Here, finally are our pics of our trip to Hawaii.

"What?!" your saying. "You went to Hawaii?! When did this happen?"

I know. It was sort of last minute. We'd been saving/planning for a trip to Mexico for a long time - the idea being to use our grandparent's timeshare and Seville's passport (that we got when she was an infant - at expedited prices - for a Spain trip that didn't happen - I didn't want to feel like the passport was a total waste), and to go before she turned 2 so we wouldn't have to buy her a plane ticket. The Mexico thing didn't work out, and like dummies we couldn't get ourselves together during the holidays to plan a trip in time. So we went the week AFTER she turned 2 and had to buy her a ticket anyway. Oh well. Despite the fact that she didn't sleep on either flight (8+ hours on a plane, through naptime one way, into midnight the other!) she was totally sweet and fun. I couldn't have been more delighted to have her along the whole time.

Birthday Photos

Here are the rest of the pics from Seville's birthday - and a couple from Jared's and mine too.

2!

Happy Birthday to the sweetest, most dear thing on the planet, my little Seville!

Birthday flowers from Uncle Bryce.
I put her hair in ponytails for the first time ever. It made me giggle over her cuteness, but made me sad too. It's such a "little girl" thing, which made me see that she is undeniably no longer a baby. I can't believe she's growing up so fast (yeah, no other parent has ever said that before)

Singing the Birthday Song (she actually blew out her own candles. It took her a few tries to get the second one. What does this mean for wishes? Is she hosed?)

Seville does this face now every time you point a camera at her. Oh well.
(hey!... I just realized maybe I should get a camera out every time I need to brush her teeth! there's an idea!)

I made her this blanket for her birthday with my new sewing machine. It's that suuuper sickly soft fuzzy material. I figured she wouldn't let go of it for the next couple of years. She liked lying on it and under it as a plaything until it was time for bed, at which point she promplty rejected all my hard work and loving labor in favor of the old raggety thing from Target that she's had since she was born. Figures.

It's all going so fast, this child thing. I'm lost in amazement, and practically drowning in adoration of her.

I'll post an album of birthday pics soon for the die-hards who want to see it all. Check back.

Holiday Slideshow

Pictures of our holidays, for those who want more.

Happy Christmas

(click image to see large version)

Happy Snowy Sunday!

This is what our day has been like so far! Church was canceled, so
we're just playing in snow and drinking hot chocolate and listening to
Christmas music. Hope you're having fun stuck at home too (if you
are)!

Merry Christmas from Seville

Big Girl Bed

Seville's first night in a toddler bed was last week, and when we went to check on her before turning in ourselves, this is where we found her. We sat there cracking up and taking pictures before putting her back in bed (some great parents we are, eh?).

Which reminded me of the story about my older brother, who slept in the top bunk. My parents one night were awakened by a loud "thump," and ran startled into the bedroom to see what was going on. They found him still asleep on the floor. Kids are weird like that. They seem to be able to sleep through anything.

From the Mouths of Babes

As many of you know, my mother doesn't cook in quantifiable "amounts" like normal people. Rather she cooks in a "dump" of this, a "handful" of that, and "however much looks good" of the other. So many of us, her kids, have attempted over the years to capture something akin to "recipes" from the food she makes. On three separate occasions I've tried to observe and write down what the heck she's doing when she makes her famous sweetbread, and thus I have three sets of notes on the subject.

Today I was attempting to make sweetbread for Thanksgiving, and had Seville helping me, complete with stool and apron and sticky hands delving into all my ingredients. In any case, I set my three sets of notes on the counter, leaned over them and said, half to myself, half to Seville, " ...[sigh]... okay, which of these should we follow?"

To which Seville promptly replied, "Follow the Prophet!" :)

Where, oh Where has my little blog gone

Wondering where we've been? See that picture on the right there? Yes, that is a picture of me re-formatting my hard drive. Yes, I reformatted it because my computer totally and completely and irrevocably crashed. Yes, it means I lose all my data.

Lucky for me, I've been backing up my data pretty regularly (actually, luck had nothing to do with it. It was more brilliance and forethought on my part). I still lost some stuff, but nothing too devastating. I have all my pictures and videos and personal documents, stuff like that.

What I don't have is a fully functioning computer yet. I've got an operating system loaded, my internet running, and a browser. I haven't installed drivers and plugins and applications and stuff yet. Nor have I restored my docs from backups, so I don't have pictures yet either. And I've lost all my customization, which is a pain.

So I'll be busy working on that for several days, I'm sure. So probably no blogging (or checking blogs) for me.

(okay, wait a second, am I becoming one of those "blog apologizers"? Like those people who call or write and say... "oh, geez, I've been meaning to call" but never have anything substantial to say? Or those journal entries where they all start with "boy, it's been so long since I've written anything I'm not sure where to start." sigh.)

Teaching Patriotism

We had a little civic lesson for our Monday Family Home Evening this week. After learning about voting and the flag and stuff, we painted flags. Can you guess which one is Seville's? :)

The Obligatory Halloween '08 Blog Post

Seville was a bee for Halloween.



I was a flower (or rather, a whole plant, and rife with bees, actually, for the benefit of those who might have been slow on the uptake about, y'know, she's a bee, I'm a flower, get it? get it?)

These are terrible pics, I know. Weird flash-less shadows, I look like some sweaty amazonian German housefrau (I swear, I'm not this unattractive in real life). But they're what I got.

Jared was too busy answering the door for trick-or-treaters (our first year doing that. We've always been away partying), to put on his costume, so maybe he'll save it for next year. That being the case, I cannot now divulge his ingenious idea. Until next year....

Should Be Famous

As most of you know, I haven't done a lot of music publicly in the last couple years (between Seville's birth and Jared's health, it's been a bit much to handle). And of course, the question I get asked most often these days - probably other than "how's it goin'?" and "paper or plastic?" - is something along the lines of "when are you gonna start playing again?" Well... the short answer to that is "maybe soon maybe I think." The real answer to that is long and complicated, and better saved for another post.

But in the meantime I have joined a fun little project as a co-host on the new Should Be Famous podcast. You should check it out. It's a little show where we three hosts (my brother Clayton, a guy named Chris, and I), find what we consider to be good music by people who are not professional musicians - basically, people like us. People who are busy doing real-life kinds of things -- like, say, working a real job, raising children, stuff like that -- but they have some talent or some luck or, in any case, some song that is really worth hearing. But because they're not promoting it, it will never get picked up by a label or a radio station and YOU would never get to hear it. Our quest is to find those songs.

So check out the podcast. The webpage is here: www.shouldbefamous.com or you can subscribe at iTunes directly by clicking HERE.

Hope you enjoy!

P.S. If you know of a great song by a non-professional musician, please let us know. We are finding them almost entirely by word of mouth.

Grumpy Old Pirate Cat

Okay. I'm not usually a big poster of other people's YouTube videos, but my brother-in-law showed me this in Sunriver, and it made me laugh so hard I had tears streaming down my face, I had to sit on the floor to keep from falling over, and I seriously thought I was going to pee my pants (a disaster narrowly averted). Granted, this was very late at night when family can get silly, and we proceeded to do other stupid things we found funny at the time that probably weren't so much, so I don't want to hype it up tooooo much and ruin it for you. But still. I can't stop laughing.

Introduction: you know how cats make those weird devilish noises when they're mad or "growling" or whatever it is? Here somebody has listened closely to what his cat is saying, and translated for us all.



There is a possible happy byproduct of this video for me: Almost nothing scares me more than waking in the night to the sounds of neighborhood cats "caterwauling" at each other. Next time I wake to Richard Parker engaging in some neighborhood turf battle, I'll probably start cracking up instead of falling into fitful nightmarish sleep, like usual.

Sunriver

We just got back from a week in Sunriver with my folks (well... Seviulle and I spent a week there, anyway. Jared joined us just for the weekend.) It's funny how vacations are never long enough. I brought books, journals, an easel, paints, my guitar, the stroller, etc, all planning on having lots of free down time to do whatever. As it happened, the week flew by, despite the fact that we did not much withour spare time other than play fetch with my parents' dog.

This is my parents (new-ish) dog, Molly. Seville seems to figure that since they're about the same height, they are friends.

Seville spent many hours throwing this ball into the water, and Molly dutifully fetched it, despite the fact that it was about 2 feet away. It was almost as if Molly was teaching Seville how to play "fetch" and not the other way around.

Daddy comes to join the fun.

Seville dons her swimsuit playing on the little paddle boat.

Returning from Seville's first canoe ride. She kept wanting to touch the water, and we kept trying to explain to her that the boat would tip over if she leaned over the side. No matter, she kept trying. Eventually I went ahead and held her over the side while Jared carefully counterbalanced the other direction.

(I posted a ton of pictures for my family to see, so if the above 5 aren't enough for you, they are at http://picasaweb.google.com/skye.engstrom/Sunriver2008# )