Gametes In Love

I told myself that THIS time I wouldn’t forget to post our family photos. I usually hold out to send out holiday cards, but that time of year is wrap-up of photo-season crazy, followed up by holiday prep-crazy, so … I’ve been forgetting. But since I’m sitting here catching up (and recognizing that our family photo is 3 years old) I realized I didn’t do it. Again. :-/

So here goes. Photos by Renee Marie Photography, who has been awesome enough to put up with our insanity for years 🙂 We did this session at one of my favorite places out here — the Redwood Preserve in Los Altos.

Please note — family photos mark the one of handful times time of year I force our sons to dress up…. in jeans.

Ski week just happened, and we took a short trip for a few days. We visited Hearst Castle, the Lighthouse and some tide pools on the shore right outside of our hotel. It was lovely…. and frigid for a February.

To see more photos of the castle and lighthouse scenery, check out the Flickr album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/avalikelava/sets/72157694354741675

Grammie visited with us for a few weeks at the start of the year. It was great! One of our week-ends we took her to Tea Time.

Storm has come up with a very interesting innovation for himself. It’s driven by the motivating factor of coziness. Storm is all about his cozy robe, cozy pants and fluffy friends. So… his robe is now a leash for a “friend”, so that a friend is always accessible.

Observe…

I’m by no means a fashion expert, but it’s clear I have failed my children with any sort of fashion sense.
At least his mama didn’t dress him funny. On the bonus side, today his socks match.

What a great afternoon! Got to see my mom’s work at the CWA exhibit and receive an award; followed by a delicious Me-and-my-moms dinner at an amazing little Italian place in San Rafael; followed by a great tourist-y drive through San Francisco. It’s not very often that we get both grandma’s out here, but I’d like more of these please!

It all started with some Advent Calendars. Big for a day… maybe two. Forgotten after that.

A fun time had with friends (and a Santa visitor). I’m not perpetuating the myth, but it’s cruel to fight it when your friends host a party. Griffin knows Santa’s “not real”…. Storm meanwhile gets to be nervous about his gift being the last in the bag 🙂

Back home. Oh the torment of having to wait for everyone to be ready. There might have been some box shaking and bag peaking to guess what’s inside. Note to self: Lego is hard to conceal through this method of deduction.

Griffin is doing a very good impersonation of our Dancing Santa.

Storm and Dad hard at work assembling his new toy robot. Dad did an admirable job (mostly) supervising.

Sigh. Another major assignment for Griffin. Another day of high blood pressure on my end. But… occasionally there’s entrainment like these lovely exchanges.

(Background: Griffin has to do a presentation on the U.K. Part of it is to discuss history. I’m promoting him with some topics)

Question: Who is Queen Elizabeth the First?

Answer: The first queen

Question: why was she important?

Answer: because she lived for 50 years

Follow-up question: and what did she DO in those 50 years?

Answer: Not die.
Finish laughing. Then send wine.

Little man is sans a tooth. His first fell victim to a popcorn encounter last night. Given the level of ‘wiggliness’ we knew it was coming out that evening faced against any solid food item.

As you know, I’m not a fan of tooth loss, and this one, frankly hit me hard. My baby is loosing his baby teeth, and is defying of my opposition to getting older.

Last weekend he ran down from his room, crying. His mouth was bleeding and he insisted he heard a pop in his mouth. I kept asking him what he was chewing on, but he insisted he didn’t have anything in his mouth. When I ran my finger against his teeth this one was wiggly. I wasn’t ready for this! I kept asking him to leave it alone. And maybe it will solidify again and we could forget this whole toothless thing. Alas I didn’t have my way.

Once he figured out that the Tooth Fairy was coming for him he got all excited.

And because we are who we are, we didn’t want to let the tooth go without a microscope examination. Storm wrote a (very cute) note to the Tooth Fairy asking that the tooth stays an extra day.

Side note, teeth look awesome close up.

I really might need to invest in a camera to capture stills from the microscope.

Now, my only request of the Tooth Fairy is that only one child requires braces. We already know Griffin’s orthodontics bill will be the cost of a vehicle. Not looking to double up on that.

When your writing is bad enough that you can’t tell where words start and end: Skittles.