Housecleaning

I'm going to get through two weeks of photos that have been sitting around so we are up to date, and then we will get to the questions tomorrow! Keep them coming, please.

I actually have a question: I was just in an exterior elevator in a Burbank parking garage. It didn't smell like pee. How is that possible?

Here come the pictures. Many of them are repeated from Facebook, so sorry for the repetition.

In honor of Mona and co. leaving, Lucy wore an all-Opubor outfit. We miss them.

Totoro enjoys the udon at the Glendale Whole Foods. He also likes watching the chefs work the grill for the teriyaki.

Here we are at one of our favorite playgrounds, on Olive Ave.

Here's Oscar with the cutie-pie sisters from the triplets from Yoga. They loooved Oscar. The feeling was mutual.

That was the only leaf pile in all of Southern California.

Playgrounds here mean sand. And sand means bare feet.

Bare feet means socks and shoes littering the playground.

And all of that means that right now I probably have 13 sweaty, sandy little boy socks in my purse. And wadded up between the carseats in the car. And in my pockets.

Fashion show!

No amount of cajoling was needed for the show. They disappeared into Lucy's room and emerged as princesses.

Crazy huge tree at another one of our favorite parks. Someday I will do a posts about all the crazy plants out here.

Last weekend it rained, but we needed to get out of the house. Oscar has a social studies project due in a couple weeks on local Native American tribes, so we took off to the Gene Autry Museum of the American West.

Horsenapper!

They have BOTH kinds of music!

Thanksgiving!

First we have Arlo's Thanksgiving Feast. Arlo's standing up in red.

Arlo was holding Lucy on his lap. He was very proud to show off his class to his baby sister and vice versa.

(That says Arlo is thankful for his brother. Really?!?)

No pictures, but we had a lovely Thanksgiving at Auntie Jojo's mom and dad's house. The kids acted like wild dogs and didn't eat anything, but there was lovely company and bacon.

We took the kids to the Muppets! It was fantastic. We got a babysitter and went to Hugo! It was even better.

Oscar had a sleepover on Saturday, and we hosted a bunch of bachelors for another Thanksgiving. Hosting solely for bachelors is making me lazy. I don't think I even put out hand towels.

We visited Evan's office. It's gorgeous and awe-inspiring and top-secret, so I can't show pictures. But I pointed out to Evan that 3 out of his past 4 workplaces have had pinball machines. Pretty cool, right?

I picked up Oscar and we stopped at the Van Nyes farmer's market and bought this strange melon. I wonder what it will taste like?

We got a hamster! Her name is Princess Chikorita Leia Brockway Metcalf, and her nickname is Little Miss Biteypants.

I took a new profile picture. Don't I look dramatic?

Your humble narrator.

Tonight I went out with a lovely new friend and met some new ones. Tomorrow everyone goes back to work and school. I will be working on Lucy's preschool's Jingle Bell Breakfast, prepping Arlo's birthday party (he turns 6 on Saturday) and getting ready to welcome my folks for a quick weekend visit before they jaunt off to Hawaii for a couple weeks.

And that's the story from the corner of Niagara and Jeffries in lovely Burbank, CA.