Hill Pub. I ran into someone from a grad school class (she's weird though, so I didn't say hi). We ran into some um, friendly neighbors, otherwise known as the pieces of shit on Halloween. I ran into some guy from Union who I didn't recognize for the life of me, who remembered my name and said I made out with his visiting friend in the basement of a frat. And we ran into like 8 other Union people. Kate saw the bartender she's in love with, and that was nice because it took her mind off of the fact that her current singer obsession, Matt Wertz, is a Jesus-lover. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

You're the meaning in my life, you're the inspiraaaaation

Things have been crazy. I finished my last take-over week last Friday, and turned in a major project for my practicum last Thursday. Then just as those two things wrapped up, I had to get in gear to turn in my portfolio, which is the culmination of the elementary ed. portion of my master's, and the equivalent of doing a master's thesis, though I don't think they're at all equivalent. I'd much rather do the portfolio.

Anyway, when you see the pictures of my room in its current state, you won't question why I haven't blogged much in the past few weeks. I clearly need to get myself together a bit. I intend to do that on Friday, after my final day of being a student teacher.

Since my portfolio brings together everything I've done in the past year and a half, I went through all of my boxes and binders and folders and notebooks and sorted it all into my infamous piles.

My comfy cozy bed? Covered in piles.






My nice shiny floors? Covered in piles.



My room has that general "What the hell happened here" look going on right now.






I haven't been that stressed out though. It's not that anything's really hard, it's just a lot of little, sometimes tedious things, that I don't want to do. I have had lots of breaks. Last night we decorated our ugly Christmas tree, while Kate baked brownies. It was really quite the night.



The prettiest part is the star. Something doesn't look quite right.

Charles in Charge

So today I started my first day of my take-over week. Which would've been fine, except yesterday was the first snow of the year. And the fact that I went to school this morning completely forgetting that 6 and 7 year olds come to school decked out in snowpants and suits.

They have to take off their boots, snow pants, jackets, hats, and gloves in the morning when they come in.

They have to put on their boots, snow pants, jackets, hats, and gloves when we go outside for recess at 11.

They have to take off their boots, snow pants, jackets, hats, and gloves in the morning when they come in at 11:20.

They have to put on their boots and snow pants, and carry their jackets, hats, and gloves when they go to lunch at 12:55.

They have to take off their boots, snow pants, jackets, hats, and gloves in the morning when they come in from lunch-recess at 1:30.

And they have to put on their boots, snow pants, jackets, hats, and gloves when they leave school at 2:40.


In between all of that, the toilet in our bathroom overflowed and spilled out onto the bathroom floor.


I tried hard to keep a smile all day, even though we wasted about an hour of the day just dressing and undressing. It was a mess. I tried to set up the routines to keep it mildly organized, but i had about a third of the class running around in socks and showing off their cool new snow pants with suspenders. Finally,at 2:38, two minutes before the dismissal bell, I actually gave up for about a minute, before I snapped back and realized I was the person completely responsible for making sure they all actually got out the door & went home.

Oh my god.
And it's going to snow overnight again tonight...

God bless the snowpants.

SNOW

I'm entering the final 2 weeks of student teaching. This week I have my second "take over" week, which is requiring a lot more effort than I remembered from the first one. I hate effort. The end of student teaching also means the two culminating projects thingies for the elementary ed. part of my master's, so I've entered my usual "I-Haven't-Done-Anything-In-Months-So-Now-I'm-Going-Crazy" mode.

I had amazing intentions for this weekend. I figured all Saturday I would finish my lesson planning for school this week. And all Sunday I would work on my two projects for my class. In the breaks that I would inevitably take, I would be productive and do some returns, go food shopping, hit up the public library to get some books I need for first grade, and clean my room.

But then I realized I didn't want to do work on Saturday. I wanted to sit with my computer on my lap and watch TV and eat pumpkin seeds. I probably should have had bon-bons, but we never seem to have any.

Eventually I had to take a break (because I couldn't find anything on TV), so I hopped in my car to go to the library and supermarket. The library was a success. The supermarket was not. Before I even parked, I hit a car. I spent another half hour finding a place to park and exchanging insurance info. The Ghetto Basket was a fucking zoo. Someone in the store later told me to never go on the 3rd of the month because it's the day when everyone gets their checks. The reason I hit the car in the first place was because I had 19 cars all coming at me to try to turn down the same aisle, and 2 families screaming in Portuguese at their kids who were running around like they were on crack.

It could have been worse. I could have driven into a ditch like my roommate. It was a bad weekend for the cars/rental cars of 9 acadia.

Today was supposed to be productive, but I've watched about 11 hours of the weather channel. I'm hoping for a snow day on Tuesday, and the meteorologists won't give me definite answers on the storm. So I watch the weather map again and again myself to try to predict the path of the storm. When I've had enough of teaching, I'm going to become a forecaster on the weather channel. That would be so cool.



For the time being I put on my good luck snowman socks. Come on snow!

Turkey: 1, Stacy: 0

The turkey got the best of me this weekend. Actually, it wasn't so much the turkey, as the pounds and pounds of potatoes, stuffing, wine, random other veggies, cranberry sauce, trifle, and 8 other desserts.


I'm getting ready to go out for my 5 year high school reunion, and it's very odd. I was excited a few weeks ago, but now that the special night is upon us, I'm pretty nervous. I can't decide what to wear. I don't want to look like I'm trying, but I don't want to look like I did when I was 17. It's very complicated.

Alright off to pregame. I'm going to need a lot of beer tonight.

P.S.

One more thing. Since Kate had a special post for me today, I found something special for her, compliments of fark.com, which is appropriate since she got me addicted to the website.

The photoshop contest was to make your dream Jeopardy board. And this, I think, would be Kate's.



Only one hour left in your least favorite day of the year (or is this number 2 after Halloween?)

Turkey says gobble

It's been another lovely Thanksgiving. I'm stuffed, and still craving a little bit more mashed potatoes.

This year involved a lot of the usual traditions for me...watching the parade in my pjs, eating a ton, eating some more until it hurt, and resuming my place on the couch to end the day. Actually, since we stayed home this year, I spent a considerable amount of time on the couch. I think this year will go down on record as one of my laziest Thanksgivings. We already set a good record a few years back for one of the quickest Thanksgiving meals, so that's out of the question for this year.

Our T-day celebration also included the burial of a hamster, who made the trip (post mortem) from Austin. I gather he enjoyed his flight from Texas in my brother's suitcase, as he had been anxiously awaiting (in a plastic bag) a proper funeral service for nearly 2 weeks now.

There's a house near us that has an incredible lights display for Xmas every year, and we took a ride to see it before dessert tonight. Last year they won the best lights award thing from the Today Show, and got a visit from Al Roker, so tonight when we got there we found that a lot of other people had the same idea as us, along with a few news channels. I think I counted somewhere around a bajillion lights, and they also have a ton of those little miniature house things with moving displays inside. Last year they made a new road go around their house and you drive past all of the house things, so traffic people direct you through their property and it's almost as fun as Disney Land. There was even a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle display, which made me think of everyone's favorite liqufied veggies eater.

I feel like a big waste of space.

When I drove to work yesterday, I heard about the "experiment" that one radio station did in honor of today. They put a slab of deli turkey meat in front of a live turkey to see if it would eat it. Turns out, the turkey ate itself. And apparently went nuts over it too. I can't really blame him.

Gobble, gobble.

What's cooking?

My 2nd favorite holiday has come around again. And I'm very excited to stuff myself with turkey, stuffing, & mashed potatoes tomorrow!

So in honor of turkey day, I wanted to share soething the first graders have been working on. We made a Thanksgiving recipe book, and the kids each told us how they thought you make a certain item. Don't try these at home.







Off to school for a half day!!

my milkshake still brings all the boys to the yard...the song is still stuck in my head

I have a weird obsession with checking away messages, and typically with people that I haven't talked to in years, friends of friends, people I've never even met...I guess I'll stop now. You really get to know people by their away messages though. And I've found that there are some people who are constantly complaining that they're sick. Like every other week, it's the worst cold ever. It makes me feel fortunate sometimes that I don't actually know these whiny people. But it also makes me wonder whether there are some people who just have really weak immune systems or something and actually do get sick all the time...or if their threshold for how sick they need to be to complain about it is a lot lower than the average person. Very philosophical, I know. But these are the kinds of things that make me think at night.

Here are some pictures from the Saturday night hoopla, straight from Kristen's camera.


Before the stair jumped out at me




Greg & Caitlin getting down






Caits, me, & reardons



I have something very special to share tomorrow if I get my work done.

