Palm Springs

Last weekend Summer St. Pierre, Stephanie Spehar, Amy Turner, Erinn Valencich, Amy Robb, and I took two days off to lounge around Palm Springs and do nothing but drink margaritas, sit by the pool, play board games, and eat snacks. It's hard to believe I've known these girls for more than 20 years - and now we have a new annual tradition.








Thanks to Summer, Amy, and Amy for most of these photos...

Jack and B

Jack celebrates his second birthday with his friends Miller, Alexis, and Beatrice

Beatrice and Jack

From Summer St. Pierre's blog - and Summer has a real knack for getting great baby photos, too.

Happy birthday Jack!

On Sunday Beatrice's best friend Jack celebrated his second birthday, and today he invited Beatrice, Miller, and Alexis over to celebrate with him.

Photos coming soon...

Just one more...

I know I just posted "Beatrice, Month Eight" - but my good friend Amy Robb just posted a photo on her blog too cute to pass up. This is Beatrice with her friend Miller while Amy and Evan were very kindly babysitting for us the other night.

Congratulations Stephanie and Paul!

Last Saturday Stephanie and Paul got married in one of the loveliest weddings I've been to - every element was totally personal and unique. Sadly I didn't have my camera but you can catch a few pictures on Summer's blog - with many more to follow.

Stephanie's bridal shower

On Wednesday night, Summer St. Pierre, Amy Robb, Amy Turner, and I hosted a bridal shower for Stephanie before her wedding this Saturday. We looked at photos of Stephanie from infancy until the present day, learned a little about her fiance Paul in a trivia game, and had a wonderful time celebrating Stephanie's amazing, adventurous pre-married life and looking forward to all the exciting times ahead for them both. I can't believe I've known Stephanie now for more than twenty years, ever since I spied her playing wagon train on the monkey bars in fifth grade.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Beatrice with her cousins Louis and Rosemary in Griffith Park

This year's Christmas card photo

Merry (belated) Christmas! and a Happy New Year!

Early in December I took Beatrice to see (a wonderfully authentic-looking) Santa at the Americana shopping mall in Glendale. We waited in line for 45 minutes surrounded by loud music, blinking lights, and shrieking children but Beatrice had a great time throughout, she was smiling the entire time, even when I made her sit alone on the lap of an outlandishly costumed stranger.

Christmas attire in Southern California

Then we drove to Dallas with the dogs, stopping on the way to visit Michael, Laura, and Boston in Santa Fe.

We spent the holidays with Dev's whole family: Mamo, Naresh, Suzan, Mina, James, Julie, Maureen, Rosemary, and Louis, along with me, Dev, and Beatrice, plus the two dogs and Maureen's rabbit Fifi.

And we even got snow for Christmas!

Louis had his Christmas balloon tied to his wrappings

Beatrice plays with her drum and xylophone from Aunt Mina

Beatrice opens her first Christmas gift from her mom and dad, the "bob and wobble lion"

The lion is a hit.

Playing the worst board game of all time.

Beatrice with her Christmas balloon.

James makes an excellent pie.

See the rest of our Christmas photos on Flickr and Facebook.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We spent this year at Sam and Lilli's house celebrating our ninth annual Thanksgiving party, which this year featured the triumphant return of Adult Fry and the unholy creation of a chidurkey (an inverted turducken). It also featured MSG waffles, which might just be the worst thing I've ever eaten. Twice.

This year was particularly exciting, though, because it was Baby's First Thanksgiving. For years to come, she'll think Thanksgiving is like this for everyone. I can't wait until her kindergarten teacher asks the class to draw a picture of what their family does to celebrate Thanksgiving and Beatrice draws a picture of a bearded lunatic deep-frying a road sign.

That's the best thing about babies: they have no context.

1500 servings of MSG.

A meeting is called.

This should never happen.

This man is NSF certified.

It's not important what this is.

Goodbye Joanne!

Yesterday ended a great week with Joanne visiting us in L.A. As usual, we packed a lot into her stay, including the Long Beach Aquarium, the Getty Villa, LACMA, the tar pits, thrift store shopping, and veggie Chinese in the San Gabriel Valley.