baking and birthdays

Erin wanted to bake a lot of cookies and such for Christmas. We made chocolate chip, snickerdoodles, chocolate crisp things, lemon things, trios (sugar+three holes filled with different jams), and some sort of fig cookie. She promised me that we would give nearly all of them away but we ended up eating far too many. We were also going to make these mint grasshopper squares but we ran out of time. We made them a few weeks later for a wedding shower type thing for her work. I never tried one but she and her coworkers said they were very good. They took kind of a long time to make but they look pretty, huh?


Jack changed his birthday cake desires from a thomas the train cake to an airplane cake. I thought it would be pretty easy to make while Erin thought it might not be so easy. She was right. Other than the tail part that is apparently showing that the plane is turning to the right, it turned out pretty well I think.


We went to ihop for breakfast. I think he and Erin shared a dish and he ate most of it. He's sometimes helpful like that.


We went to Play world down under with his grandparents and aunt. He had a pretty good time.


Finally we came back home and opened a few presents. We helpfully didn't take pictures of that part of the event but I imagine you can imagine what it would look like to see a kid open a few presents.

He had a good time and then got to go to his grandparents' house to see the room they made for him. He was quite a happy little kid.

The Inauguration

This was the car ride home from school yesterday.

M: Hey, Jack, today a new president was inaugurated. Do you want to know what that is?

J. Ok.

M: Well, it's an event when the new president is sworn in and takes office. It means that Barack Obama is now president. He's a super important man.

J: Is he a good man or a bad man?

M: I think he's a good man.

J: Why?

M: Well, he cares about people and seems to want to do the right thing. He's also a daddy with two little girls.

J: Why doesn't he have boys?

M: I was just lucky to get a super good little boy like you.

J: I hope I get lucky too.

New Orleans, LA

We were childless for christmas and Erin had the week off so we went on holiday. New Orleans was closeish so we drove down and had a nice weekend.

We stayed at the Hotel St. Marie in the french quarter. It was mostly nice but we don't think we'd stay there again.

We went on a swamp tour thing. It was really cool. Being winter time all of the foliage was dead which both meant that things looked dead but also that you could see deeper into the swamp thing than you could during say the summertime when it was super dense with leaves and such.

It wasn't completely devoid of color though. A few flowers popped up here and there.

It wasn't completely devoid of wildlife either. A boar can be seen in the distance surrounded by a poorly drawn circle.

A lot of the fishing shacks were pretty trashed. I hear they have some sort of hurricane problem around there. I'll have to look it up later.

We went back to the museum of art and looked at the statue of eros and psyche again. We quite liked it. It was also in this room at this time that I asked Erin to marry me. It's some room, huh?

We went on an expensive and short carriage ride. They are touristy and semi-romantic. Mostly because it's 20F outside and so you cuddle up beneath a blanket. This mule of some unremembered name carted us around. Erin probably remembers his name. I'm not so hot at that stuff.

We felt the day needed to be marked with a picture of us. We took this self portrait in our hotel room. I need to work on my camera skills.

The next day we were supposed to ride a trolley I mean streetcar but I have social anxiety issues and screwed that up. Instead we rode a Pontiac Vibe.

Said trolley I mean streetcar ride was supposed to take us to a garden district tour. I think I enjoyed the garden district the most out of all the districts and quarters and such. There were a lot of nice and old houses and a lot of greenery.

Some of them were even for sale. Who wants to lend me the couple mil for this one?

We had a really good time there and will likely try to revisit it some time in the future. It was a cool place to see and a great place to ask the love of my life to marry me.

Christmas

Christmas came a little early for Jack this year. His father had him this year for christmas so we just did things early. They're all made up holidays anyway, right?

It's like a magic sock thing that has candy and toys in it and it has your name on it. What's not to like?


After clothes were retrieved from their box they were briefly examined to make sure they didn't accidentally include any toys or something fun and were then promptly thrown to mommy. That sounds just about how it's supposed to go.

Books, while enjoyed on other days also get passed quickly to mommy when there are more presents to open. More presents that most likely will contain toys.

His school told us one day that we should get him some scissors. He really likes them. Actually, he really really really likes them. When he first asked it sounded quite like "I want a sister" instead of "I want a scissors." We told him that he'd have to wait for a little bit as those things take time. He didn't understand.
We have a lot of scrap paper around that he gets to cut whenever he wants. The tree got cut a few times when we first brought it home but after a few reminders that we only cut paper it lived the rest of it's life unscathed. Christmas was a great time to pull them out again and get the pesky ribbons off of the presents that surely contained toys.

He likes plugging things into the wall, especially things that light up. Another picture in this set is blurrier and darker and he looks quite devious. Good thing this one got put on here instead, huh?

The astute viewer will notice that presents progressively appear under the tree as the pictures go along. That's because this site likes to display pictures backwards and the editing area is so small that it's a large pain to try to reorganize them. That means you get to look at them backwards. Enjoy.