Blonde roots

With all that hair it's hard to tell, but there are signs of towheadness peeking out from the two hurricane cowlicks on the back of her head.

 

Overheard

First, a non-funny one:

Ethan (totally unprompted!): I love Sophie more than anything.
Me: That's so nice.
Ethan: Even more than Godzilla and Pokemon.

That means A LOT.

Second, a funny one:

Ginger: We need a new exercise bike.
Me: I think it would be better to get a treadmill.
Ginger: I like exercise bikes better, because you can do it sitting down.

Happy birthday to our little Princess

We love you.

 

Matching dresses

  

Revenge

This family's home was invaded by a wild turkey on Thanksgiving. This is the second time a turkey has attacked the home--the first time was on Christmas 2004. Weird.

Hide and seek

"He'll never find us under the piano!"

 

Happy Thanksgiving

  

Glenn Beck...

...has a well known talk radio show and a TV show on Headline News. Here he talks about his conversion story.

Taking the plunge

Video here.

How to prepare for second grade

A bowl of Kix and the Wall Street Journal. This morning he told us about the inflated prices of Elmo toys on eBay.

 

Sophie

Evangelicals and Mormons

There are a couple of blogs about Mitt Romney that I follow, and both have recently had good posts about the Evangelical vs. Mormons thing:

"What it means to be a Mormon" (from Evangelicals for Mitt)

"November 16 Reading List" with a conversation between Hugh Hewitt and a guy who called in to the radio show to say he'd never vote for a Mormon (from Article VI Blog)

I wish I had majored in physics

This stuff is so cool. A scientist in Washington is going to do an experiment to try an send a photon back in time:

"'It doesn't seem like it should work, but on the other hand, I can't see what would prevent it from working,' Cramer said. 'If it does work, you could receive the signal 50 microseconds before you send it.'"

The experiment is based on the principle of entanglement:

"'If you do a measurement on one [photon], it has an immediate effect on the other even if they are separated by light years across the universe,' Cramer said. If one of the entangled photon's trajectory tilts up, the other one, no matter how distant, will tilt down to compensate."

Zoo.com

There's a new search engine for kids, called Zoo.com. It has clean search results so kids don't stumble upon stuff they don't need to see. Seems like a good idea--even second graders have to do internet searches for homework these days.

Music

Following Leslie's lead, here are some good ones I've found in the last couple of months. Although most of the time we're listening to Disney princess music around here.

Neil Halstead - Sailing Man
Charles Aznavour - Sophie
The Shins - New Slang; Kissing the Lipless
Without Gravity - Beautiful Son
The Cambridge Singers - Esurientes
Paul Simon - American Tune
Todd Hannigan - Thicker Than Water
Laura Veirs - Song My Friends Taught Me
Niobe - In The Sun
Mojave 3 - After All; Got My Sunshine
Sufjan Stevens - To Be Alone With You
Innocence Mission - I Have Loved You
Thao Nguyen - Chivalry
Don Peris - Firefly
Colin Hay - Waiting for My Real Life to Begin
Beth Orton - Sweetest Decline
Jolie Holland - Crush in the Ghetto
Keren Ann - Not Going Anywhere

Reading in bed

No need for lamps, with all that pink.

 

Ready for launch

  

The best part

  

Test your musical skills

Try this test for tone deafness. I got 80.6% correct, which means my musical abilities are "excellent," but apparently not "world class." Alas, no professional musical career for me.

Only 3 payments of $33 each

Shh. Don't tell Ginger about this. It will be her Christmas surprise.

 

Ickle me, Pickle me, Tickle me too, went for a ride in a flying...

...plastic tub.

Have you ever dreamed that you could fly?

Daddy, now can you do some of me?

Yes.

By request

Flickr's best photographers

I want to learn how to take photos that look like these.

Halloween

Trick or treating last night was a lot of fun. Emma summed it up as we were walking between houses when she looked up at me and said, "Dad, I LOVE this." There are a lot more kids in the neighborhood this year--it seemed like there were kids running around everywhere.

Emma liked to strike up a conversation with the homeowners while she was getting candy. Her favorite conversation starter after taking some candy was, "We have a new baby sister at home. Her name is Sophie." She said this at almost every house.

Andrew is a very finicky trick-or-treater, it turns out. When the candy bowl at someone's house didn't contain anything he was interested in, he would wave his hand and say "I don't like any of that." The tone of his voice was not "No, thank you." It was more like "Maye you should TRY A LITTLE HARDER NEXT YEAR."