Coda

 

Coda is a Great Dane Mix puppy.  She has been here for over a week now, two weeks soon - and our other dogs Charlotte and Minerva have finally begun to warm up to her.  She is eating more dry food, has come to an agreement with all the cats and Melody, the blind goat and is learning much more about outside and so forth.  She has velociraptor 'bite the world' moments as well as very sweet 'could you please play toy with me' and lots of floppy my paws are too big and I have no idea where I'm going until I get there moments.

Tarragon Cream sauce Pasta

I'm telling Esme about another one of the family recipes that I want to make and show her how to make - and every other recipe I've been finding for it uses white wine in it for reduction in the sauce. And I had to think, ah.. yes, my mother never cooked with that (cooking alcohol) at all, so of course the 'family recipe' that I know doesn't have it, so.. do I try to do it 'correctly' according to the books or do I cook what I know so I don't 'mess it up'? I'm choosing option two, and then maybe we can learn how to make the 'actual French recipe version' later.  Apparently there is a 'boil the onions in white wine' step that I've never done in my life.. and am not sure I want to.  

 This is usually served with chicken breast, but can also be served with eggs.  We didn't have fresh garden tarragon, but I was inspired to make this by the dried tarragon packet I got in our spice sampler.  Tarragon goes bad quickly, much quicker than many spices - and the reason I haven't made it in many years is that it is hard to find it, and then when you do, a little disappointing to throw much of it away later.  I used finely diced zucchini instead of the real chopped tarragon plants that were in a recipe I found - I think maybe it was made with canned green beans at times in our household, my mom canned a lot of green beans every summer.

 We decided to make it with eggs.  It is not an easy dish to make with three burners by yourself - will need to practice again, as one of the burners was an omelette to go with it and that got a bit messy in between - started pasta, then melted butter in a big pan and added finely diced zucchini and sliced sweet onions, cooking them until the onions were translucent, then added a bit more water to make sure there was enough liquid - added a few tablespoons of flour until it began to form a paste with the butter, added some grated cheese (used the last of the gruyere block we had, about 3 by 2 inches) to that to finish making it a full paste (roux), then began to reliquify with half-and-half, then whole milk, until the sauce and melted cheese came to the right consistency, added dried tarragon and lots of black pepper (should have added more salt, I had hoped the butter and cheese was salty enough) and removed from heat as the omelette was getting done to put on the plates and drained the pasta, stirred it into the tarragon cream sauce and added more black pepper and shredded cheese on top of each plate after serving. It's been years, maybe a decade, since I made this dish, but I thought I'd give it a go again to show Esme.

bit

We did those two flea market days in a row, and that was a bit much for us, social introvert wise.  I did some gardening yesterday, and will go out there again in a little bit to look everything over.   And today we did some shopping, and glad to be home.  

I've studied a little less of the Lithuanian the past day or so, give myself some time to see how much I've soaked in.  I did a bit more today than yesterday, and found myself getting about 1 in 8? of the 'non-super-easy' ones wrong - I wasn't counting the ones like 'galaktikus' for galaxy, but more the ones that are very specific to the language, like 'pamesti' (to drop/lose)  - not obviously borrowed words.  That is still pretty good for a week on it.  (and hundreds and hundreds of words)

 

I've added some Greek review the past few days, and continued with the Russian site (Busuu) and Spanish and French on my Duolingo profiles (with the Greek there, and on Greekpod101).  I dropped the Bulgarian except for a word or two here and there because I tried to join their site as a birthday gift and it wouldn't let me pay for less than 6 months.. and I didn't want to commit to that much money on it yet.  Instead, I'll buy myself a longer garden hose closer to my birthday.  We've also still got to pay for what the mail truck is in the shop for, and fix the kitchen faucet that has sprung a leak, but not a major one.

Today at the supermarket Esme brought me this little cooler thing that Mark wanted to use in the greenhouse for cold-stratifying seeds - and I didn't know what in the world they wanted it for when she came up to me carrying it.  I asked her 'Apparata se quoi?' loud enough that people turned heads next to me.  She knew what it meant (fairly easy - what is this apparatus? in pseudo-latin-french which my brain seems to operate in).  Then : I kept myself from saying the next thing that was not quite-English 'ya apres nostri a seguir' (it follows after us) and instead said the English translation from my brain of 'I guess it's coming with us then', with a note of resigned sarcasm.  That last bit isn't Latin, it isn't Catalan, it isn't French - but it has elements of all three.  

I really don't know what language my brain 'speaks' in before it translates to English - at one time I thought it had to be only French, because that was what was present in my childhood - but the answer lies somewhere between several languages - so I must have picked up more from reading, dictionaries and encyclopedias, (my dad had a set of language books from Simply Teach Yourself ...something in red leather-bound volumes, there were also math, accounting and other books in that series but I adored the multiple languages), other television? and so forth.  And the more languages I learn, the better I am at interpreting that what comes 'pre-installed'  isn't just nonsense, it actually does have roots in somewhere, and that it's grammar, of course, is absolutely horrid.

note : a friend looked at what I had written and said 'you were speaking a patois' - a pidgin, especially of French, that includes regional dialectical differences and/or adaptations to nearby languages, sometimes called a creole in other countries, but also referring to the 'country speak', 'colloquial' or 'rough way of saying things (what patois means)' vs. the refined correct grammar forms.  I like that, I'll take it.  

 I don't know what form of French my grandmother spoke, as she was French and Indian (Ojibwa from Rolla, ND, her parents did not live on the reservation, her mother was half or full Indian, from what I was told and remember (I was five when she died, and my mother told me some of it - so this is how I remember what I was told:) my great-grandmother's name was Bessie Gannon on my grandmother's birth certificate, and a gravestone I've seen - but didn't have any birth record for Bessie that we could find - and her father was many nationalities, in-and-out moving around, gambling and doing odd and long-haul type jobs - Grandma was third or fourth youngest out of ten children, several of the girls had already gotten married and moved away - so after Grandma was seven years old (and her younger sister four, and maybe another younger boy, and then the baby girl) their mom got sick and their father had been away for a long time, and all the children at home, right down to the 18 month old baby, were sent to an orphanage near Owatonna, Minnesota, very far away from their home.  The boys and the girls got split up.  The baby was adopted out (Grandma's sister, when I was a kid, found her and met with her).  

In the orphanage it is possible they learned Latin from the nuns? but she did tell me they were nuns, and they definitely spoke some German, and that she and her sister were in a German speaking household for a while but the lady gave them back because Grandma was stubborn and talked back, she said the lady called them 'dumkoff' (dumbhead) all the time, and that Grandma wouldn't stand for them beating her littler sister who still wet the bed, she made them beat her instead and she told me that once when she fought back the lady locked her in a closet and she screamed and hollered and beat on the door and after that I guess the lady decided Grandma was too spirited for her and both girls went back to the orphanage).  

Grandma's name was Vera, and her little sister was Inez, and the youngest I think was Priscilla by birth? perhaps Patricia.  The older girls were Nora and Eva and Ava and another name that sounded like Eva... and then there were several boys Arthur and Clyde.. Claude? and I can't remember the other maybe a William?  What I did find out I had written down in a notebook for Esme for the future - but I can't find it now.. it's somewhere around here with a bright turquoise cover and has all of my father's family's info  and my mother's father's family's info in it as well (which I found much more of).

On Baltoslav tools - I am playing the pictures game in multiple languages - it goes very quick and gives me a good random selection of words to test - and in Bulgarian, I am getting today maybe a score of 5 or 7 before I lose the three lives over 4 times, in Latvian, about 40, in Lithuanian also about 40 - both of those about 4 times played, Catalan 55 (high score, 2 times), in French 280 (one time played)!  I find it really interesting what French words I have not learned, like wild boar, or trace (it left no trace, not to trace something) etc..  they tend to be high tier ones you would only get in certain circumtances.  In Catalan I'm still getting some of the next tier down wrong - faucet, sparrow etc.

After that, did a comparison with babadum on the French and went to score 125 - with probably about ten mistakes in there on again (it doesn't show you how many mistakes, and there are no 'lives lost' there.  Again, it was mostly high level words that I had not heard and/or positively identified before - even in all the time I've studied French - but I felt the mistakes harder, and also felt the 'I can figure that out from it's parts' stronger, as well - on words that I had an idea about, but had not heard the combination before.  I also like that I knew a lot of the 'abstract' words in French that I have learned the Lithuanian word for on the same system, but how that feels different in my head now because I know the French from a different level, and understand that picture better now (since it is all pictures there, and no explanations).

Community Scrabble Game at the flea market

 

We were out at our local flea market and showing off the 3D printed things, the magnetic Scrabble game, and our greenhouse plants.

 

whereupon I turn myself into a crochet workshop

 

 This is the second one of these I've made, a bit smaller than the one last year - and for me, not for 'the workshop'... but I've also made two pink market bags for the workshop drawer, a couple of washcloths, and a little sketchbook full of potential stuff I could make, but I'm not sure if I want to get into it that far type stuff.... And I've dedicated a drawer to 'stuff I'll make in case we go to sell at a market or bring things to the gallery', which used to be the entire six drawers were full of yarn, but I've been using some of it, and moving it around, and now there is enough space to start putting finished objects in it.

But at the same time, I don't want to do a lot of projects actually requested by other people - I'll sit up and chat with someone or watch a movie and make something, but my personality is often (not always) that if someone actually wants me to make something and I didn't come up with the idea, I'm not very likely to finish it.  What makes me do that?  Something about an overbearing parent, I think.  Anyway, that was the big chat with my sister the other night - about how after she left to live at her father's house my mother had cranked down hard on me while at the same time she was losing her memory and always having health issues with her diabetes so I was straddling three worlds at one time - can't do anything she doesn't tell me to do, can't figure out what she needs, and figuring out what I actually need and where it falls outside of those two enough to become an adult.  It was a hard talk - and I don't think my sister will get half of what I was trying to tell her or remember it.. 

but I finished nearly an entire bag while talking to her - because my hands needed to be busy.  We had the talk because it was our mom's birthday, and my sister had posted some 'rose colored glasses' things, and I let them stand publicly but I had to have a 'this is the way it was for me' discussion with her that I usually let slide.. because no, it was not all rose colored glasses and unicorns when she was away, and even when I moved out and she moved back and left her kids with my mom often (and really, my mom was not entirely capable at that point, but she didn't seem to care and had her own issues going on too deep to fathom here) I still felt she should remember it right, even though it was tough, and not paste flowers all over it.

Esme and I took a nice nature walk / bike ride (she biked, I walked), and went and got some groceries and talked about up and down mix of all sorts of things including past present and future... she understands the 'its not all sugar coated' thing maybe too well for her years at times (sigh)   I am going to make her a Mexican inspired taco meal after a bit.  We bought mole sauce, and looked up how to pronounce it, what ingredients it is, what is usually eaten with... and then said eh, we'll make tacos and Spanish rice both how we know we like and then try some of the mole sauce on the side of the rice.

Languages : added Italian to my phone, tested into second section (better than I tested with Czech, not as good as the Spanish) even though I really don't know very much Italian and it is just as 'sticky' to my brain as Spanish is.  (sticky is not good, sticky is I want to separate it from other words and I can't they come up all together four words for the same thing in four languages and it makes it easy to read but hard to speak)  French and Spanish 'stick', Spanish and Italian 'stick'.. Czech and Russian stick but Russian has a different alphabet.  When I try to remember how to say something in one of those languages and have been doing another sticky one - I can't decide which one to respond in, although I can read them just fine the road is not two-way.  Went back on my other computer and continued in French and Russian and Czech and one lesson of Japanese to make sure I could still recognize stuff.  

currently staring at a little Pinterest crochet cat thing and wondering if I could figure it out

Pondering a sitch or a skitch more

I was surprised by the Welsh word 'cwch' today, and its meaning - which is a comfortable cuddle or a hideaway spot or to stow something away in a hidden place.  It has several meanings, and it was odd to hear it in some of the sentences I was reading.  I was reading an article by David Jandrell about Welsh Valleys Speak at Parallel Cymru, a bilingual online newspaper where I've been doing some of my Welsh studies.

It is a little fitting with the multi-use word in Welsh though, and it makes me wonder if it has come from similar far back roots and if anyone else would know of it.

The word: 'skitch', or 'sitch'

It brought back to mind something that has passed down through my mother's family, a bit of  vernacular I always thought was British English, but could even be related to the word 'sich' in German.  But nothing I've found actually seems to fit with how the word was (and is) used.  I have seen the word 'skitch' meaning to scoot over, which might be close to the meaning I learned.



The meaning I grew up knowing meant a small quantity, or a small quantity more than what was given previously.  If the item given was not specified, it could also mean a quantity of time.  It translated best to somewhere between 'a bit' and 'a pinch'.. and I have no idea where it came from but it still pervades my speech now as an adult.  Not only do I not know anyone else that says it, I can't remember anyone outside of my own family as a child using it.  Google shows up nothing - it says it is a vernacular for 'situation'... which in this case, does not fit.

Examples :

'Give me a skitch more of that (flour, a length of something like a board, pipe or fabric etc..)'  If you needed a very tiny amount you would say 'Give me just a skitch more' and that would mean less than a skitch.

I definitely remember using it a lot in baking, but also in sewing.  It would be very unnatural to ask for a 'skitch of marbles' or a 'skitch of apples'... it was more used in something that normally would not have quantity until it was measured, such as flour, or water or a length of board, pipe or cloth.  You could knead the bread a skitch longer, or pound a nail a skitch deeper, or do something, anything, just a 'skitch' better than before.

You could also 'sit a sitch' or 'sit a skitch' to sit for a little while somewhere

Or you could 'drag/push/move that item a 'sitch further' or a 'sitch closer'.
You could skitch over to the side, as well, but I wouldn't say 'sitch over' unless I meant 'a sitch over that line' etc.

"Wait a skitch more" meant you wanted to do something just a moment later, like after finishing a task that you were involved with but not much later than that.  The 'now in a minute' in the article made me laugh and remember this, too.

 

Background and other bits:

 
I am thinking this must have come down in my Grandmother's family, as I did not hear it from anyone else and my Grandmother Vera had very few siblings or other relatives that I knew growing up.  She was adopted out of the Owatonna Children's home in Blue Earth Minnesota, and knew French and some German from the nuns there and from one of the families that had adopted her for a while.  From some of what I remember being told she went to a German family for a while but eventually went back and stayed at the orphanage until she married my Grandfather.  Her birth mother was part Ojibwe / Anishinnabe from the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation area in North Dakota, but I believe her father was of French and Russian descent.

I know there are records out there that one of my aunts had - but she said she was told not to give the information to anyone.  So, that is as much as I know.  The children were taken because their mother got sick and/or couldn't pay bills - there was some confusion on that part.  Their father was 'out' and couldn't be found - he apparently went away for long periods of time and then showed back up with money, as many men did at that time.  There were older sisters (Ava and Eva?) but they were married and their husbands wouldn't let the children come live with them.  So my grandmother, her sister, the baby girl and at least two of the younger brothers were transported a long distance to the Children's Home.