I'm 23 and a half

I had huge intentions for this weekend. Lots and lots and lots of work so I wouldn't have to do much over Thanksgiving weekend. Some laundry. Some errands. Some cleaning of my room.

Then somehow I didn't get any of those things done. I may have had the brilliant idea to check out IKEA on Saturday afternoon, along with 75% of the greater Stoughton area. And we didn't even get that accomplished, since we turned around about a quarter mile away from the parking lot because we had already been sitting in barely-moving traffic for an hour.

Saturday would have been totally shot, except for the fact that I had an absolutely great night with some of my high school friends. I danced so much that my legs were actually sore today...which is actually more pathetic than amazing that I danced a lot. Tomorrow I'll share pictures, compliments of Ms. Kristen Whitney.

Now I go catch up on sleep...

P.S. When is it going to snow?

P.P.S. When did Ty Pennington become so annoying?

If you could all just take a chill pill

Whenever I told people during college that I was a psych major, almost everytime the person responded with something like, "Ohhh, you must be analyzing me! I'll have to watch what I say!" I know I do look a little bit like Freud, but come on people--it wasn't very hard to get a psych degree from Union, and I certainly can't look at a person and diagnose them with a borderline personality disorder after a couple of classes with Donaldson.

I've found that people do the same thing when I tell them I'm going into teaching. As soon as they hear 'first grade,' inevitable they remark that I must be a patient person. I suppose that's not entirely untrue, but I can think of at least half a dozen other qualities that I think should exist in most good teachers.

I've always thought of myself as a pretty patient person, when I want to be. But lately I've found that those crying, nose-picking, running-in-the-hallway little guys have been wearing me down lately. I don't know what it is, but if I have to hear one of them tell me one more time that so-and-so said he wasn't going to be his friend anymore, it's going to be hard not to hit him. And it drives me nuts when one of them cannot finish his snack in 15 minutes. ADD aside, the fact is you're hungry, so just focus on eating your apple and jello! And then there's the little stubborn ones. I think it's great that at 6 you already have a strong personality, but I'm the teacher, and when I say that you need to use your crayons instead of your markers, then don't try to negotiate.

Goddddd...my roommate is sitting here screaming about how her bank is going "fucking down." She has that evil look on as she crafts a brilliant letter explaining why she shouldn't pay the excessive charges as she lists what she could have bought for the same amount of money (new boobs, for one), and I'm thinking it's time to vacate the room and head to bed.

Burn baby, burn

I kind of crapped out on blogging for the past two weeks. A long time ago Kate told me something like 99% of blogs don't last a year, and I was determined not to have that be me. I have a feeling once I'm done with student teaching I can have lots of time and no stress and can blog alllll the time. Except that when I'm sitting on the couch during my 4 weeks of winter break, watching my second consecutive hour of Family Feud hosted by Al from Home Improvement, it might be hard to think of exciting things to write about.

I have just five weeks of student teaching left, which is really hard to believe. Last week I did my first "take-over" week, which is where I'm the one in charge for five days, and I do all of the planning and stuff. I was so nervous about student teaching to begin with, but I was absolutely terrified before the school year to do my two takeover weeks. But it turned out actually being kind of fun. I spent so many years playing school in my room, so it was strange to think that I was actually the real teacher for the week. And it was a little bit fun playing school with real kids.

So I promised a fire and foot story, and now I'm actually getting around to telling it. With pictures.

I decided I needed a little time on the futon to recover from the Halloween bash the day afternoon after the party. I curled up with my favorite blue and white fleece blanket, and fell asleep to some reality show on MTV. In that time, Kate migrated to Gillian's room to keep her company while she continued to unpack her room, and Charlotte dozed on the other couch. I'm not sure how long I was sleeping, but all of a sudden I woke up because my foot felt hot. Really hot. So I sat up, looked at my foot (which had blanket/sock on it) and realized that I had unknowingly moved my foot into the flame of the candle that Kate had placed on the table so precariously close to my helpless toes. Sadly Kate wasn't there to take sideways pictures before running for safety to her rock in Yarmouth, so I drew a picture.




After a little scream (I found it's slightly scary to see your foot on fire) I whacked it with the rest of the blanket and got it out. But not without a little damage to my blanket and the table.



My favorite blanket will never be the same. Mostly because it leaves ash on me now.





