Annual Traditions

We're all looking forward to Christmas, but probably none more than Seimi.  He was very insistent that we need to have a Christmas tree that was "at least as tall as when I was three."  He was very satisfied at the sheared Douglas Fir we selected from our traditional source, Chubby & Tubby's, particularly when decorated with our the traditional Christmas lights from the Hobbit Wife's growing-up years.

Admiring the lights after dinner, Seimi suddenly blurted out, "Wait!  I forget - how do you turn these lights off?  Do you blink at them?"

sing it like you mean it

at the risk of offending any of our dear readers, i confess...

i've never been a big fan of joe cocker's ballad, "you are so beautiful."

it's those two little qualifying words unnecessarily tacked onto the end of what might have been a fabulous compliment: "you are so beautiful... to me."

i'm sure i'm in the minority here, and perhaps i'm just a really grumpy person.  but i've always imagined the lyrics look something like this:

you are so beautiful!!!*

*to me.  everyone else politely tries to focus on your great personality. 

anyway.  i've never had occasion to share these thoughts with my seven year-old daughter.

so when she came into the kitchen this morning, dressed-up in so many layers of princess garb and plastic jewelry that she looked like madame bonbon from the nutcracker, i laughed and burst into song:

"you are so beautiful... to me!"  (it was true!)

to my absolute joy and maternal pride, she furrowed her little eyebrows at me and retorted with conviction,

"now that is just insulting."

that's my girl!

New in the Kitchen

After a long and much-needed hiatus from house projects, the Mayor and the Hobbit Wife have been enjoying a renewed/new sense of purpose as they have been exploring what Michael Delving is about.  The house seems to have a growing sense of identity, and all kinds of house projects small and large are springing to joyful life.

 

Last Saturday over coffee in the morning, the Mayor commented that he'd like to replace the kitchen floor.  It ended up taking longer than he expected because SOMEONE (the picture gives a clue as to that person's identity) had done a bang-up job with prepping and gluing the previous kitchen floor tiles, necessitating much chiseling and prying (aka bang-up job #2) to remove the old floor.

Here's some of the new kitchen floor mid-installation.  It took much longer than expected but turned out wonderfully.

While the floor was going on upstairs, downstairs in the Mayor's shop, the new kitchen table (begun long ago in the summer of 2012) was drying under the last coat of polyurethane.  The table had been on hold for this long because it needed to wait until the Mayor and the Hobbit Wife knew what sort of family gathering place was needed.  Once the Father passed that on, the rest was a piece of cake.  The Mayor worked up a quick model in Sketchup to work out the exact dimensions.

And it was only two weekends from there to the finished table, which turned out to be everything that was hoped for.

 The finished table and new floor.  We look forward to hosting you soon!

overheard

boookie was seated at the home computer, making explosion noises aplenty as he gleefully recreated the allies' defeat of the axis powers in italy.

[ela]  what are you doing, brother?
[boookie, with great gusto]   i'm blowing up sicily!
[ela, incensed]   why on earth are you doing that to poor cecily?!

Barbecue for ever!

This weekend, we gave the 'ol black spot to our grill of many seasons, which snuffed it one too many times, leaving undercooked food to be finished in the oven.  Ela crafted a beautiful "FREE" sign, we put it on our front lawn, and it disappeared within the hour, as is the way with such things here in magical MLT.

 

We acquired a replacement grill and were debating about names.  A line the Mayor read last night from "Treasure Island" jumped simultaneously to several lips:

"Silver!" they cried  "Barbecue for ever!  Barbecue for cap'n!"

And so "Cap'n Silver" was duly appointed as our new grill.

Famous!

The Mayor was captured by the Bing car while walking to work several months ago.

The Mayor has his backpack off because he's just putting his phone away after calling the Hobbit Wife to tell her that he was photographed by the Bing car.

Dinner Time

We have been doing a little bit of rearranging to accommodate another hobbitling at the kitchen table, now that Mr. Eejee is getting started on solids.

First time that all four hobbitlings are at the table together.

The proud six-month-old showing off 50% of his tooth collection.