I know this is why I bawled so hard at the book 'Before We were Yours', because it matched some of the stories I did hear - of my grandmother being oldest of those that went to the home, not knowing where some of her younger siblings went, especially the baby, Phyllis.. and also about having to clean up after her younger sister Inez when she peed the bed so that the nuns wouldn't whip her for it in the morning.  That book hit home that I could see my grandmother as a young girl in the shoes of Rill/May.. and her doing everything she could but still not being able to keep them together.

Our family zoo portrait

From left (clockwise) Minion, Freckles, Minerva, Lucy, Nova, Sweetie, Spud, Kitty (the goat), Dox, Daphne, Pumpkin, Callie.

Mark says my style isn't cubist, it's trapezoidal.  Ha.  I wasn't sure I was going to get everyone in there- started with the dogs and Esme said I had to add the goat, and then I had to find places to put the cats.

10 years old

 

We united Grandma down for eating cupcakes and opening presents.  She brought Esme a nice card and present, too.  Esme opened up the traditional potato gift and her face was priceless - but I didn't catch it on the camera.  She also received a sketchbook and animal drawing book from Mom, and a forest knife from Daddy (because she's finally old enough and has practiced this summer to our satisfaction).

She loved her Minecraft toys and a little Zoomer giraffe I picked up.
I bought her a  copy of 'What the Dinosaurs Did Last Night' by the Dinovember crew.

We made pepperoni pizza with chicken nuggets on top (and extra cheese), which was her request.
Tomorrow we have another big day planned!  We've also played a lot of Minecraft and watched her birthday movie 'Tad the Lost Explorer', which was recc. by a friend and very good.

I can hardly believe she is ten - the time has flown by.  And she is so tall, now!

Grandma has a permanent lap puppy :)

Lucy was very interested in the new toy - it makes noise, is it alive?  Is it going to get to eat cake?  Dogs eat cake, not giraffes!

bits and pieces

 Mark on the roof, working on his antenna for radio reception.

  

A picture I asked Esme to take of me since my profile was about two or three years old...

 Esme downstairs before I gave her the camera.

When Esme gets home today if the weather is nice she can try riding her new bike again.  I've finished one of my books and back into another.  I'm also sketching down a few things in a journal that I've meant to write for a while but haven't been in the right frame of mind for it.

collections and album bits

This is the glasstop display box I gave Esme for her geology and shell collection.  The collection was sitting on a shelf by my sewing box and it is much more enjoyable this way!  I put the shell she got from her grandparents (Grandpa Harvey and Grandma Gale) in there it had been out of sight in a jewelry box.  Then, she asked me why we didn't have any photographs of them up on our memory board.  She couldn't remember what everyone looked like!  It was near bedtime so of course she got deeply philosophical about this.  She also wanted to see more pictures of Grandma Irene and Grandpa Henry.

I printed out a batch of photos and put a few up on the board, and a set into her little album here on the display box.  The album already had a lot of pictures from when she was a little baby, but it was put away in a drawer.  It now has more recent pictures as well from our Kentucky Lake heritage center trip and her third grade photo the other day.  She can have it out and page through it.

The memory board in the kitchen is a little crowded now, but it's good!  I think she will like it.

I think I need to get a big album and start putting all of the other photos in it.  They are laying in sleeves in a drawer and I'm not even sure what is there.  It would be a good project for this fall.

Anymore sausage flavored dog food in this pan?

Gave away these kittens today at the flea market.  They went together to a good home.  I thought I had lost my ring and couldn't find it anywhere.  Then when I got home it was in a soap dish from earlier that morning after Esme's bus stop I had washed my hair.  I felt silly - but glad it wasn't lost!

Minecraft Freeway World

This is in the Freeway world she has been working on with Daddy:

It is a flower stand - pick a flower, and put a dollar (gold bar) in the chest to pay

We have been playing with fireworks and also with making a 'currency system'.