We had a nice weekend here at 9 Acadia. It was Gillian's birthday, and we celebrated in style. Some celebrated a little harder than others. But our toilet appreciated the company.


23, but still just as hot

It's the most wonderful time of the year

We had a rather nice Halloween party last night. Lots of beer, lots of friends, lots of friends of friends, and LOTS of candy, cupcakes, and cookies with a Halloween theme. The night included an awful version of the drinking counting game (re-re version), Gillian putting on a salmon colored shirt and telling everyone she was a pumpkin, Charlotte and Helen meeting for the first time and after a shy 'hello,' quickly warming up to each other over a British tv show and chatting for a long time, at one point having 25 people crammed in our living room, candy in the bathroom, Kate smiling once or twice even though she hates the day and hates me because I get really excited about it, a ride home from a bar downtown in a limo, and someone in the bar asking if I was dressed as a hot dog.

Pictures.













Tomorrow I'm going to share a story that involves fire and my foot...but I need to upload pictures first to properly tell the story, so I'll leave you with that for tonight.

And the sox win it

A year ago from this very moment, I was sitting in a literacy class, checking my cell phone every 2 1/2 minutes for text messages to update me on Game 4 of the World Series. I had class until 10 that night, and my professor promised us she'd let us out early so we could catch some of the game, but I knew she was lying. And she was...we ended up getting out just 10 minutes before 10. I sat through three hours of learning how to teach kids to read, selfishly wishing that the Sox would lose so I could watch the entire game when they actually did win it all. But, I got out of class, sped to Caitlin's party, and was there in time to watch the last 2 innings and enjoy some chilled champagne.

I oddly remember that night with about as much detail as I remember September 11th (the first one).

Those were the good old days, the days of cops in riot gear.



And the good days, when it didn't matter that I stayed up until after 1 o'clock for days on end to watch the series with the Yankees, because I was just getting up in the morning to go to classes, and not teach math to a class of rammy six and seven year olds. And the non-working schedule gave me the time to get out to see the parade through Boston and catch a glimpse of the trophy and Theo.


Manny being Manny, before he was Manny being Manny


I love you, Mr. Epstein



Bellhorn, before the pinstripes




Pretty great, one year ago today

Lice-free

What a week it's been.

-I was checked for lice at work. Who gets lice checks at work? (To be fair, everyone in first grade was checked).

-I found out I don't have lice.

-I learned what lice look like.



-I learned that without talking to Charlotte for a year and a half (besides email and IM), I forget how to understand her crazy accent.

-I (with the help of two roommates) devoured three English chocolate bars. They were big. My stomach hurt for most of last week.



-I got apple cider and made peace with the fact that fall is here. And now I'm really excited for snow. And sledding. And snow days. Especially snow days.

-I celebrated Helen's birthday. Did you know she'll be 39 in like 3 years?

-I took my air conditioner out of my window (with a lot of help from kate), and it didn't fall on the street and smash into 12,672 pieces.

-It did however dump all of the water from the AC onto my floor. And trail the water through the hallway, through the living room, and into the kitchen as I dragged it out in a box to store it until next summer. It's going to be interesting when I take it out of its moldy box next July.

Nothing too thrilling coming up in the next few days. If you're not already a regular reader, you might want to check out Molly's blog, if not for her brilliant insights, then for her stunning recap of Zabe's wedding last weekend in one of her recent posts.

In case we haven't mentioned it to you, we're having a Halloween party here on Saturday. Costumes, beer, candy, pumpkins, and maybe some karaoke. It doesn't get much better than that.I also want to play that game where you tie doughnuts to a string up high and have to eat them without your hands and you get the powder all over your face, but I haven't figured out how to attach the string to the ceiling. So we'll see. Anyway, if you know where we live, we'd love to have you come celebrate the greatest day of the year.


Luckily, Kate's enthusiasm for the holiday hasn't faded

Straight from the motherland

Charlotte's here! And that means I've eaten so much English chocolate today and yesterday that I've had a constant stomache ache. Charlotte's cool not just because she says funny things like slowpoke and aluminium and car park and pronounces "no" noooorrr. She's also cool because she always brings lots of presents!

Here's Charlotte with the bath toy she got me. It's a lobster named Nipper.



And here's the blow-up lobster chair she brought. Kate's making me put it somewhere where she can't see it.


And she got us some clay with little plastic add-ons like Mr. Potato Head has, and we made little guys.


Oh yeah, and then I turned six.