Dream within a dream?

I have seen very few movies in the last 10 years or so. Phil refuses to go to the cinema, claiming that it feels like a waste of an evening. But he is happy to watch anything at home, so we have recently vamped up our Netflix subscription to two separate queues - one for Lucy and Jessica, and one for us. And I have stopped waiting for an evening when he can join me and am now just watching films with the girls instead.

As a result, we've seen A LOT  of movies in the last few months. Most of these we should have seen when they came out, but we're a bit behind the times. Here are our hightlights:

Easy A
The Queen's Speech
The Social Network
Julie and Julia
3:10 to Yuma
Grapes of Wrath
Little Miss Sunshine
Gran Torino
Black Swan
The Blind Side
The Hangover
Invictus
and finally 
Slumdog Millionaire

They were all pretty good. Little Miss Sunshine is my favorite. The girls have had a Disney retrospective and decided to see all the animated films they missed as children, so we've also had The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules (awful) and Mulan.

For Christmas, Lucy got Jessica the DVD of Inception, which Jess saw at the cinema a few months ago. I picked her up that evening and she was so blown away by the movie and its complicated plot she could barely speak in sentences.  "It was just so incredibly cool" was about all she could say. We all watched it two nights ago, and spent half of a car journey yesterday talking about it.  As I got confused watching Hermione fiddle the Time Turner in HP3, I was not optimistic that I'd be able to follow Leonardo DiCaprio in and out of three levels of dreams, but was determined to make an effort because Jessica was so excited to share it with us.

It was worth it in the end for the special effects, Michael Caine and Ellen Page. And Jessica's conviction that really, we're all actually dreaming.

Merry Christmas

I realize I am jumping in early here but Phil is out for a Christmas row and the children are playing, and I've been trying to be a more consistent correspondent.

We've had a lovely holiday so far. School finished over a week ago thanks to Christmas falling on a Sunday. We hosted Phil's office Christmas party (for job #2, the small private equity firm) which meant a long slog in the kitchen on Monday, but Lucy and Jessica were fabulous help and we pulled it off. Never mind that we found the dessert cheesecakes waiting out in the screen porch the next morning. I don't think anyone minded...

We decorated with our Bollywood theme this year. At its most basic, this means no Red and no Silver. It also means no victoriana or gingham or other homespun-type things. It does mean lots of magenta,  glitter, colored lights and exotic things like peacock feathers. We last did this the year Fred was born, but that Christmas is a bit of a blur to me.

pillowpets x 3

One of the many joys of having teenage daughters (and there are many!) is that they jump in and contribute to Christmas magic. It is no longer just up to me. Surprises emerge that I knew nothing about. Fred has secrets with them, and they know things he wants that he has never told me.

Jessica helped him with the Santa snack. "By the time they get to Texas, the reindeer will want a change from apples." And someone is willing to play Hungry, Hungry Hippos over and over...

Phil has planned Beef Wellington for Christmas dinner, and we're going to take a walk with Lulu and our friends' dogs, which we're babysitting. On Boxing Day, the girls are making breakfast and we're going out for a long walk in the hill country. Other than that, I'm going to finishing icing the cake (ouch!) and then help Lucy...

Yea!

catching up

I've been a poor chronicler this year, but I'm in a better position now that I've moved our Picasa library of 11,000+ photos to my regular computer. This took most of a Saturday afternoon earlier this month. It was one of a number of projects I've been getting around to since the semester ended.

There is a big part of my brain which says I should not have started my foray into academia until about a dozen small- to medium-sized projects were finished in our house. These were the finishing touches after our last remodel. But I was so tired of the whole business, and I have only a limited interested in decorating and organizing that I jumped ahead. I also felt my age was making any decision more urgent. But this meant that we've spent the last 9 months stumbling over piles of things that needed putting away, and being unable to find things that we knew were here, and living as though we were still expecting plasterers and electricians in at any moment.  I'm getting to several of them during the Christmas vacation.

And although I've complained repeatedly here about the heat and drought, we did have a great summer, with many visitors.

My lovely cousin, Sarah Berkley, and Aunt Barbara stopped in on their road trip from Connecticut, where Sarah has finished college, back to Eugene, OR.  Sarah is the youngest in the very long line of cousins on my dad's side of the family.  I had never met her before.

 (Sarah plays the piano beautifully and my dad used to make her play 4 hand duets with him when she was little.)

(Sarah talked to us about the dreaded college application process, which Lucy was about to start)

My sister, Laura, came for a week during their "flyback" from Beirut. They spent almost two months with her in-laws in Pennsylvania, and joined in the Krisko family beach reunion.  We had a fabulous time, despite the heat, and I barely saw Fred for most of the time as he ran around with JT and Ruby.

 (In the very western bar at the Driskill Hotel)

(at Austin Zoo)

And if anyone else is as freaked out by the passing of time as I am, here is a little comparison:
 

(JT and Fred during a visit at Dad's house in 2007. James is 4 and Fred is 5 months)

(JT and Fred in 2011. James is 9 and Fred is 4)

So Fred is the age JT was when we were living near them in Surrey. I don't know how that happened so quickly. Here's another favorite:

East Molesey 2008

But I digress. I am a fool about old photos. Our last visitors were Phil's sister and her husband and family who came to see us from London, on their way to Victoria Island, BC, where they spent a week in a wilderness cabin, relaxing and whale watching.

Lucy and Jessica with cousins, Emma and Helen Reith, on the "W" at Westlake High School

Emma and Helen had never been to the US, and got a kick out of the crazy Texas high school customs. They ate barbeque, swam at Barton Springs and visited the capitol building. It was over 100F every day they were here. I think they were relieved to move onto to Canada.

Start of the Christmas Season

Fred was 5 earlier this month. For me, his birthday is the start of the Christmas season - about a week after Thanksgiving. I used to move my own birthday cards out of the way as the Christmas cards arrived, but now I move mine out of the way to make room for Fred's. I have only now uploaded photos.

He is at an absolutely delightful age, before school or unkind older children have intimidated him. He tells us he loves us several times a day, sings outloud and plays games with imaginary friends and dogs, and runs around the house bellowing car noises, rocket explosions and dinosaur assaults.

We had 6 friends from his pre-school over to play, along with his long-time buddy, Grayson. This is Real Grayson, and not Pretend Grayson. Fred was so enamored of this boy that over a year ago he morphed into his imaginary friend. Pretend Grayson can be a handful: sometimes he's 18 and drives a monster truck; other times he is a little older than Fred and can do things Fred can't, like skateboard or play fancy video games. Sometimes Pretend Grayson is mean and says bad words and spits and Fred won't talk to him.

Fred also has an imaginary dog, called Liefer, who is sometimes a Boxer, and sometimes a Labrador. Liefer emerged about the time our old dog, Kiera was re-homed.  Leifer is very good and doesn't bite people. There used to be another dog, called Chumley,  who was occasionally a Pug, (because I love pugs) but often just  a brown dog. Fred told me the other week (this is well after we adopted our 8 yr old very gentle German Short-haired pointer, Lulu) that Chumley was gone. He had bitten lots of people and scratched and growled at everyone and Fred had to give him back to the dog rescue people. So now we just have Lulu (real) and Liefer (pretend). Oh, and there is also a pretend cat, called Alex, who is good friends with our real cat, Ollie.  But Alex is very quiet, and only comes out when we're at the pet store buying cat food. Then he needs special imaginary toys.