Scenes of the season

It Has Came and It Has Went here too. And like Ellie, I'm going to give you a little peek. My brother, his wife, and their two kids landed here the Saturday prior to Christmas. They came all the way from Durango to visit and celebrate the season with us -- and for that we are grateful.

A good time was had by all, but the cousins, especially the 4- to 6-year-old set, may have most enjoyed the time spent together. And for good reason.... There were:

amusement parks visited,

dinners out,

Cheers!

My brother said that this was both the largest, and the worst drink he had ever had. Not the best combination. But no one likes a quitter -- he did manage to finish it. 

performance art and concerts, right in my very living room,

I somehow managed to not capture any photos of the actual frousin show. I'm sorry. Or you're welcome.

But I did get some Monday night jam shots...

And of course there was a visit to the beach.

And even skiing.

Thank you, Purcell family, for making our Christmas so much more fun! xoxo

I literally do not have one photo of my older girls from this week. I'm not sure what that says about me. Or them. Perhaps the Purcell's got a few?

It Has Come and It Has Gone . . .

. . . or as we ironic geeks like to say, It Has Came and It Has Went.

It started thusly:

It continued such like:

It got to here:

 It worked its way here:

And it ended thus how:

Wait!

It hasn't ended yet.

Let me rephrase that.

This is how it begins.

Merry, Merry!

Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope the day is great, and that Santa was good to you. Here is a little peek into our obligatory pre-Christmas hoopla:

To counteract the recent cat overlording

Strolling the lights is our Christmas Eve post-mexican feast tradition. 

As is the gifting of jammies. Ignore all those vaccuum cleaners.

My jammie game was strong this year

 

that's good enough for me

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good Night

Ho ho ho

Happy holidays! I thought about finishing the cat tale today, but (a) I'm not prepared, and (b) it's really not all that season appropriate.

So, instead, I'm going to keep the cat theme rolling by stealing images from the Internet. If this doesn't get you in the holiday spirit, I don't know what will....

Schleckeffects

Okay okay, so maybe we went too far this year.

As I've said before, Mistah sometimes gets tired of old-fashioned representational photography. So we tweaked this year. Okay, allright, we tweaked Big. Okay, fine, we tweaked Majorly. Mightily, even. Does that make us bad people?

It almost certainly probably does not.

For those of you who are *not* Hsin, and haven't unlocked the mystery, here's how to create the Perfect Christmas Card that only one friend will figure out:

Send Mistah out on a beautiful day to take a photo of the beautiful sun shining through a beautiful tree over the beautiful water across the street from Ocean Beach:

Oh, wait. Crop out that house.

There it is.

Now add some Schleckeffects:

Add a dash of holiday cheer:

Voilà!

I knew what it was all along. And so did Hsin.

Happy Everything, Everybody!

Some things never change

I love that Facebook memories thing, and it cracks me up to see how very little most things change from year to year. 

Case in point:

Don't ask me why this thing is all centered. I am stressed out enough!

Holiday hairball

I actually have more to share about the poor dead cat; unfortunately I did not manage my time well enough to tell you that story today.

But, until then, I wish you a very

The Art of the (Bad) Selfie

I'm new to this whole selfie-taking craze. I must confess, however, that although I'm a very enthusiastic selfie-taker, I'm not necessarily a particularly talented one.

But does that stop me? Oh, noooooo, sir. No, it does not.

As you can see.

We had the great good fortune to go on a Field Trip with friends who -- although we love and are fully devoted to -- have never risked actually going away with.

But everything worked out just fine.

Why yes, there was some drinking involved . . .

. . . and we even picked up another friend along the way . . .

. . . but mostly it was the four of us . . .

. . . stuck together like glue . . .

. . . with (bad) selfies every step of the way to prove it.

See?

And there it is. There's the stuff. The impetus, the reason, the Field Trip Focus.

 Nick Offman as Ignatius J. Reilly.

I'll never look at Ron Swanson the same way again.

And then, just like that, our final selfie on the train home. Sigh.

What did we take away from our Field Trip, you ask?

Let's ask The Man himself:

“With the breakdown of the medieval system, the gods of chaos, lunacy, and bad taste gained ascendancy.” ― Ignatius J. Reilly, A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole