my new ipod.  it’s not pink.  but my sister has the pink one so it just wasn’t right.  one can’t have a monopoly.

and my new, ruffled cake stand.  all it needs is a pink, swiss dot cake to go on top.  that or a really trashy barbie/ballerina cake.  we’ll see what the little minion wants.

that’s right, guess whose birthday is next?

delicious british breakfast with fake bacon up the yin-yang.  (i celebrate in style.)  after church the whole family made lemon meringue pie with me.  which i think will become my birthday tradition.  my mother found me another extremely useful piece of fenton glassware, much to boy’s chagrin.  boy’s mother bought me a very sexy nano.  and boy’s father has promised to help inspire my husband to bead-board my dining room.  i call that a haul.  to top it off my true love took me to barbacoa for dinner.  a restaurant with such exciting things on the menu as “double cut pork chop with apples with hibachi cherry wood smoked quail and house made fig jam” – whatever that is, and i ordered french fries.  i can’t help it, i’m cheap.  as a further demonstration of his affections, boy make a token attempt at putting on my cupboard doors, after 4 years in the attic, and bought the bolts to attach my new bed frame, after three weeks on the floor.  now that’s how you melt my heart.  to another good year.  *m

they’re like little cinnamon roll elves.

highly trained professionals.

butta!

knife!

(my mother-in-law’s recipe.  what are the odds she would share with you?)

i was home for a week and helped my mother clean his room.  it became very clear that reuben was in need of a woman.   he needs a little dusting off.  …out there cold and alone, hiding under a rock, waiting for his very own honoria glossop to come and flush him out.  (i’m just trying to help point her in the general direction.)  besides, my brother is the coolest.  at least that’s what i thought while rooting through all of his stuff and organizing it in to little piles: guns, ammo, black powder, hats, archery, woodworking, leather-working, fishing, weight lifting, rock climbing, tree climbing, camping, hiking, biographies, records, knives, vintage clothes and ties, engineering, photography, calvin and hobbes, cycling, and yoga.  (if i wouldn’t have visited and tidied they all would have thought he was just a hoarder.  now they will think he is a man of diverse interests and many talents.  now that’s smooth.  thank me later.)

while there my mother threw a new year’s party in his man cave.  so i invited my friends, made bubble tea and sushi, hung christmas lights and pictures, and gave him tips for entertaining in the future.  he just looked at me.  fat chance sister.

the bubble tea prior to the ice.

monica objecting to ever drinking boogers through a straw.  do it anyways.

the sushis.

geoffrey upon discovering that the wasabi was not in fact guacamole.

idgi thinking that’s the funniest thing she’s seen all week.

every once in a while i get to try out the 11 foot table my father made me eight years ago.  which has yet to fit in any of my houses.  except my dream house, of course.

jehu thinking there’s just no place like grandma’s.

he’s exactly right.

gideon played ping pong for like four hours straight.  until his arm cramped up.

dad showing the wagners daddy boy’s front page pullout.  ”why yes, he is cute.”

visiting with friends, including my latin instructor from high school.

playing hacky sack.  (“look, i’m a ballerina!”)

jael doubling as a net, waiting for midnight.  gideon still playing ping pong.

stoking the fire.

i think only reuben and his friends actually made it to the new year without passing out of old age.  i heard them setting off fireworks outside my bedroom window and then laughing hysterically while trying to blow up the foreign exchange student and the dog.  no one told josue that you had to let go of the bottle rocket and no one told the dog they weren’t playing “fetch.”  happy 2012.

p.s.  reuben, if you mess up your room again i can make you a personal ad.  keep your underwear off the floor.  *m

we made a trip north after christmas so marc could help on a job my brother was doing.  we like to joke that boy made the cover of the newspaper because he’s so stinkin’ sexy and reuben likes to climb in unitard.  seriously.

that and boob skipped over to q-doba for lunch, barefoot, decidedly dirty, and then wondered why he got frisked by mall security.  my favorite was when jehu’s little cousin saw an elderly/bald/slightly homeless man while shopping and yelled, “it’s uncle reuben!”  what was even more uncanny was when two days later jehu himself spotted a quadriplegic in an electric wheelchair and mistook him for reuben on a moped.  let’s just say we have a lot of material to work with here and we do so quite often. i ♥ my little brother.

here is the christmas habbie.  with her christmas/birthday clothes, blankie, and shoes.  lub.

and the boys in the middle of their christmas rioting.

after which we jumped in the car and drove to deary for a week.  here is rahab meeting the much famed young alexander.

and then catching up with leif the lucky.  (the kid’s a social animal.)

then we jumped in the car and drove back to jerome.  and in two hours, jerome is driving back to us.  bring it.

