Howl!!!

Friday night had a great moon!!!! It was closer to the earth than usual, so it looked pretty big, and was super-bright and beautiful!!!

It was also the first full moon of the year, which is called a “Wolf Moon”!! Both Em & I thought this was pretty cool, and apparently a lot of other people did too. Yahoo had put this piece of information up on their news feed in the morning, and suddenly many of the blog sites had posts that said, “Awesome Wolf Moon!!!” (including ours : )) It’s amazing how powerful Yahoo News is these days!!

In any case, it was a beautiful moon, and a perfect night for howling!!!

Covet!!!

Covet!!!

Star Night!!!

The boys & I went up to “Star Night” at the Griffith Observatory this weekend! This is a special night when all of the amateur astronomers set up their telescopes for people to take a peek at the wonders of the universe. Mom told us about it, and we met up with her and Petur, as well as Amy and Felix. We missed Jamie, who wasn’t feeling well and Em, who was at the dentist : ( But we still had a great time!!

It was the perfect night to go up there since the rains had cleared up the skies, and the views were fantastic!!! Unfortunately, a lot of other people had the same idea, so it was super crowded, but after a spirited hike up the hill, we made it up there and saw some amazing sights!! We got to take a beautiful look at the moon and Jupiter – we could even see a few of its (at last count) 65 moons!!

The guys had a great time, and I’m sure that we’ll go up there again, but we’ll remember to go early and bring some good walking shoes : )

Thanks Mom!!!

Cezanne!!!!

Happy 171st birthday to Paul Cezanne!!! When considering the aesthetic revolution of the 20th century, it is pretty easy to make a case for Cezanne's prominence. Others, like Picasso and Kandinsky, might have brought it to fruition, but, as Picasso said, "Cezanne was the father of us all."


So many crazy things are written and said about modern art - which is really all art/music/film/writing today. But the way that I tell it to my students is that it is just the idea that things do not have to look/sound/read/feel like something else. While the artists of the past were judged primarily on how well they reproduced the world, Cezanne claimed that art was, "a harmony parallel to nature." Things can look however you want them to look!!



Of course the problem with this is, how do you then tell if it's good or bad? This is where I really love Cezanne! He pioneered the revolutionary notion that, when you reject the rules of the majority, what you need to do is to look deeply and fearlessly into your own consciousness for what moves you, and this is what he did for his whole life!!

He was brilliant, insecure, radical, courageous, flawed and relentless!! I love his paintings, but just as much I love the man and what he accomplished!



Here are some words of his:



"Nature is not on the surface, but in the depth."


"Painting from nature is not copying the object, it is realizing one's sensations."

"Regarding one's art, one must be incorruptible, and to be so in one's art, one must practice being incorruptible in one's life."

"All juries are pigs."


And of course:










How I love his fruit!!!!

Interiors!!!

Here are some rooms that I'd rather be spending a rainy day in than my room at school today : )

Thanks!!!

Giving thanks.

Exteriors!!!

Hope you're all making it through the week!!

Dude/Dead!!!

It’s been a couple of weeks now, but I wanted to get in an entry about our last Morning Glory gig at the All Star Lanes bowling alley in Eagle Rock. For one thing, it was an awesome gig!! It was our first time there, but the place sounded great & the people were really nice. Also, there was a great crowd, and we actually played pretty good!! Usually it’s one or the other: good crowd-play poorly, or no one there-play great! However the band has been playing really terrific lately, and a lot of people actually showed up to see it, so it was a really fun night. I was especially glad that Eric and David could make it, and it was so nice of a bunch of other friends to come as well!!

So anyway, the other reason that I wanted to post it is that we’re playing there again on Sunday, January 17 at 8:00!! So I thought that I would plug it a little bit : )

Actually, this one should be a pretty awesome gig as well. We’re working the bowling alley/Lebowski angle and actually playing some Credence : )



Check out Joel’s awesome poster for the gig – The Dead Abide!!!

Also, we’re being joined by an old friend of Doug’s named Doug Grean. He’s a real music veteran who has worked with just about everyone, and is also one of the only people I know who have their own Wikipedia page (it’s right here)! So we’re pretty excited about that.

