Baby Kate

I think Claire has the makings of a good babysitter. She definitely puts a lot of effort into it, but she does seem to think that a real baby is something like a baby doll, there to dress up however she'd like. When I told her that we needed to find baby toys, she came back with all of the baby things from the doll house: the high chair, cradle, car seat, and actual babies. I suppose I did say baby toys.

In Which I Travel to Utah with Madeleine

Okay, I've come to the realization that if I wait until I have time to write a thorough, pithy, and fascinating blog entry about my trip to Utah, it will never happen. I'm going to settle for seeing what I can type in the next five minutes (or less) before someone pounds on my door demanding attention.
So a week and a half ago Madeleine and I hopped a plane and headed for Utah. She had no school and we had two free tickets that were about to expire; that and the fact that she's never been there made it the perfect time for a trip. For most of our visit we stayed with Jeff's brother and sister-in-law, Matt and Marta, who were fantastic hosts. We also got to meet their super cute kids for the first time ever: Beau, who is five, and Cash and Pierce, who are two. Beau was particularly entertaining and had a lot to say, despite the fact that he kept telling us that he couldn't say anything because he was too shy. I think he needs to look the word up in a dictionary. One of the cutest things I've ever seen is Beau dressed for pre-school in his kilt (it was heritage day). Did I think to take a picture? Of course not, I stink at taking pictures.
The first day we were there we drove to Park City in our rented Jeep Patriot (I'd never buy one, my hands are still vibrating slightly). Since the Sundance Film Festival was going on I'd ordered tickets for the most interesting-sounding film that was being shown at a time that was convenient for us and wasn't already sold out. Not a lot to choose from. We decided to live on the wild side and went with the Spotlight Surprise documentary.
When I picked up the tickets at the box office I discovered that we'd be seeing "Exit Through the Gift Shop," a Banksy film about graffiti artists. It was quite good, so my gamble paid off.
Despite the fact that Madeleine moves at the speed of a sloth we had a great day.

 (Banksy explaining how the film came to be.)

I'm being summoned, so in my next installment I'll tell the exciting story of being in the middle of Idaho without a bathroom in sight. Stay tuned!

The Toad News Network

One of my favorite writers, Jasper Fforde, always refers to the Toad News Network in his books. You can also check out some funny Toad News stories online, including "Student's function to 'test education system' challenged."
The Toad's motto?
"Proudly Disseminating Sensationalised Rubbish for over a Century."

Carter's Photos

Carter loves to take photos - most of them are of random objects around the house, taken from interesting angles (note the lego photo) - but sometimes he gets a person in there. He also loves to hang out with Madeleine in her room, so one day they combined the two hobbies.

I'm a Winner!

It's official, I'm a winner! I love a contest where simply completing the task makes you a winner; it may be the only kind of competition at which I can excel. Who cares about quality? It's quantity that matters at NaNoWriMo.

Jello

Claire really wanted to make some orange jello, as in Jello brand gelatin, and I really wanted her to stop bugging me, so I explained rationally that there was no point making jello because we wouldn't even be able to eat it right away since it had to be in the fridge for a long time before you eat it, etc. etc. So she ran over to the fridge, opened the door, and stuck the box of Jello in. She looked really proud of herself.

NaNoWriMo

I've discovered that it's really hard to write 1666 words per day for a month. That's 50,000 words in 30 days if you're wondering. Why would I do such a thing? Madeleine's English class is doing NaNoWriMo this month as an assignment, so I decided it would be fun to do it too. It's actually hard and stressful and crazy, but it's fun at the same time. They have excellent pep talks from real writers (the published kind); it's almost worth doing this just to have an e-mail from Jasper Fforde show up in my mailbox. I might even do it again next year, even though I truly believe that the majority of what I'm writing is crap. According to the pros, writing crap is good practice.