They have really expanded the map lately.  They found a desert village and connected it to the Freeway, and this flower stand and a new 'mushroom soup' (Mushroom Dooshroom Family Restaurant) restaurant was built with fresh Mooshroom cows in the back pasture to assist the chef in his preparation.  She put hoppers for the tables so the waiter could dump the food order right into the hopper and the customer could leave their payment there.  She was using book and quills to write the orders down in shorthand and depositing them in the chest by the kitchen :)  

The serving area in front and the kitchen in back.  We built the walls of this together but she had the floor and counters laid out and the colors picked out for everything.

 The 'secret ingredient' ala Willy Wonka

The other project lately was the hospital - which Daddy gave her over an abandoned building of his and she built in ideas from a little map I sketched so there was a waiting room, and operating room and a recovery room.  We did a 'mock operation' there like the appendicitis operation she saw in the Emily of New Moon episode.  I wrote her several books in Minecraft about appendicitis and the names of bones to have in her hospital library.

 hospital outside -it was Daddy's build, and she put the cross on top and made the inside

The operating room.  The stone cylinder on the table in the foreground is a 'cylinder of coffee - for the doctor, when he needs it'.  There are beds to the left for recovery - in the 'broken leg ward', 'sleepwalkers ward' etc etc..

Tonight I made a large building out in some flatland just for the architecture of it -and because Mark said I needed to make something 'big enough to show up on the map'... should post the map soon.  His smiley-face bank building and her giant red T-rex do show up prominently :)

 Mama's build - it looks a lot like the civic center I grew up near..although I didn't have any plan when I started building it last night.  Mark says it is asymmetrical and that bothers him ;) heh.

Alien spaceship and lander - this was a pretend she really wanted to do the other night.

She then filled the spaceship with chickens *facepalm*


A cropped down map of Freeway World.
The T-Rex is left of middle... the hospital is in the right side edge...Daddy's smiley face bank is upper middle-right.. my civic center is lower middle-left

Unrelated Note:   I had her read more with me in the Little House book (we need to buy the next one...we're more than halfway through going a chapter at a time).  Her reading is getting more natural- still runs between her sentences sometimes where she has to stop and look back...still has some pauses and 'errs' while she is reading ahead faster than she can say the words.  But, she is retaining what she is reading -and some of what she is listening to (even though she was fidgeting and playing with flower petals while she was 'listening')...she was able to tell me several specific details from the story later while we were doing a bit of writing.

A new bike to share

 Esme has had her bike for a while, and is getting better on the gravel with her training wheels - but it is tough, especially on hills!  Mark found this bike on clearance and has been researching them for a bit.  This one fit most of the bill and the price was right.  He wanted something we could share, ride on the gravel and the hard road, and would stand up for a while.  It is a men's bike - but if I'm not on a hill I can get it started.

 Taking it for a spin just a bit around the yard.

I'm getting over the cold I had - and had Esme out to town, today although that hit me hard when got home.

We got some great library books I've yet to get out of the car... and we set up her school study place again to be clean, organized and ready for next school week.

Proud on her bike



Native American Indian house styles, her attempt to make some of them in Minecraft, after asking me questions about them.  This is a wigwam .. my attempt and hers.


And a leanto she made after we read about how they would make quick shelters in the woods if they were hunting.  This is also a wattle and daub mud house hut which we worked together on, with reinforced door and a thatch 'hay' roof and wood rafters inside.  We put doors in the windows because they would not have had glass at that time...

Santa and bits at the end of the weekend

.We saw Santa at our local home improvement place yesterday - where I happen to be a plumbing consultant during much of my week...

 Watching Christmas trees, houses and carousels

 Miss Judi, getting an explanation about Santa

 Esme seeing Santa and freezing... but only momentarily.  I think there was also a line, and she was trying to decide how to feel about waiting.

 Santa, look, that is my Grandma!

She sat on his lap and told him about the things she had written in her letter.  I had a hard time hearing all of it because there was a fan going - and I got a couple of eyebrows over something I did not hear, but she seemed very happy he had understood the giraffe and spaceship ideas.