Hope some of you can make it – remember that you should have the day off the next day, and if you don’t, you should quit your job!! We’ll probably be playing pretty late (our band basically just keeps going until we get kicked out), so come and go as you will, but we’ll be really happy to see you there!

Hope everyone’s New Year is going well and much love to all!!!

Friday Afternoon!!!

Stop Everything

Stop everything and come with me.
Let the rose in the yard go untended.
There are places I need you to see.

Let the phone ring. Unboil the tea.
Let the tale, just begun, go unended.
Stop everything and come with me.

The crack in the cup. The blight in the tree.
Must a broken thing always be mended?
There are places I need you to see.

Let the door hang open. Don't take a key.
Leave the house and your heart undefended.
Stop everything and come with me.

Where will we go? What will we be?
Ah, love, let me be candid.
There are places. But I need you to see.

No promises, then. No guarantees.
Just love and fear equally blended.
Stop everything and come with me.
There are places I need you to see.

- Kevin Coll

A Belated Happy New Year

Happy New Year and new decade everyone! We had a great start to the New Year. Julie had a little party here in "The Village" and we all got to feel like grown ups for a just a little bit while the kids ran wild. Of course...we did celebrate the East Coast New Year's Eve, so we could all go to bed by 9pm.

Before we went to bed, though, we did take a moment to rush outside with all of the kids to look at the blue moon. Thor was a great uncle during the party. He played with the kids for a long time and tired everyone out, so we had a lovely, mellow moment right before the end of the party looking at the last New Year's blue moon for another 19 years.

Then we woke up not too bright and early on New Year's day. Julie and Scarlett came over and had ebilskivers with us (little round Danish pancakes). Then Patrick and I took the boys on our favorite hike up above the Observatory.

We didn't expect to get very far, it's a pretty tough hike, but the guys were troopers, they made it all the way to the top.

It was a perfect, clear, blue day and we could see all the way to Catalina. We hope everyone else had a perfect New Year's, as well.

Alma!!!

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

Here's a nice little short from Rodrigo Blaas, one of the amazing Pixar guys from Spain I think. Basically, what if Pixar said, "Heck with pleasing kids - let's do the Twilight Zone!" Nice job!

Radio!!!

Here's an article that I thought was really interesting! It's from Richard at "Free the Animal" and is about how he decided to try cleaning himself only with water - no soap or shampoo (with a couple of exceptions), and the surprising results - at least they were surprising to me! Read it here:

http://freetheanimal.com/2009/12/paleo-i-dont-care-i-like-no-soap-no-shampoo.html

Three Greats!!!

Happy 118th birthday to John Ronald Reuel Tolkien!!! While The Lord of the Rings is definitely not an underground sensation any longer (and The Hobbit being CGI'd as we speak) I would like to put in a good word for two of his lesser known stories: Farmer Giles of Ham and Smith of Wootton Major (you can usually get them together in one volume).

While The Lord of the Rings and even The Hobbit are pretty ambitious reads, both of these stories could probably be read in one rainy afternoon. And while they may not have quite the epic scope of his better known novels, they are both sooooo great!!!

Each has its own charms: Farmer Giles is a great comic story and Smith of Wootton Major is a very deep fairy tale, but they are both filled with Tolkien's wonderful, mysterious and earthy imagination! Hope you check them out!!!

Christmas...the last gasp

Well...the holidays were a bit of a mixed bag in our household this year. Kathi and Petur's Christmas Eve-eve party was smashing. It was so much fun to see Patty and the boys (both for the party and for the earlier cookie-baking festivities). Also, wonderful to see Mike and Molly who made the long drive from Oregon!

We finally got to meet Annie's mystery-man Peter, who seems like a very cool guy. Everyone held there breath while Jack treacherously waved his lit candle to and fro, but eventually all of the candles were lit and no one went up in flames. Phew!



We love this picture of Kathi and Finn. Two beauties!!!

One of the best parts of our entire Christmas holiday was getting to spend so much time with Patrick's best friend Eric and his son Jude. Here are Finn and Jude together - two sweet peas in a pod.

