Santa Claus, Physics, and More

So I did it this year, I came clean to Asa that there is no Santa Claus. You might think that at age 11, this would be a no-brainer, and of course she already knew. But I've always felt it's important to keep the magical thinking alive as long as the kid wants to. And as somebody who still anthropomorphizes my favorite plaid stuffed hippo, Horace, I'm a sucker for magical thinking. Of course, this means that Mackenzie has to give up his spot as Santa. He's stayed up the last few Christmases, stuffing stockings and having fun being the big brother. I don't know how this Christmas Eve will play out, it's an ever-evolving thing as the kids get older.


For those of you who still have younger kids, or kids interested in physics, or just like this kind of thing, here's a great physics-based proof that Santa Claus really exists.

In other physics news, our FIRST FTC robotics team went up to an event last weekend at Portland State University. In addition to working on their robotics stuff, the kids got to tour a whole bunch of the engineering labs there. We were very impressed! They got to help move a laser (over 800 pounds!), talked with a chemistry grad student about his work detecting nanoparticles in soil and water using an atomic mass spectrometer, saw a wind tunnel where they are testing wind turbine and wind energy farm designs, and best of all they got to spend a lot of time with someone from the robotics department discussing a robot called "Shrödinger's Cat" . Those of you that are physics buffs will understand why that's so funny. The cat lives in a box and is mobile, he runs around the building using two cameras, touch sensors, and other methods for object avoidance. He has a mental map of where he is, and can even go in the elevators and ask people to press the buttons to take him to another floor. He can interact with other robots in the lab, including a talking head of Nils Bohr.

I loved hearing all of the questions our kids came up with for the roboticist. Mackenzie was especially interested in the vision processing algorithms and how he could distinguish between objects and blank space (like a doorway). One of the things this tour really showed me was how much science being involved with FIRST has brought into his life. He already knew about Nanotechnology because back when he was on a FIRST FLL team, they did a research project on Nanoparticles and one of the things they discovered was all about the potential dangers of these particles when they end up in our water and soil. Another year, they did a project on alternative energy and it was his part of the project to research wind generators. So all of the things he was seeing in these science and engineering labs, he had already had a taste of through FIRST.

Halloween Pics

The kids went "trunk or treating" at our karate dojo this year on the Friday before Halloween. Since a lot of little kids were present, Mackenzie kindly decided not to wear his scary grim reaper death mask thingie with the blood pump that made blood run down his face. Instead, he used my old standby Godzilla costume. What a nice guy! Asa was a "Cheerless Leader" in her skull-covered cheerleader costume. She was supposed to keep a zombie-like face, but she's just way to cheerful for that. 

So here's the costume Mackenzie suckered me into buying him. In true Mackenzie fashion, he pulled this long face and said "But Moooooom. It's probably the LAST time I will EVER go trick or treating since I'm SO BIG now. And of course he knows I'm thinking "OMG, how can my baby be so old that this is his last year trick or treating?" Of course I'll splurge on the extra blood-circulating death mask costume!" That boy knows how to wrap me around his finger.

On actual Halloween night, he went with some friends, and went with the gorier costume. Since he went over to his friends' house early, I didn't get a picture of the blood-dripping part of it. It was weird to have him gone for Halloween and just be trick-or-treating with Asa and her friend. Where are the days when he and I went together and he wanted me to dress up with him? Long gone for sure, LOL!

But Asa invited a friend over and we had a terrific time trick-or-treating together. Her friend's mom and I walked and chatted through the balmy night, admiring all the cool decorated houses. People around here go for funky rather than commercial, and there were some beautiful luminarias. One guy came to the door in a fairy costume and his dog was dressed as a fairy too. And I'm reminded of why I love Halloween - a night that brings everyone in the community out and walking around together with their kids. Not to mention the candy. This year was so balmy too!

A Birthday for a Peach

I always call Asa my peach, because she's just such a sweet little thing (most of the time, except when she hasn't been to too many sleepovers in one week, but I digress). And now, as she informs us, she is leaving her childhood behind and is now a "tween".

Her birthday week was fun, and filled with all of the things she loves. Her dance classes started, the weather was lovely and we rode bikes around, she had a birthday party at the bowling alley with her wonderful group of friends. She even got to go to an audition for a film company who is thinking of filming a project here in our city on Friday, We had less than a day for her to prepare a monologue and for me to take this photo of her to put on her acting resume. As you might imagine, she wowed the casting directors and they called me in to tell me "We hope you know you have something special here." Why yes, we do.

