Christmas Trip 2009

As a bit of an epilogue to a year of traveling, we drove out to spend Christmas in some place with family and snow: Utah. We rented a car--those of you betting against our car being anywhere near fit for the journey win whatever you win at our expense--and drove out in one day, stopping every hour or so as Ballyhoo recognized the leverage that a newly-potty-trained toddler has on her parents.

We stayed at CaA's house, home to many awesome cousins, including Maggum, for one reason or another the coolest person on the entire planet to EllaBella. The kids got the remainder of their presents, including headlamps for each--Santa's a smart dude, how did he know they always steal Mommy's and Daddy's headlamps?

BigE received her whole Christmas list this year--including a space station [EllaSmella clearly asked for a "space station," not a "fragile toy space-station-looking-thing made out of toilet paper rolls and scotch tape." Maybe the poor economy is hitting Santa hard up there. Time was, when a kid asked for a space station she got a space station. Not some cobbled-together toilet-paper-roll scale model. EllaBella was ecstatic so I guess Santa knows when he can get away with stuff like that. But still, Santa=cheapskate. I digress...] and a soccer ball. Ballyhoo got everything she didn't know she wanted, and loved it.

We attended Christmas morning at the CnA's, observing one moment when the heavens opened, angels sang, and the mysteries of True Christmas were revealed to us:

Ambrosia got a cell phone. We're pretty sure we observed a State Of Ecstasy, Nirvana, Total Oh-Em-Friggin-Gee, Transcendent Capitalistic Joy, Freaking Out Of The Highest Order [In A Good Way]. It was something.

We went to VonDenbergh's house to experience Christmas with them folks. All the pictures from that experience are in his possession, but imagine books. Lots of wonderful books. We had a fabulous Provencal supper wherein Daddy ceremoniously gnawed on a large lamb leg. We digested there for several hours, deciding finally that we had just experienced the best Christmas in the history of history, all told.

EllaBellaSmellaFella was way too very much extremely incredibly excited to play in the snow. So:

Mommy's side of the family had a big reunion in SLC, so we went there for a few days. We went sledding several times, sometimes with the family and sometimes just the Chesters:

K'naaan and Ballyhoo biffed it majorly:

Daddy got undercut from behind by two midget hooligans on a sled and it popped his rib out of place, which is a sure sign that he's getting old. Speaking of it...

After the reunion, we went back to CnA's house and spent endless hours jamming to Beatles RockBand. It was epically radinous. Sister BaBa and Elder BitBit came and "jammed:"

This next picture takes a bit of explaining, but once you understand it--and if you know BitBit--it may change your life forever. It's an instant classic, an I-Was-There-When type of deal. Daddy, as the photographer, writes the caption thus:

BitBit is playing the drums on Beatles RockBand, and--truth be told--entirely failing to more or less keep the beat, as it were. After watching his grandfather flailing away at the drums--and I'll note before I proceed that I'm confident BitBit will not read this blog post but if he does, my love for him has always been and will be forevermore orthogonal to his drumming abilities--YahnBahn decided to kindly step in and--to quote Russel the Asian-American scout--"assist the elderly" by surreptitiously keeping time on the snare pad to keep BitBit from failing out of the song. So here it is, BitBit in deep concentration hitting the drums with all the enthusiasm and random timing of toddlers telling knock-knock jokes, while Yahn is secretly the only one actually hitting the drums when they're supposed to be hit. BitBit was never aware of the source of his drumming power:

Then we pretty much just drove home, stopping in Reno to eat dinner with a couple of old Ogdenites, which was awesome.

We were treated with overwhelming generosity and kindness throughout the trip. It was phenomenal--thanks everybody for a great time!

Guess What?

I'M PREGNANT!

Are you surprised? haha

I guess it's possible there are people who check this blog that don't know...

Pictures for posterity's sake...

14 w 3 d

16 w 6 d

Trip part 5

We drove down to Tucson and stayed at Bonk and Kebbo's house with their two cheeky sons. By this point both Little and Littler were getting a bit bewildered by all of the cousins on the trip, but they had a lot of fun learning how to play Wii with Icklefattikins and Noer.

Our first day in Tucson we drove to one of our favorite birding/exploring areas: Sonoita creek, near Patagonia [AZ]. It was pretty dang hot, the birds were all hunkered down, and we were all quite tired by this point, so we--you guessed it--just played around in the water for a bit. Sonoita creek is pretty much the archetype desert-oasis thing except with the largest cottowoods in North America instead of palm trees [plus a thick-billed kingbird and some gray hawks, of course].

Little does this whenever she's in water:

We spend our nights hanging out with Bonkers, Kyky, Nicoplasm and Narpete, playing Wii and listening to music. When Daddy was out playing basketball with Nicwise, Gobot, and Kyky, Mommy and Bonky found a Sonoran desert toad in the yard, and captured it for Daddy to get a look at:

Daddy also found a great plains toad in the yard--gotta love monsoon season!

Daddy's main goal in Tucson was to play ball with Nicopotamus and Gobot and Kyky as much as possible. Like-mindedly, Nicasa took a whole day off from work to hang and play ball. And they played quite a bit, though the games always ended somewhat shy of epically do to lighting and timing issues. Daddy wants to include these pictures because he thinks they make him look cool [he searched hard for pictures showing Nicodemus with a funky expression or showing, you know, his butt]. Gobot was there too, but mostly he showed up on film as a lanky blur.

And, finally, Daddy felt strongly that a great deal of his nerdy rep would vanish if people could see how awesome he really was, so he had Mommy get a picture of him touching the rim and tried to think of ways to subtly remind people that he is only 5'7", which he imagined would cause them to say things like "wow, he's got ups," "look at that, white chocolate," and "oh my blazes he's sooooo awesome." Basically he failed; he touched the hoop but he's still pretty sure the whole setup is pretty transparent [and, you know, it would have actually meant something if he had dunked over Nicked like he's been promising for the last... 15 years, instead of being blocked over and over again by Gobot]. Nikolaus grabbed the rim solidly but Daddy vetoed the picture because it would make his accomplishment so much cheaper by its inclusion.

We hung out at Mommy's parents' place a bunch and went swimming with them; Little still loves Gobot to death. Bonksters and Kybbles were super generous and pretty much ran a B&B while we were there. Eventually, though, we had to face reality and head home--a 15-hour straight shot from Tucson to the Bay in one long, noisy day.

Thanks everybody for a great trip!

Tickling

Today Little told me that she wasn't silly. I asked her to prove it. So she invited me to squeeze her knee and she'd prove that she wouldn't laugh.

So I squeezed her knee and she stayed heroically, deliberately stoic. Then I squeezed harder and she made a little gurgling noise like she was about to ralph. She looked like she was going to ralph too. But, determined not to be silly, she didn't laugh or even giggle, not even smile [which, for her, is a part of breathing]! By this point normally she'd be convulsing on the floor hysterically.

So I decided to pull out all the stops and I really gave her something to laugh about... I squeezed just in the right spot with just the right pressure. With completely overlydeliberate calmness she said:

"that's enough."

:o)