Wrestling at least 2/3rds of our kids to hold still for a picture before the whole tableau is destroyed.
Cal, Postmaster General of Gift Dispensery.
Mack with one of his favorite gifts: a headlamp. (Other favorite gift: an 8-pack of chapstick. I don't know.)
A rare all-family photo. We are all making unfortunate auto-timer faces (that is to say alternately caught off-guard or expectant) but at least all our eyes are open and no one is moving. I'll take it.
Yeah, so anyway, Christmas was fun. Both Joe and I took a week of vacation the week between Christmas and New Years, and I would say that the decompression from the work week to the vacation week has been acute and disorienting, transitioning from having too much to do to having...well, nothing to do. But again: I'll take it.
Oh, and unrelated to anything, but since I'm rambling (and apparently teeming with parentheticals) anyway, just a pro tip: the very best day to go into the post office to renew your passports is December 23rd, because it's already past the point where people are actually trying to mail Christmas presents (procrastinators non-withstanding, but likely even they've given up and are just ordering gift-certificates to Outback Steakhouse online) and the postal workers are super-efficiency mode, if somewhat (and understandably) grouchy. Cal needed his passport renewed for a trip we'll be taking later this summer (we got his first passport when he was just a few weeks old--in his picture he is propped up on some kind of swing seat and slumped in a pile of drool) and Mack has never had a passport, because barring a well-stocked cabinet of barbiturates (I'll leave it open-ended who would be the recipient of this pharmacologic intervention) no one in their right mind would want to take that kid on an international flight anywhere. However, might I venture the opinion that these two are the cutest passport photos ever taken of anyone, ever?
You wouldn't even be able to guess that I took them in the bathroom, because it's the only room in this house with an actual white (well, beige) wall. Whoever lived here last painted the living room this South Beach tangerine color which I have gradually become inured to, but in the way that people who live near a pork fat rendering plant gradually stop noticing the smell.