The Theme Awakens

painting penguins

Today was an auspicious day for Soren at Little Bear School. Today, they painted penguins!

Soren's penguin is in the middle. The ones on the side, like everyone's penguins except Soren's, have orange flippers and an orange beak. Why is Soren's different?

I'll give you a hint. Here is the stuffie he brought to school with him for this very special day:

I come bearing a rice crispy treat.

patches

When a new roof is put on an old house with lath and plaster walls and ceilings, you sometimes need to do some patching after the fact...

Half Moon Bay

We spent Saturday and Sunday roughing it at Half Moon Bay.


The boys enjoyed room service. Repeatedly.




Sigrid and I enjoyed a sunset stroll.









And on Sunday morning, we all walked down to the beach.

Correction: 1000 Colours

Sigrid and Anders finished the puzzle!


One interesting thing about this puzzle is that the colours* don't smoothly transition across the entire puzzle. Instead, each piece is a single color.


* I've used the Commonwealth spelling for this post, because the puzzle is from Australia.

animals

It's animal month at Soren's preschool.



(We think this last one is a millipede. We asked Soren, and he said, "I don't remember.")

Update (1/27/15): He says it's a lizard.

1000 colors

We brought a 1000 piece CMYK color gamut puzzle for the adults to try in Tahoe, but never got around to it. So Sigrid opened it up at home, and Anders decided to help out.

another lost tooth

Anders lost another tooth.


More technically, he swallowed it. He felt confident the Tooth Fairy would understand.

Glacier Loop

Before leaving Tahoe for home, we hiked Glacier Loop on Donner Ridge. It was supposed to be a moderate hike for the boys—1.6 miles, mostly flat. But the lower part of the loop is not well marked, so we took a detour. Plus, 1.6 miles seems farther when you're at elevation. And the way we did the loop, the biggest incline came at the end. Put it all together, and our hike ended up taking two and a half hours (including breaks).

But it was surreally beautiful.



Oh, ok; it was beautiful, but perhaps not quite that surreal. Those were edited. Originally, those pictures looked like this:


But even without special effects, it was nice to hike in the snow.



The boys even let loose a few snowballs.


Part of the hike dipped a bit lower and faced south, leaving us without snow. Plus, this was the site of a huge fire in 1960, and you could still see the effects.


But looking south, we had a beautiful view of Donner Lake.




(And, off in the distance, Northstar, I think.)


After taking in the view, we had a snack.


Actually, we ended up taking in the view of Donner Lake before and after our snack, from slightly different spots. (These are 360° panoramas.)

This place will do.

Sigrid picked a wonderful rental house for MLK Day weekend.



The main room stretched up to the second floor.




We made good use of this kitchen, and ate lots of meals—all eight of us—at the tall dining table.


But we never got around to trying this fireplace in the back yard. Nor did we spend time relaxing on the ski lift chair swing.


This bench was not the most functional piece of furniture.



When kids disagreed what to watch on TV, or when kids didn't want to watch the football games, we had a second TV in the den.


The gas fireplace kept the main room and the den cozy.