So for the whole week, we celebrated the wonderful gift that is Asa in our lives. She's grown up so much this year, turning into a little lady who is independent and spirited. Sometimes she's gone so much with all of her many activities (seven dance classes a week for starters) that I can see the quiet that our house will be when she's grown up. As it is, she brings an energy to every room she inhabits that fills the house (sometimes with more noise and chaos than we can almost handle, but that's just her).

Feeling Loved

Our family are not really Hallmark Holiday people. We don't tend to buy flowers or cards, we prefer things homegrown or homemade and heartfelt. For Mother's Day, what I really love is (if the weather cooperates) to head to a lake and do my first outdoor swim of the year. It's become a bit of a tradition and it's something I look forward to. So this year we headed to our favorite lake by the beach, with the kids' kayaks in tow and the dogs in the back of the van, it's quite a procedure just to get out the door!

It was my pup Sophie's first trip to a lake, and she wasn't too sure about getting in the water. Mackenzie is trying to encourage her!

Eventually she got the hang of it and even fetched the ball from the water. It took her a few tries to get the hang of grabbing it without swallowing water. It was like watching someone bob for apples for the first time.

My tri-buddies Carrie and Devlin and I got to dress up like superheroes and save the universe from certain disaster. Just kidding! We got to go swim in the lake, which was surprisingly warm and beautifully clear in the sunshine. To me, there's something about swimming outside that is just so joyful. I mean I always love swimming, but a pool indoors is like a pale substitute for outdoor swimming. Kind of like buying a slice of cheesecake at McDonald's. It's only good if you absolutely cannot possibly get real cheesecake and have temporary amnesia so you've forgotten what it really tastes like. Not that I've ever eaten McDonald's cheesecake, I'm just imagining how bad it might be. In any case, I always look forward to the first outdoor swim of the year and this year delivered a blue lake and sunny skies right on cue for Mother's Day weekend (even though a threat of rain on Sunday made us move the swim to Saturday instead).

On Sunday, I got these sweet straight-from-the-heart cards from the kids. Mackenzie made a point to hand-write me a message (even though he's usually the computer keyboard kid) and Asa gave me coupons for a massage, a manicure, pedicure, and hairstyling (I'll post photos of that last one!). Could a mother ask for anything more?

Wayne cooked me a yummy breakfast, I got a nice long phone call in to my mom to tell her how much I love her, and I got to go for a 10 mile run on Sunday in the sunshine as well. All in all, I'm left feeling blessed to the utmost degree, grateful for my hubby, kids, and friends, and hoping all of the mothers out there had a wonderful day too.

Feelin' The Love, The Fun, The Exploding Volcano of Pudding

This has been one of the sweetest Valentine's Days ever. Oh, I know it's a big commercial day to sell lots of candy, flowers, and stuff, and people bemoan its "Hallmark Holiday" status, but I say there's nothing wrong with taking and entire day to celebrate those you love.

My day started with a card and a present from my sweetest little girl. She made me this heart herself, and holding it you can just feel the love sewn inside.

Then after breakfast Mackenzie decided he was going to make some special chocolate pudding for the day. My grandma has a super-easy recipe that she loved to make, so we took a minute to remember her as we got the card out of the box. Unfortunately, Mackenzie got confused about the small fact that cornmeal is not the same as corn starch. Needless to say, the first version of the pudding was a bit... gritty.

Second time around, he neglected to keep a watchful eye on the microwave, so he ended up with the Exploding Volcano of Pudding. As you can see, he didn't mind cleaning off the microwave by hand! What didn't explode all over the place tasted great though, we all enjoyed some topped by whipped cream, agreeing that it wasn't near as disastrous as the Great Smoothie Explosion of 2008.

Asa had a Valentine's Day party to go to, I got to take a run that wasn't in the rain (always a blessing here in February), and then we all went to see the movie Twilight New Moon, which was thankfully at the $1 theatre, since I'm glad I didn't pay more than that to see it! But it was okay, and we had a good time dishing about the bad parts afterwards.

Out of the 25 years I've spent as an adult on this planet, 18 have been together with Wayne and 13 have been with kids in my life. Over half my adult life! That's really amazing to me. All I can say is I'm feelin' the love!

Giving: They Get It

I don't think I can take any credit for this one, since I've always struggled with being, essentially, a pretty selfish person. But our kids were born with a greater generosity than I've ever had and all in all we've tried to emphasize Christmas as a season of meaning and family, not a holiday of getting presents. Luckily, we set things up from the get-go by announcing that Santa brings one present per child, and on Christmas Eve we've given the kids each a book and that's it. So they've never expected a pile of presents under the tree and I think in retrospect that was a good path to take. I especially feel for families who have built up a Christmas tradition of mountains of presents and then this year find themselves in a financial pinch (as so many of us are in this economy). With kids, it's always harder to undo than it is to do.

