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.

Happy Halloween!

We've had a busy month of Halloween-related activities, starting with our annual Block family trip to the apple farms near Placerville in northern California.


We also went to a pumpkin festival in Pasadena with Mina, James, and Rosemary,


and to see the fall foliage at Descanso gardens.

Then Dev and I helped out with the Mom's Club children's Halloween party on October 24.

The following day we had some friends and family over to have an all-pumpkin dinner and carve jack o' lanterns.

Then at last it was Halloween itself - we had a big open house with friends from all over the city while also handing out candy to the many trick or treaters in our neighborhood. More than thirty people dropped by plus a total of seven babies.

Rosemary in costume as an Indian princess,

and I made Louis an ultrasound costume.

And of course, I also made Beatrice's costume, a stack of pancakes.

Shackleton was a middle manager.

Cromwell was an old-timey motorist.

Dev was a ghost (again).

And I was Medusa.
See more of our fall and Halloween photos on Flickr and Facebook, including some great photos of our party guests and their costumes.