Birthday Breakfast

It's going to be Asian food all day by Wynn's request - she's 8 years old today!

A fairly authentic northern-Chinese breakfast - on the left, deep-fried sesame-coated rice balls with red-bean filling; two different kinds of oranges in the middle; steamed pork bao on the right

She was excited to see what I was making - and told me the significance of each item before we started eating!

Happy New Year 2014!

No big trip this Winter Break - the biggest journey we took this season was to Hogwarts as we introduced Wynn to Harry Potter. Finished Book 1 yesterday and showed her the first movie today.  She is still trying to get her head around the idea that we had to wait about a year and a half between the books!  ("Now, imagine that the next book we'll read sometime between third and fourth grade!")

New Year's Day was cold - we had lunch at Masu at the Mall of America, but the service was dreadfully slow.

Bored, bored, bored

The Polar Vortex descended on Minnesota today, and Governor Dayton has closed all the schools tomorrow, so Wynn and Ann are getting one more bonus day of Winter Break. They'll be picking up the house & getting ready to go back to school Tuesday...

Sick day on vacation

Wynn and Ann were both fighting a flu bug and not having much success Sunday night; Ann was really out of it Monday morning. I went to work in the morning and came back at lunchtime to take care of the ladies.  Wynn was taking it easy and was feeling pretty good after lunch - took Ann until evening to start feeling more like herself.

I love how Wynn can relax in just about any space / any position:

The End of Christmas 2013

We took down the tree this cold, cold morning and set the Christmas Castle out on the deck for the squirrels.  And Wynn built a solar-powered dinosaur robot.

It was a most excellent tree; still very fragrant and thirsty and held the ornaments beautifully.

 

The plastic fork & spoon for arms was Wynn's idea ... all the better to eat you with!

Squirrels love marshmallows and Kit Kat bars, apparently.

Christmas Eve 2013

We are thankful for everyone's good health this year, and the ability to share with the people and causes we care so much about.

So let's get going with the presents, already!

School pride!

Wynn drew one-page comics for each of us - she's explaining the action in this one to Uncle Paul...

A good day for Wynn, and good to know that we're donating an even bigger amount this season!

Xmas Cake 2013

The Betty Crocker kids' cookbook suggested we make a Santa's Castle Cake ... but it wasn't coming together well, so I grabbed some extra ingredients to shore up the castle wall - and well, the rest of the construction just kind of fell into place.  Santa's using a Japanese castle this year:

Only European kids served in this cafe. Is Becky really going to eat all those hamburgers by herself?

Santa's Castle looks like it's in Spain.

The construction hit a few snags, so I found some Kit Kats to shore up the castle walls, and, well, one thing led to another and now Santa is going to use a traditional Japanese fortress this year.

Christmas Decorations 2013

We learned how to make six-sided snowflakes this month, and used different papers we had here at the house as well as bigger sheets from school!

 

We got our tree again from the University of Minnesota's Forestry students - it was frozen up with all the branches together like a collapsed umbrella when we picked it out from the lot, so we felt lucky that the tree was so full and bushy when it thawed out!

Ornaments that look like Wynn and Shadow!