Although they are essentially good-hearted kids, I was still really moved this year to see how Mackenzie and Asa have embraced this as a season of giving, not getting. First of all, Mackenzie went to pick out Asa's present. He went to a local bead store and picked out by hand a bunch of different beads, all in Asa's favorite colors. He wrapped them up with different kinds of earring wires and a craft-style case to sort and carry it all in, and voila she had her own earring-making kit. She took that kit and made earrings not just for me, but for many different friends, and even the moms of her friends in the neighborhood. When she ran out of beads, we went back down to the bead store and she used all of her money to buy more. In the process, she bought some ceramic beads for Mackenzie in the shape of a dragon's head and teeth and made him a necklace that was really cool in a 13-year-old guy kind of way.

So for me, that was really the Christmas gift that shone out during this season, way more important than anything that could land in my stocking: watching our kids get that giving is the greatest gift of all.

Have Yourself A Mellow Little Christmas

After the insanity of this crazy year, it was nice to hunker down and just have a small our-family-only Christmas. We had virtually no plans, other than to open presents in the morning and eat something in the afternoon, and that was really nice.

The kids as usual popped out of bed bright and early, but in a ritual common to cruel and heartless parents everywhere, we kept them pinned down upstairs until Wayne had his coffee and I had my tea in hand and we were both more or less awake.


One very sweet thing I thought about this Christmas is that after emptying out their stockings and finding a candy cane or chocolate to chow on, the first thing they wanted to do was to open presents from each other. Both had done a stealth job of wrapping to disguise size and shape of presents, using multiple boxes, bags, tape, etc. This cracked me up, and reminded me of last year when Mackenzie swore for weeks ahead of time that he was giving Asa an onion for Christmas, and actually wrapped one up as a gag before giving her his true present.

After that was out of the way, they opened their Santa gifts. Well, opened isn't really the right word for Mackenzie has he got a note from Santa saying his present wouldn't fit through the chimney!


After a summer spent borrowing my mom's kayak at every opportunity, I guess Santa figured that he would really enjoy his own, and if you look at his grin here you know that he will.

And Asa's expression in this photo more or less spells out "A karaoke machine? OMG!" She was beyond thrilled, and has been singing day and night ever since (not that she doesn't sing day and night anyways, but now she's mic'd.)

And that, plus a turkey dinner in the afternoon was more or less our Christmas. Small, mellow, fun and family. In the week leading up, we celebrated the solstice with a progressive dinner with neighborhood friends, baked cookies, sang carols, decorated, read books about the Christmas story and in general just enjoyed all of the rituals of the season as well as celebrating the reason for the season.

Snowy Days

We've had quite a week with several days of good snow and great sledding. The kids are a bit disappointed that we didn't get the dumping down here that the rest of the Pacific Northwest has been getting, as in several feet of snow! But they're happy that we got enough to keep their school-going friends out of classes for almost an extra week and so there were lots of kids out sledding on our hill.

They were really really hoping for a white Christmas this year, and the weather reports seemed to indicate that's what we were going to get, but now it has changed to mostly rain. Still, we're hunkered down and ready for a great little family Christmas together. No traveling this year after our whole year of crazy travel. And all of our family is elswhere, so it will just be the four of us together. Wayne is planning on making Christmas Day cinnamon rolls with Mackenzie, and the turkey is already defrosting. I got another big package of the world's best Oregon cranberries to make some sauce with, and we should be all set for a nice mellow holiday.

My mom and I went thrift-store shopping together yesterday (50% off day at my favorite place!) and I took her to the train station this morning where she hopped on a completely full Amtrak to Seattle to spend the holiday with my sis and brother-in-law. We got a few little stocking stuffers and had a great time.

To all who are celebrating this time of year, whether it be Christmas or Yule, Channukah or Solstice, I'm wishing you a wonderful holiday time filled with family and friends, love and laughter, and maybe a little white fluffy stuff falling from the sky!

