Cairo and Santa

Cairo thought Santa was loads of fun! He didn't hesitate for a second to get on his lap and tell him all about his Christmas list...and his birthday list for the day after.

Angel debut!

Big breakthrough for Windsyr last week! It was the first time she overcame her stage fright enough to perfom on a stage without chickening out. She sang her little heart out as an angel in the primary kids reenactment of the Nativity. It was perfect timing too, since her TaVaci performance is this weekend and after four months of enjoying the classes but insisting that she didn't want to be in the show, she now says she can't wait to get on the stage and perform with her TaVaci friends. Yea! Staten, ever the performer, made a pretty snappy shepherd this night too.

Wish list

This is a car made by the FRENCH company, Bugatti. It runs a mere 1.5 million if anyone wants to give it to us for Christmas. Thanks to the anonymous commenter (from France, by the way) who corrected my Italian reference. Do you think my mistake had anything to do with my association to oh, say, ................MANICOTTI??

car show

We met Papa Dave at the car show in LA yesterday. Here are some of the pictures highlighting the event including: my 'teenagers' on wheels (a sign of things to come), some concept cars, and Papa Dave in the "Sky" (coming soon to a garage near him...)

Team WOW

This was the start of what we plan to make an annual tradition for our YW: Running in the Southern California 5K/ Half Marathon event (that takes place right in our neighborhood.) We'll need to talk the rest of our 26 YW into joining us next year. Want to guess which part of the race we ran? OK, so 3.2 miles is not quite 13, but I ran it with a nasty cold (armed with a fanny pack full of kleenex for nose blowing) and still broke a record (as in, beating my personal best in all of my week and a half long of treadmill training!) Oh, the glory.

Color Blind

Well Papa Dave has a successor for his color blindness. Staten came to me the other day to show me the funny Balance Bar he was eating (Balance bars are his favorite breakfast.) So this was a new kind of balance bar--peanut butter flavored, coating and all. So it was tan as could be, but Staten came to show me the funny green balance bar. We had noticed it before with the multi-colored rug in his room of which he can correctly identify MOST of the colors. But there were two shades of green he calls silver. So his problem is with greens, greys and tans from what we can tell. I knew I was a carrier because of dad and that my boys had a fifty percent chance of being color blind. Well, it didn't impede Papa Dave much in life--especially in the avenue of art--so we're crossing our fingers that if the color blind gene passed to Staten, maybe the art gene did too!

Creative Flair

We knew Staten was hard at work on a project yesterday, but didn't know what he was making until he surprised us with these home made pirate accessories. He thought of every detail, from slits in the vest that would look like sword gashes right down to the personalized belt with his name written on it. Quite the creative flair, we're thinking. Today when he got home from school, he put on the garb again, adding two paper cuffs to his pant legs. Also noteworthy--his dad made the pirate flag in the back ground. Two peas in a pod!