If Monet had tried to capture Owen's hair in a painting,

it might have looked something like this.

We definitely don't want a repeat of that

Kevin came home from the grocery store yesterday with birthday candles. We're having a party for Laura in a couple of weeks, and he didn't want a repeat of two years ago. Not that I blame him, but I did have to point out there are more stores here that would sell such things. And have them in stock. And have them in a place we could find them. And not charge outrageous amouts of money for them.
You get the idea.

On disappointment (at least on some level)

Kevin found out Friday he will be taking Italian eight weeks longer than we'd planned. So now, instead of leaving for Milan around May 1, we'll be sticking around D.C. until late June.
I was ready to move on with our lives, but obviously that isn't meant to be. Laura's thrilled she'll get to finish out the school year here, though.

You, too, can build a shoebox Acropolis

Laura came home a few weeks ago tasked with choosing from a list of projects about an ancient civilization. The third-graders are studying Greece, Rome and Mali this year, and despite her parents' insistence that she choose something related to ancient Rome, she had her heart set on building a model of the Parthenon.
I'm not even sure how much money we have invested in the thing -- I had to buy styrofoam, paint, dowels and a saw to cut them -- but it seems to have turned out OK.
The shoebox stand -- aka Acropolis -- was an afterthought, but at least it sort of works.
The project was due today, and I'm hoping it made it to school in one piece. Even if not, at least I got a $6 compass saw out of the deal.

The world according to Owen: A photo essay

Sometimes I like to dress as a farmer and wedge myself under the end table.

Toy basket or baby cage? You decide.

Rolling all over the floor is so much more fun than studying Italian verb tenses.

If Mom's going to insist on building towers out of tiny books, she should be prepared for them to crash to the floor.

I suppose I'll humor her and look through the bottom of this thing.

Women who don't want their camera's lens cap chewed on shouldn't let it dangle so close to babies.

I'm tired of being hounded by the paparazzi. This photo shoot is over!

This post started out with a theme. Now? Not so much.

The first overseas trip Kevin and I took after we got married was to Paris in 2000. (We'd each been there before and had been married almost a year, and a group of Friloux relatives accompanied us.) It was in March, so we missed the New Year's revelry, but there still were fireworks at the Eiffel Tower every night. Not that it isn't great just lit up, without fireworks.
When Laura and I moved back to the States last year, one of our first trips was to Ikea. I saw this picture then, and I've been admiring it ever since.Saturday we took a trip to Ikea to plan for the furniture-buying we're going to have to do before leaving for Milan, which is an unfurnished post in State-speak. I was admiring the picture for the umpteenth time, and finally we decided to just go ahead and buy it. (Later I was informed it would be my Valentine's Day present -- fine with me -- and to fit it in the car we had to do some seat rearranging that involved Laura being huddled under it for the long drive home. But oh well.)
I already was planning a Paris-related post because I recently read My Life in France by Julia Child. (The cover of the edition I read was different than this one, but it's the same book.) I consider it unfortunate that I wasn't old enough to care who Julia Child was until she was older and worthy of being mocked by Saturday Night Live. It's a great book, and of course I found it even more interesting because she initially went to France as a Foreign Service spouse. I haven't read Julie & Julia (or seen the movie), but both definitely are on my list of things to do.

Another book I recommend is the Down Home with the Neelys cookbook. We don't have Food Network on our cable system here, and I've never watched a full episode of Patrick and Gina Neely's show even when it's available. But I checked out their cookbook on a whim -- it was on the new books shelf at the library a few weeks ago -- and have enjoyed reading it. So far I've made creamy herb vegetable dip and chocolate-chip muffins, and I plan to make frozen lemonade pie and pecan cinnamon rolls before returning it. Heck, I might make some other things too, although not barbecue spaghetti. That's just disturbing.
See, no theme. But we all survived just fine.

I refuse to use cute names for apocalyptic snowstorms

I wouldn't even call it apocalyptic myself, but everyone else seems to be. Don't get me wrong, we've gotten a lot of snow. It's the snowiest year on record in Washington, D.C., and it's a big deal here because of that. Well, that and the lack of resources available for dealing with such a thing. In Denver this wouldn't even be a hiccup.
But here we are in Virginia. Laura hasn't been to school in a week. Church has been cancelled the past two Sundays. The federal government has been closed the past four days, although it's finally open today.
This last one is a big deal for us. Yes, it's good to have Kevin home, and he still gets paid. But his Italian test is next week, and he really, really needs the class time.

I guess I should mention ...

the Saints' Super Bowl win. Granny sure would be happy if she was here to see it.

Disappointment of the literary kind

Recently I read Gomorrah, which some of you may have heard of. It's an expose of the Camorra, the "mafia" of Naples and surrounding areas. Although it's a very disturbing book, which I think was the author's intention, I felt like it was very disjointed and hard to follow. The chapters seem to be random divisions, it's hard to keep track of who's who, and it's unclear exactly what the author was trying to accomplish. (Well, other than gaining police protection, as he really ticked off a lot of dangerous and powerful people.)
However, the last chapter of the book is about organized crime's environmental impact, and I thought it was the most interesting part. Maybe not worth slogging through hundreds of pages about killings and drug deals to get to, but I'm glad I got that far.
I can't say that about every book I read (or start to read). This week I got about a third of the way through Twenties Girl, by Sophie Kinsella, before I decided I just didn't care to finish it. I've read some of her other books and liked them, but this one just didn't cut it for me.