A Birthday Weekend

It seems like it can't possibly have been a year since this happened last but here it is again, my son's birthday. The day I met him, the day he was born, the day I saw his eyes for the first time. He has been such a force of joy in my life, and such an instrument of change to the person that I am as well. We had an awesome weekend to celebrate his birthday. Of course, he got his presents from us family members while everyone was still in pajamas in the morning, including this cute hippo headrest from his little sis' (she also gave him a hippo cookie cutter and hippo alarm clock, and noticing the hippos shirt - a birthday present from grandma last year - I'm sure you sense a theme here!). Yes, the boy still loves hippos. "Donation to WWF hippo protection" was one item on his birthday list in fact, and he has talked lately of a future in wildlife biology, studying hippos of course.

Then he wanted to camping, so we headed to one of the most beautiful places on earth: Waldo Lake. Some friends were camping there and we joined up for a couple of days of sunshine, incredible clear water (one of the clearest lakes in the world, with over 100 foot visibility), forest, and an amazing display of stars at night. My mom came to join us and brought her kayak, which Mackenzie really enjoyed paddling around in for hours and hours (I think mom thought she might never pry her paddle back out of his hands)

Besides kayaking, we went hiking, the kids rode bikes all over the place, there's a swimming dock, and they waded around catching frogs in the marshes and had frog races. All the things that make a late-summer camping trip so sweet....

At 4:14 in the afternoon, my alarm went off. Mackenzie and I were alone on the shore, he was still wrapped in a towel, and I wished him the happiest of birthdays in that quiet moment (and of course, snapped a pic of my birthday boy, looking very quietly contemplative here).

After getting home late Friday night, we spent Saturday morning getting ready for his birthday party. I woke up at about 2:30 am in a mild panic. The wind was blowing a cold and pelting rain through the open French doors in our bedroom, and Mackenzie had planned an outdoor party with lots of games (and he had about 20 guests coming, so I was envisioning how I would keep all of those kids busy in our house if we got rained out!) But I shouldn't have worried as Saturday dawned clear, if a little chillier than the usual August weather. The sun shone on his party and everyone had fun playing tug-of-war, capture the flag, and water balloon fights.

And of course, he had fun opening presents, from a chess clock to D&D books, Yu Gi Oh cards, favorite games and gift cards, he got some very thoughtful presents from his friends. Then they all played in the park until the dusk closed in on another turning of the year.
The next day, we went for a hike up a local mountain with my sis and brother-in-law. It was great to have them here for the long weekend, and celebrate together as a family. The good weather held until about an hour after everyone hit the road to go home, and then it started pouring. It was definitely a serendipitous little window of weather for Mackenzie's birthday weekend.


As always, I'm grateful that I've gotten to spend another year on this planet in this young man's company. As he grows and matures, we spend more time together as friends, and less time with me reminding him to wash behind his ears or pouring his milk. He's a great person to hang out with, even if he wasn't my son he'd be one of my favorite people on the planet. With a ready quip, a rollcking laugh, an inquisitive spirit, and a soft spot for hippos, his cat, and all creatures great and small, he's just a terrific 12 year old kid.

Holidays, Sweet Holidays

I'm not a Hallmark Holiday kind of person, and I don't expect a dozen long-stemmed roses from my hubby like clockwork every Valentine's day, or brunch on Mother's Day (though I'm glad he always remembers to bring home Euphoria truffles - what a guy!). But one thing I learned growing up is that holidays serve to tie a family together, and connect us with the seasons and the circle of the year. It's no mistake either that so many of them happen in the dreariest parts of the winter. My memories of childhood are a wheel with spokes of holiday dinners and red doilies with valentines pasted in the centers, cookie baking and 4th of July picnics by the river. Valentine's Day, with it's focus on love and friendship (and cookies and brightly colored hearts) has always been one of my favorites, not for the mass consumerism pushed by the greeting card companies and florists, but for the sheer sweetness of taking time out to appreciate those you love.

I'm not quite the picture-perfect mom of home and hearth that I'd like to be though. When it comes to crafts and cooking, my talents are thin and disaster often ensues. Case in point, the night before our homeschool group's Valentine's cookie-decorating party had me all Betty Crockered-out, covered in flour and gleefully baking sugar cookies. Being the modern mom, I'd downloaded a recipe for the "World's Best Sugar Cookies" from the internet and was mixing away. There was that little niggling voice in the back of my head that said "Isn't four eggs an awful lot for cookies that are supposed to turn out flat??", but quite unfortunately I ignored it and forged ahead. When I peeked in on the baking cookies, it was to see with horror that they were puffing up like marshmallows in a microwave and no longer resembled hearts in any shape or form. Now if you bake, you'll recall that sugar cookie dough has to be refridgerated for many hours before rolling out, and it was now 8:00 pm.