“blessed are the people who know the festal shout,
who walk, o lord, in the light of thy countenance,
who exult in thy name all the day,
and extol thy righteousness.
for thou art the glory of their strength;
by thy favor our horn is exalted.
for our shield belongs to the lord,
our king to the holy one of israel.”  psalm 89:15-18

the ottos have enjoyed another good year tromping around after god.  no matter where we go, or what we do, it seems we can do it with a smile on our faces.  god is good.  every morning we wake up and pile together on the couch to read the bible.  when we sit there kicking and squirming in our jammies, pulling toes, snuggling fuzzy cheeks, smelling stinky breath, we’re practically neck deep in love.  and then god piles on more.  when he is for us, who can be against us?  the greatness of the gospel is that it transcends everything.  it meets us where we are and it makes magic.  what i have noticed this year is that we really don’t accomplish anything great.  we didn’t go on vacation, move, find a new job, buy a new house.  but we loved every second of being where we were.  home.  in an ordinary life, in an ordinary house, with ordinary stuff, grow some of the most extraordinary things.  and we can’t help but celebrate.

this has been the year of our christmas baby.  we cannot imagine life without her.  just today jehu observed a family going into kinkos, “look, they have kids!  two boys and one girl.”  after an audible sigh he said, “that’s just not enough.”  baby rabies is the total icing on the cake.  when she wakes from her nap all three kids burst into her room singing, “queen of brasil!  queen of brasil!  queen of brasil!”  (i’m not quite sure why.)  and she stands in her crib basking in the adulation.  she is most commonly seen being carried by any of the children, with one leg smashed into her ear as an extra arm and the other dangling helplessly below, usually at an alarming speed with a confused look on her face to unknown peril.  also known as fun.

jael is my young padawan learner.  she follows me everywhere insisting on helping, mostly only if it involves scissors, knives, the oven, saran wrap, anything messy, liquid, or potentially hazardous.  but if you tell her to do something dull, like put away clothes, she becomes decidedly less enthusiastic.  if she wants to do something on the other hand, no matter how many times you have told her not to, she usually finds a way to do it anyways.  where there is a will, there is a way, and jael was there way ahead of you.  just follow her swath of destruction.  she has yet to decide whether to use her powers for good, or for evil.  but the force is with her.

this is my little kitty.  my handsomest, sweetest, politest, most charming little man ever.  an absolute joy.  a dream.  (yeah, i still love his little sister, i just have to beat this one less.)  it’s been fun to watch him grow into himself.  if you ask him what he wants to be when he grows up he will say an artist and a graphics designer.  (because mommy needs someone who knows how to run photoshop for her.)  he loves coloring, doing his schoolwork, “quiet time,” and eating strange foods; like sushi, boba tea, anything with peppermint, or that has been soaked in brine until unrecognizable.  he is homeschooling through kindergarten this year and just taught himself how to read.  (that’s what bob books are for.)  now he is pulling books off the shelf and reading them with this dawning look of “oh, this is how you do it.”  all the while he remains pretty much inseparable from gideon.  the two kick around all day, jehu bringing up the rear.  until after dinner…when the wild kitty comes out.  he generally strips off his clothes, makes like tarzan, and kicks gideon’s patooty.  i call it even.

and here is my number one son.  the giant headed, pasty, moley, underwear bunched masterpiece i call my pride and joy.  i love this guy.  gideon is always thinking.  always imagining, always reading, always adventuring.  he’s super serious and principled and always wants to be and do what is right.  (and will be voting for ron paul in 2012.)  whenever his sins find him out he is mortified.  he is super lovey and sweet, until you introduce him to someone and then he eyes them up and down like they just got out of prison and goes and reads.  (it doesn’t matter what it is, if it’s in print and in a 5 foot radius, he will be staring at it helplessly.  in gideon’s world, books have force fields.)  the rest of the time he’s playing soccer.  usually with five or six imaginary friends, during some kind of epic battle, with a stick, no shirt, an imaginary missile launcher, and two chickens.  all while talking to himself non-stop.

as for me, i’m pretty much a party animal.  we love having people over.  if you look at me wrong i’ll be inviting you over to dinner.  the kids love it, even the husband enjoys it, the vintage punchbowl gets to make it down from the attic to say hi now and then, and mommy has an excuse to make (and eat) tiramisu.  when i am not hot after licentious living i can be found doing laundry, planning menu’s, telling people what to do, delivering spelling tests, and getting ideas.  i am always getting ideas.

i asked boy the other day why he put up with me, since i drive most people crazy.  he just looked at me and said, “well…i guess i’m not dead set on being bored.  …but then again, i don’t like being excited.”  yes, i’d better watch it.  he does give me the dirty harry now and again, but secretly, i think he likes me.  just not as much as he likes treestuff.  when he is not watching rigging videos on youtube or coveting pulleys, he can be found reading books about dirt, watching barcelona cream real madrid, or listening to lectures on architecture in ancient greece on his ipod, usually all while eating grape-nuts…with someone on his lap.

merry christmas 2011!

the ottos

marc, miranda, gideon, jehu, jael, & rahab

well we got aprons, we’re wearing them arent’ we?  right.

p.s.  if you miss me, i’m on facebook.  i can’t take a decent photo in this grim december lighting, so i throw them up on facebook with everyone else’s grainy cell phone photos and you can’t even tell the difference.  now that’s slacking.  see ya.

gideon always has his habbers.  when reading this morning he picked her up, gave her a book, and sat her next to him on the couch.  i think reading time in the morning is my favorite part of the day.  i love to walk by and see them sitting there in the sunshine.  …while i’m cleaning their filth off the kitchen floor from breakfast.

nothing like holiday violence.  notice the festive goliath.

mexican hot chocolate by the way.  made frothy like in the blender.  the best.

esther the hulk.

thank you grammy.  the kids love them already.

happy christmas.