 Candid shots from the triplets that were there before us, we caught one of the elves yawning on the job.

Cuteness Wars.  What a scowl!

We hope to work more on the extra atmospheric vehicle today.  I have a few little sewing things I could do - have to get ambition to work on those or to start something new.  I have been looking at lots of sewing patterns but only slightly inspired, and nothing enough to set to fabric.  I was slightly depressed yesterday by more problems with my Minnesota family, but there isn't anything I can do except give them some advice and then try to stay away from the topic.  It has been raining for several days - warm, not cold... but still, depressing weather does not help.  I'd like to have some sunlight.

I took Esme's measurements today - since she has turned five.  She is 21 w, 23 chest with a 25.5 inch length from outside hip to ankle.  She is 44 inches tall, and about 44 lbs (Mark used the fish scale).. she said that was fun and she was very strong and Daddy was very strong for picking her up.  The patterns I am currently using for her are a size 5 vintage pants pattern and a size 6 vintage dress pattern

This is Butterick 4655, which I do not own but was the only one I was impressed with during my search today.  I have something that will do this already in my collection.  I'm not sure what draws me to this one -- square collars have always done well on Esme, but I do not often use them anymore, as they are much more difficult to set the facing on.  I know I am also drawn to that golden yellow color often - but it isn't Esme's color, hardly anything is a 'bad' color for her, but blues and greens and purples seem to be the majority of her wardrobe.

 Up and Away book, 1949 - we have been reading this before bed and the pictures are gorgeous.  The writing is just above Esme's level, she knows a lot of the 'small' words but needs to take her time so she doesn't say 'far' is 'for' or 'was' is 'went' etc..  That is good to have her pay close attention (when possible, isn't always), stretch, sound things out etc...

Esme and I made a map of the house on paper 'just like Electric Company' today, and went around placing stickers and using a pen to mark where that would correspond on the map.   ie: by the refrigerator, on the stairs, at the edge of the bathtub etc.  Then, we backtracked and put all the stickers back onto the map where they had been in the house.  We hung it up on her wall, and she thought it was a great game :)  I loved watching her gears turn when she tried to figure out which was the kitchen sink and which was the bathroom sink... and three times she forgot what the toilet was in the map - but stood there and worked it out from memory at least once for herself.

Christmas Day 2011

Daddy and Esme with the hex spider


how does that work?


Loula with the cats


Scooby Doo was a hit


from Nana in Minnesota


The animals are here!

She also got a cow like these animals in her 'sock I hung on car bed!' Christmas Stocking. The red and white and blue striped socks were her other stocking item and she was happy with those, too. Grandpa Harvey from Iowa called and she talked to him and Grandma Gale about what she got in her stocking and how she was going to the white house to see Grandma (Irene) and Grandpa (Henry) soon and bring them presents!


Grandma


Grandpa got a copy of the Constitution
and the Declaration of Independence

We are glad Grandpa is home and everyone could be together. I hope Grandma and him eat a lot of good food and rest up!


Esme really enjoyed these blocks, too.


Mama

Daddy spoiled me with coffee and yarn and candy, knitting needles and DaVinci model kits. He says he gets to help me with the kits, they are for both of us ;) He wrapped the yarn in old coffee cans which made it look like he bought me five cans of coffee - what a good joke he almost let me believe it! I bought him a shirt and socks and candy.


Construction toys!




Oh boy my cube!, thank you Santa!
and then she ran off... and we had to call her back
to open it and see what it really was (animals)


It was all a little much for Loula
so she crashed on a jacket

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa! It has been a great day and we are trying to get some rest here at home - hope Grandma and Grandpa do, too! Mark is downstairs preparing a long slow roasted porkchop for his dinner tonight. Esme is playing with her Silly Putty and Optimus Prime transformer... and still introducing all the new toys to each other. She has had a round of painting with her new watercolors and then begged to watch Transformers with her new toy.