Aaaaand out!

with two minutes to go.

Trying... so... hard... to... stay... up!

Really?

I cooked 1.8 kg (!!) of Spaezle this evening to go with my New Year's Eve Gulasch... Let me be clear, I had to use *two* frying pans the size of this one to do so. And this is how much was left over. We're all stuffed and nobody is willing to eat just a handful more...

More from the artiste!

Dog with car glamour shot

Nice sunset... but wait...

... how did he get so BIG?!?

Merry Christmas again!

Here was the setup the night before. :)

Merry Christmas

Ok, so I'm a little late in posting this... but here we have our Christmas morning "before" post. Well, except that the stockings had already been raided...

Cookie factory

I may be a few days late but I still wanted to have some Christmas cookies this year.

Merry Christmas

From a trio of labradors!

Throwback!

Just found this little gem on my phone. Dated November 22, 2018.

There are warm dry sheets in the dryer!

Talented... and prolific!

Portia made art for everyone this Christmas. I may have missed a few pieces...

Fuddnuddler Kids

For Four Days?!?

I guess when you have the space, you fill it! We are headed to Dripping Springs Sunday - Wednesday. Only five people... Daddy said it was "ridiculous." And en we laughed and kept packing.

Happy Fourth Sunday of Advent!

Gingerbread House

Carollo gave everyone in my office a gingerbread house kit that we decorated during our office's virtual holiday party this evening. Portia helped, too! I'm not sure we're going to win the decorating contest... but we had fun!

How it’s going (part 2)

Daddy has been doing most of the glueing, but Portia is there to witness it all!

How it’s going

This is Portia this evening helping sand down the burrs in the channels Daddy cut into the various boards for her car house, which will help with glue and assembly. The refined car house design will hold up to 20 cars, with a tunnel through the bottom and an open attic for the "cars that go so fast they can fly."

How it started

This is the first of a multi-part series playing on the current theme of "how it started - how it's going" where people post two photos adjacent to one another showing the beginning of something compared to where they are now.

This photo shows some drawings Portia made - completely by herself and unprompted - showing the four side views and a scale drawing of a "car house" that she wants to build for her (the kids') match box cars. The two on the left are side views and the two on the right are the front and back views, respectively (they have doors!). Note the scale (and the use of fractions!) on the scale drawing on top! We had to shrink it down a little bit to be a realistic design. :)

Important conversations

Today's important lesson: don't snort tomato soup (from our bread bowls)!!

Ta-da!

All of our light strands (except the two on our tree inside) are now wrapped around the branches of our Live Oak. It's pretty cool when you're standing right under it and look two stories up to see lights above you.

Phase II

Well, we had our hot water heater go out after the first day of tree wrapping so we had to take a hiatus to deal with that... but tonight we have mild weather and the wrapping continues!

Pinewood Derby

All four kids raced pinewood derby cars for cub scouts this weekend. We took advantage of being at the track early for setup to race a head-to-head all-Tanner heat. Cars are in increasing age order left to right. Yes, Portia beat us all!