That is why Valentine's morning saw me rising with the dawn (and the help of my alarm clock and several reminders from my daughter) to start rolling out and cutting another batch of three dozen cookies. All was well that ended well as the second batch (recipe courtesy of the actual Betty Crocker, not some virtual Crocker wanna-be) turned out just fine. The first batch went with us to karate to be handed out to friends who were more than grateful to eat the very tasty non-heart-shaped lumps. And the kids poured on the frosting and the sprinkles at the decorating party, and I realized that it's not really the shape of the heart that counts, it's how much love you generate. I know my kids won't remember me for my culinary talents in their childhoods, but they'll remember the love, sweeter than sprinkles, that drives a mom to rise at dawn and create another family holiday.

Quote of the Day

On a recent walk to the store: "It's hard to scratch an itch when you're holding an umbrella and nursing a seal."

Yeah, I guess it is! By the way, for Christmas the kids each got an adopted animal from World Wildlife Federation from their aunt and uncle. It's a great present - they got a cute stuffed animal, an adoption certificate and photo that explains how the gift is protecting wildlife and habitat. They are both really concerned about animals and this was a wonderful way to get a gift that also helps the earth. M. got a hippo (his favorite animal) and A. got this seal.

Skies Not So Blue

Becoming a mother was a watershed moment in my life. I know people who are born to be mothers, women who have envisioned themselves with babies and children since they were little girls playing with dolls. Not me. For one thing, I named all of my dolls the same thing when I was young. Clearly I was not cut out for a mothering career (though I was not quite as bad as my sister, who carried her favorite doll around by the hair until it looked like some demented pixie.) Even my husband once said that he feared I would be a terrible mother. Let's see, self-centered, severely lacking in patience, driven mad by the slightest noises or touches - yep, not really a checklist for the cover of Mothering magazine there.

But something happened when I first became pregnant. My life became infused with a joy that I had not known before. Oh, I was always a pretty happy-go-lucky kind of person, but motherhood brought a day-to-day happiness that, even on days when my children are taking me to the teetering brink of insanity, swirls around and through every encounter, bringing a kind of blessedness that I suppose the truly religious must feel. In short, as Viggo Mortensen says in one of his fabulous books of poetry and photography: "Kids are God; Pay attention"

But then there are days in every parent's life when the skies are not so blue. Pain, to an adult, is a terrible thing. But pain to one's children, whether physical or emotional, is almost unendurable. It's the kind of thing that keeps one up at midnight, staring at the ceiling, a pit of dread in your stomach. Yesterday was one of those days.

One of those days when your kid has gotten a remote controlled airplane for Christmas from Grandma, something they've wanted for a very long time. And you read the instructions carefully, and test the controls, and take it to a huge big field on a calm day, and do the ground tests that the instructions recommend, and it launches perfectly, but then as it goes up, you realize that the sky is not just overcast, but actually foggy. And the airplane starts disappearing into the foggy clouds, at which point it loses contact with the radio controller and it's going farther and farther away, so you take the controls from your distraught child to try to get it back, and it crashes into an area of houses. So you go over to the houses and spend a considerable amount of time peering into trees and over fences into backyards and knocking on doors, but you never find the plane. One of those kind of days.

All in all, he took it very well. He didn't scream or cry or throw a fit as he might have done even a year ago. He was heartbreakingly stoic. And, because a large measure of the fault of this inaugural flight lays with me, I have promised to find him another one. And next time we won't be so blinded by sheer enthusiasm, and we'll wait until our neighbor can come along, who flies RC planes and can help us get it squared away.

And of course, we'll wait until the skies are truly blue.

Christmas in the High Desert

We decided to do something different for Christmas this year - camp in a cabin! Although it was a bit overwhelming to pack all of Christmas, not to mention our camping gear, five people, and a dog, into our minivan, we really had a great time. After opening presents on Christmas morning, we decided to head even further east to Fort Rock. A stunning volcanic remain that towers out of the desert floor, Fort Rock is a great place to explore around. It used to be situated on the edge of a gigantic lake, and in caves nearby, the distinctive Fort Rock sagebrush sandals (world's oldest shoes) have been discovered, many pairs carbon dating 9,000 to 10,000 years old. Part of the rock on one side has been worn away by the ancient water, leaving a horshoe-shaped ring of rock that you can explore around.


There are so many different, and beautiful rock layers that make up Fort Rock, everywhere you turn it looks like a completely different rock landscape. It's one of my favorite places to visit, and the kids (and adults) had a wonderful time exploring around.

Here's some more photos: