Length: 28 1/4 inches

Shots: 4 

Cuteness: At least 90th percentile

New food: green beans!  His palate is expanding!

You know, it is REALLY not smart to tailgate and flash your headlights at the car in front of you in a heavily-patrolled, densely residential area that has a often-posted speed limit of 25 miles an hour. Especially when you are driving a company vehicle with said company’s NAME and PHONE NUMBER on the vehicle. And even more especially when the driver in front of you happens to be me, and the Webmaster is sitting in the passenger seat, taking down your license plate number and calling the phone number advertised on your vehicle to complain TO YOUR COMPANY about your aggressive driving.

Just a friendly, helpful tip. Have a nice day!

Sincerely,
Deanna

Oddball, this one is for you. I only wish I’d thought of it when Little Cousin or Baby Cousin were born.

Here are this year’s jack o’lanterns. The Webmaster used a template this year, but Ane preferred a “traditional” look to her pumpkin.

May your trick-or-treating be safe, well-lit, and secure lots of peanut butter cups.

Maybe tomorrow.

The Webmaster: He’s been reading quite a few different things recently (besides watching season 5 of “24″ on his iPod), but he’s got Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s So Great About Christianity checked out from the library at the moment.

Me: There have been a LOT of new Star Trek and Star Wars books out recently, much to my delight. The reading has been pure escapism, and I’ve needed that. I have read Star Trek Excelsior: Forged in Fire (see my sidebar), Star Wars: Death Star (which was SO COOL; I told the Webmaster he had to read it for himself), and I’ve got Star Trek Enterprise: The Good That Men Do checked out from the library now and Star Wars: Fury on hold. I’ll get back to “serious” reading later.

Ane: She checked out four books from the library this last Tuesday! She usually only picks out one or two to check out. She is on a Max and Ruby kick right now, so she picked Bunny Cakes and Max’s Dragon Shirt, Going to Town (a My First Little House story), and Space Boy (a book just published at the end of 2007, and it is so good that we might have to buy a copy, because Ane loved the “outer space” bits and Tad would love the actual story about the boy).

Tad: For his birthday, Friend and Doc gave him My Friend is Sad, which is part of a series written by Mo Willems (of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! fame). This is Tad’s favorite book, and he has it memorized. We will find him reading it to himself, complete with the sound effects that we use when we read it to him. In fact, the only phrase that Tad will say on command is a line from this book (if you say, “Then I saw a robot!”, Tad will immediately say, “A cool, cool robot!” It is both endearingly cute and enormously funny). Well, we got a Barnes and Noble gift card from the CW family this last Christmas, and we purchased Today I Will Fly! for Tad. He was thrilled to find out that there were more books with his favorite Gerald and Piggie in them. He’s working on memorizing this one as well.

So, what have you been reading – either for yourself or to your kids? I’ll take any suggestions!

Little Cousin and Baby Cousin are arriving TODAY. With their mommy, of course (who will be known on this blog from now on as “Resiss”, which is what Ane used to call her before she could say her real name properly. And if you can figure out her real name from that, you are way ahead of the rest of us). Their dad will arrive in a couple of days, once his leave kicks in.

And where does all of this cousiny goodness land us tomorrow?

Celebrating Ane’s fourth birthday.

So, there will be a birthday post tomorrow! You’ll just have to wait for the Christmas pictures until later.

1. Wrapping or gift bags? I have no problem with either one. Wrapped presents always look nicer under a tree, but gift bags are reusable and just so darned convienent when you have an irregularly-shaped item to give someone.

2. Real or artificial tree? I grew up with a real tree until I was seven, and then it was fake all the way. And then I married the Webmaster, whose family owned a Christmas tree farm, and it is the highest form of sacrilege to even THINK about an artificial tree. Or so I’ve been told.

3. When do you put up the tree? Depends on when Thanksgiving is, but I generally like to have the tree on hand right after Thanksgiving so we can put it up on December 1st. We only get to have it for a month – we’d better enjoy it!

4. When do you take the tree down? January 2nd. At least, I try to. It is usually down by the first Saturday in January (if that’s not New Year’s Day), and I am usually the one doing all the dissassembling.

5. Do you like eggnog? Ewww, no! The Webmaster likes it, so I do buy it for him.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Too many to list, but some of my favorites include the dollhouse my father made for me, a pair of bears that my mom dressed up in wedding clothes (including scraps from her own wedding dress), and my lightsaber, which I still have.

7. Do you have a nativity scene? Yes – my mother gave us one that she purchased in an antique store in the college town where the Captain and Q-Bee met the year that the Webmaster and I were first married, and we have the Fisher-Price one, of course.

8. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? Sorry, Grandma… a couple of years ago, she gave me some old Christmas decorations of hers (she actually wrapped them and stuck them under the tree). They were little houses, and as a toddler, I’d poked my finger through all the windows and broken them. So, of course, I deserved them, right?

9. Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail them, and try to have enough Christmas postage stamps on hand.

10. Favorite Christmas Movie? Oh, that’s a hard one… I enjoy the kids’ movies so much, so I’ll have to say The Muppet Christmas Carol for the kid part of me and The Family Man for the grown-up part of me.

11. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Who stops shopping for Christmas? If I find something for someone and their birthday is already past, it goes into the closet to wait for Christmas. This annoys the Webmaster terribly, because the closet is really only clean for about a month after Christmas, but it does spread around the expenditures quite a bit.

12. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Christmas morning brunch at my parents’ house. Mom always tries something new and different each year, and it never fails to please. I hear we’re having fruit smoothies this year with brunch.

13. Clear lights or colored on the tree? I grew up with colored, but decided on all clear lights once I had my own tree. I love the look of it, though I do like the colored strands, too.

14. Favorite Christmas song? “O Holy Night” or “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”

15. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Home sweet home! We do drive to the Webmaster’s family, but since we get home that same night, it’s more of a “drive” than an actual “travel.”

16. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer. Yes, and I can probably recite most of “Twas the Night Before Christmas” as well.

17. Angel on the tree top or a star? Star, though the Webmaster had an angel and I grew up with a very old glass ornament at the top of my parents’ tree.

18. Open the presents Christmas Eve or Christmas Morning? Growing up, we did Christmas Eve presents with Grandma and Grandpa, then had stockings and tree presents at home on Christmas morning, and then proceeded over to Obachan and Ojichan’s for the rest of Christmas Day and had presents there. The Webmaster grew up in a Christmas Eve family, so we do Christmas Eve with his family and Christmas Day with mine, reserving Christmas morning for our own stockings and tree with the munchkins.

19. Most annoying thing about this time of year? The commercialism and ads. I know I only have 4 more shopping days until Christmas – stop reminding me!!!

20. Do you decorate your tree in any specific theme or color? Nope. I hope to have a Peanuts tree someday, but that will be an extra tree, not the main one.

21. What do you leave for Santa? Cookies and milk. Santa has his own special plate at our house – it’s actually a cheeseball plate, but it doubles as a cookie plate and has Santa’s face on it, just in case he thinks they were left for someone else.

22. Least favorite holiday song? “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” – it’s okay once, but not once an hour on the radio.

23. Favorite ornament? Too many to choose from. Didn’t I do a whole post about this???

Q-Bee and I took the kids on an overnight trip to St. Louis. We planned a full day at the Magic House (the renowned children’s museum) and the St. Louis Zoo. We wore the kids out so much at the Magic House that they really didn’t get into the zoo as much. So I only took a few pictures at the zoo (I wish I’d had a video camera at the penguin exhibit), but I took lots at the Magic House – Ane still talks about the fun she had there. It’s perfect for any child of any age – there is truly something for everyone there.

Tomorrow, small anecdotes about our trip. They will be funny, I promise.