Our Bold Adventure Continues

Tonight we sought out a traditional "Lion Dance" to celebrate the Chinese New Year. The girls have been learning about it at school and were very excited. They kept explaining that red was the color of good luck in China and they had to put lots of red things in our house for the new year (this didn't happen, though I offered red construction paper for crafts). They also said the house had to be clean for the new year and took it upon themselves to use the wet wipes we use to help make four-year-old hygiene easier (AKA Butt Wipes) to wipe down every bathroom in this house. It may have used a lot of wipes, but who am I to stop my children from voluntarily cleaning bathrooms? The girls' school told us about a Chinese restaurant in town that offers a "Lion Dance" to celebrate the Chinese New Year. We heard it gets crowded, so we got there at 5:30 for a 6:45 dance (both girls sporting red shoes). But despite our early arrival (they don't take reservations) t...

The other day a mom of older kids gave M+O each an old cassette tapes of kids' music, so now we have some vintage Raffi and WeeSing going on at our house. Woo hoo! The most amusing part is that the girls are fascinated with the cassette tapes. They want to hold them constantly. They try to take the cases apart. They put the little folded covers out and put them in again incessantly. Once one of them pulled the brown magnetic tape out a bit, looked up at me and said, "oops mama." They can't seem to remember the word "tape" so they call them "those small CD thingys." This weekend when we set out for an errand both girls protested taking the minivan. NOOOO! SUBARUUUU! They never ask to take the Subaru, it's harder to crawl into and the carseats there don't accomodate winter coats well. But, I quickly figured out, the Subaru has a tape deck. No, I promised, opting for driver ease and preschooler comfort, we'll listen to them on the totally...

We had an exciting day here in Boulder yesterday. Just a two miles from our house a wildfire burned 1400 acres and seven "structures." It started when 80 mph winds blew down power lines. You could see the smoke for miles, smell it too. An entire side of a mountain appeared to glow orange -- we could see it from the end of our street. It's a mountain very close to our house, one we drive on regularly, and one we hiked on just the weekend before with a visiting grandma. More than 11,000 homes were evacuated along with a lot of livestock. Mostly horses, but I saw a photo of a llama. They brought all the four-legged evacuees to the Boulder County Fairgrounds, which struck me as brilliant, but of course must have been part of the county's standing emergency plan. The Red Cross set up a shelter at a local high school, but in a statistic that illustrates Boulder's wealth, most found friends or hotels: of those 11,000 households, only 75 people spent the night at the sh...

First, you have to resign yourself to being tired. As fun as Christmas is with kids, and it really is now that they're old enough to get it, there is an endurance aspect to it all. But, once you accept that there is a fatigue you cannot escape -- because Christmas Eve is never an early night and Christmas morning comes early -- it's wonderful. It's wonderful to listen to M explain that she REALLY heard reindeer on the roof last night, and watch O be more intrigued with the mechanics of her new Zingo game than the game itself (it's a bingo-like game with a little dispenser for the chips, and woah! is the dispenser fascinating). They're old enough now that they thought to distribute gifts as well as dive for the ones with their names on it, but they're young enough still that there was a steady chorus of "I want to open another one." The opening was over, breakfast was yummy, and then we had the time-honored, chaotic tradition of Christmas phone calls to...

When alloted one piece per night -- provided they a) finish their dinner and b) remember to ask -- it takes four-year olds from Halloween night until December 5th to consume all their trick or treating candy. Reeses Peanut Butter Cups were the hands-down favorite. Tootsie Rolls were also quite popular, but Three Musketeers bars were thrown-away half-eaten.

Last year at this time I filled this blog with my somewhat arcane knowledge of Thanksgiving , thanks to the work I did on my master's thesis. Most everyone I know has heard this information now, so I won't rehash. I'll let a few years go by, and assuming I'm still in the blogosphere then, I'll let 'er rip again. This year I'm focused on family, and how nice it is not to travel -- which in many ways is an oxymoron since we have no family here. I'm focused on what a nice place Boulder is to call home, and I'm not just saying that because it was 70 degrees and sunny today. I'm focused on my new hobby of running, and how I never thought I'd be one to plot when I could squeeze a run in. I'm focused on the fact that I was a moron for waiting until the last minute to go to the grocery store, but I'm enjoying the smell of baking sweet potatoes. So I'm focused on some good things. But also, it seems I'm NOT focused in some important pl...

Woo hoo! I ran my first road race this weekend, a 5k. That's about 3.1 miles, for those of you who don't speak metric. Not far by some standards, but considering that 12 weeks ago I hadn't run since I was 17, it's far enough. Here I am, in the second row with the blue pants on. Not a great photo, but it's all I have. The woman with the short hair on the right is our coach, Pam. It all started with the Avon Walk . After a spring and half a summer of long-distance walking I was completely over the idea of walking as serious exercise. It takes too long -- who has five hours to walk 20 miles each weekend? So running was the next logical thing to try. I trained through a local store, Fleet Feet , and a program called No Boundaries specifically for new runners. I had two coaches and a group of ten or so folks to run with each week. I enjoyed the training more than I thought I would: it turns out that running is fun. It took a coach to show me that I was trying to go to...