And one of my other favorite sweet peas, our cutie pie nephew Felix. It never ceases to amaze me how calm and gentle Finn and Felix are in comparison to Mr. Jack. Both Finn and Felix managed to light their candles without incident. We also noted that Amy and Jamie had many small, lovely breakable Chritsmas trinkets at Felix's eye level. Ahhhh...those were the days. I tease Jack a lot in my posts, but honestly he reminds me a lot of Mike and if he demonstrated his rascal-side during the tree-lighting portion of the evening, then his gregarious, social side came out later when he lead the group in our most raucous carol-singing session in years. Thank you to Eric, also, for livening things up a bit and throwing in a few harmonies.

A good time was had by all at the Christmas Eve party...and then came Christmas. Patrick and I were busy wrapping up presents when Jack let out a terrible shriek. I took one look around our paper and ribbon-strewn living room floor and said, "Patrick, hide all the wrapping stuff NOW!" Then I ran in to check on Jack who had come down with the stomach flu. I will spare you most of the details except to say that I did 20 loads of laundry in two days and Jack and I managed to sleep for about a grand total of 3 hours during that time.

Here is Jack just lying there, feeling quite miserable. Finn was so sweet, he opened Jack's presents for him and demonstrated each one to try to make Jack feel better.

I was very, very sorry to miss Christmas with the family. We look forward to it all year long and I was especially sorry to miss seeing Mike and Molly a bit more, and Patrick's grandpa Hank. I think Finn and Patrick had a great time though and...I must confess, things were probably a bit more relaxed down there without us.

The funniest thing to me in the whole Christmas fiasco of 2009 is that we usually pack all the presents up and bring them to Kathi's before the kids see them. We couldn't do that this year because Finn came out and saw all of them by the tree in the midst of one of Jack's sicko sessions. He came running to me in the bathroom and said, "Momma! Santa Claus came, Santa Claus came!" I could see the little gears in his head already turning, thinking..."Wait a minute. Mom and Dad are still awake." So...I did what the Grinch did, I thought up a lie and I thought it up quick. I said, "I KNOW! I saw that, too. I think Santa must have been on his way to Grandma Kathi's house when he got the message that Jack was sick, so he turned around and zoomed over here and snuck all the presents in while Daddy and I were cleaning up Jack's bed and getting him in clean jammies." And my little scientific boy, who never lets anything go without asking 30 questions nodded sagely and said, "Yeah, I thought that was what happened." I think little kids want to believe in Santa as long as they can. And why not? We can all use a little magic in our lives.

And now...on to Patrick for the rest of the Christmas report. Love to everyone! It was so good to see all of you. I'm sorry Jack and I didn't get to see you more, but we love you all and hope you had the merriest of times.

Well, Em covered most of the dramatic moments! After that, the morning was your basic Christmas bacchanal! Of course we missed Jack and Momma terribly!! It really wasn't the same without them - but we were happy to be with all of the folks at Mom and Petur's house, and the show must go on : ) We feel soooo lucky to be with so much family on Chrismas these days including Anne & Sonja!!

It was great that Sonja made it for Christmas this year from Switzerland!! I hope that she got to study for her medical finals enough!!

Finn with new watch!



Lovely Anne with stylish new sweater!!

Petur with big new book!!

Afterwords we had a great breakfast!! It was sad without Em and Jack, but Mom and Petur still made it a wonderful Christmas morning!!

After Mom's, Finn and I headed down to San Diego to see Grandpa Hank, Dad and Molly. Jack was feeling better, but the thought of him being sick in the car for three hours was not heartening, so still no Momma and Jack : (

More Christmas presents though!!! And Finn got to use his new camera - I'll post some of his pictures soon!!!

Including this one!!! We love you Grandpa Hank!!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and wasn't feeling too sickly!! While we were driving around, Finn & I had some great talks about God & Jesus & what Christmas is all about. We saw a billboard for a show called "Life Unexpected" and Finn said that we had some unexpected things happen that Christmas, which was really true, but we still felt the magic of the season!