Hey! You call that snow? We'll show ya snow. Had an icicle hanging down from the second floor that shook the house when it fell. I haven't figured out posting photos or having my camera powered up for the festivities so no Sheboygan photos from us- maybe Susan/ mom/ dad will post?At least Scout and her fashionable ruff?

I kept thesecouple of weeks pretty clear so I'm almost caught up from the unplanned down week. We had awonderful time on Christmas day. Fabulous food, the completed kitchen with beautiful new counters, totally funky telephone and a heated commode seat! The kids are all so fun to be around ( CAL is suddenly tall with long ringlets, Declan, Cooper and Alex have assorted facial hair, the young ladies are young ladies and Finn is going into archetechture, has already re created the Empire StateBuilding) And the music! The guys go downstairs and the house rocks. We all should be working on identifying Buckethead. Ask Cooper. Great gifts, amny of us will be enjoying Three Cups of Tea. Matt was my Santa and the oak leaf mirror is lovely. Finn will be investigating crime scenes and we are very glad that the great tradition of reading, aloud and in bed or otherwise, continues thru the family.

Mark has confirmed that Neil Gaiman (Sandman, Coraline, Stardust, Mirrormask) really does live in Wisconsin and has chatted with him. We came home to a local news story that Baraboo is in the running for some location shots for an upcoming Johnny Dep movie- yes girls, he would really be here, at the bank and Courthouse, places previously glimpsed in the masterpiece I Love Trouble. Big hit then was that I kept watching Lyle Lovett watch his then wife working. Mr. Nolte and Ms. Roberts just kept walking down the same sidewalk segment, but Mr. Lovett hung out in the bars.

Johnny DEpp tho! Something like "Public Enemy"? Mark? Gangsters inthe '30s/'40s? Bank robbery theme.Late news has much more detail! Woooooo- John Dillinger! DeNiro is exec producer? Universal Pictures. Yup. I could find reasons to hang out and watch Mr. Depp. Yes girls, you can come up and camp out in the living room so that you can hang out and watch filmimg too.

Mom: Sweeny Todd, Edward Scissorhands, the weird updated Willie Wonka, Finding Neverland, Pirates of the Caribbean and posters in Domi's room. Definitely "A" List. And who does the news guy interview? "I don't keep up with modern film" Yup, we all live under rocks in small towns. Lady clearly had no clue who the guy was talking about. I was on the Square, cudda talked to me, cudda given Mark a plug. Hmm, lady in suit with briefcase, upscale older shopper. Lets go with the dulllard. Wouldn't have been any fun for the Madison viewers if he interviewwd somebody who could run down the guys body of work would it now/ Mark help me out tho- he is in a (Robert Rodriguez?) scary thing as a detective with his eyes destryed/ ? Title? Once upon a time in Mexico?

No court stuff tomorrow so I'm staying up late and playing on the blog. So good to see everyone, listen to the kids who are all blossoming so beautifully and just generaly th ank you all for being so pleasantly and creatively abnormal people. Nice to kick back and spend time with happy , interesting folks.

Or we could have been mauled by a tiger or hunting down the freed cougars (2, at the Manitowoc Zoo). Creepy- now the thought is that the victims may have taunted the tiger- the tiger would be smart enuf to identify specific people? I may never go to another zoo. Now i really am babbling.

Nite Nite.





Watching major snow in Denver, sad news about Ms. BHutto,

Thanks, Santas!

We wanted to check in and say a big "Thank You!" to our Santas!

Freya's Santa was Stephen, and he got her some wonderful new books (thank you--seriously--thank you) by Todd Parr and then this really neat floor puzzle. It is a farm scene, and the pieces are all about the size of Freya's head. We've put it together in the kitchen, in the living room, the bedroom, etc. She's nuts about it. Great choices!

Matt's Santa was David Sorensen, who got him a very cool wall clock. It is made from that fused glass--is it called "dichromatic" or something like that? Anyway, it has swirls of color against a dark background and neat squiggly-looking hands. We've hung it over the pantry door in our kitchen where it goes great with our colorful wall.

Susan O'C-Long was my Santa, and she got me a gift certificate to a local massage place. I am so appreciative of this, especially since I am in the market for a new massage person and there are a number of massage therapists there to choose from. I hope to get in shortly after the new year and enjoy it!

Thank you very much to all--we missed you yesterday and enjoyed getting to talk to everyone. Much love,

Casey, Matt & Freya

Happy Holidays!

We don't have anything as cute as little Freya watching snow. You could barely see her under all those layers! We went from 47 rainy degrees in the middle of the night to 18 degrees when we got up. Our sump pumps were running, sprung a leak in the tube and made a small flood in the basement. After spending the day on Saturday moving office furniture, we weren't too happy with one more mess, but it cleaned up easily. We had more snow than we expected today, lots of wind and blizzard like conditions at times, and ice where the inches of snow and rain had been yesterday, so no furniture moving occurred. Instead we enjoyed a visit with Magda, Declan and Kevin in Big Bend. Amazingly, we haven't seen Mom and Dad since they got back, so we looked at their pictures. Colin and Bridget were working in the ski shop at Alpine, and came home about 3. Colin is so thrilled not to have to study that he has been glued to his video game, Halo for alot of the past 24 hours. I was doing very well with my Xmas cards until the beginning of last week and now I can't remember who I sent them them to besides the ones who sent them to us. I knew I should keep a list, but I re-focussed on getting my work Xmas stuff organized and lost track. Some people will be hearing from us around New Years or later.

Bridget got her official confirmation letter that she is an Evans Scholar on Saturday. They wasted no time, which is great. She probably will just accept it and not pursue any of the other opportunities. I think that Grinnell and Whitewater really intrigued her, but the desire was always to go to Madison.

I had a great phone visit with Michele on Saturday before their family Xmas dinner. David had received his package from Jay and is trying to figure out what it is. Casey has a pretty good idea of what hers is, unfortunately, but it was hard to disguise it. Well, I am going to join Bridget in watching a movie. Looking forward to seeing everyone on Tuesday! Love, Susan

Holiday Weekend

Happy almost Christmas, everyone! We got a little snow here in Boise last night, and the weatherman (locally known as "The Mustache") says we've got about an 80% chance for a white Christmas. Yay!

Freya helped Matt shovel some snow this morning. Unfortunately, our camera ran out of memory before we could get very far into a video, but here's what it looked like for about 35 seconds of our morning:



Also unfortunately, Little Miss has a case of pinkeye and seems to be fighting a cold. So I'm not sure that we'll have a very exciting rest of our day, but we'll try to help her get better before Tuesday. We'll be heading over to my brother John's house to get together with my side of the family and enjoy a big dinner together. We'll be thinking of all of you and wishing we were all together again.

Love,
Casey, Matt & Freya

Almost ready, now, for Christmas on 12/21/07

Hi to everyone!!

Hope this will be timely enough for all of you to be able to read before Christmas!

Our week began with 2 very nice experiences. On Monday evening, we joined Mark to enjoy Capril playing her cello in the Ft. Atkinson Schools' 5th grade

orchestra and the following evening Capri's "Scrooge"

was resounding success! She got a great indication of audience appreciation. It was a dapper, top hatted success all around!!

Glad to have had a short visit with Domino after Capri's performance and it is evident that she is even more excited about her Vassar life than when we saw her in

September.

Thanks to Mark for sharing his "picketing' experience.

Liked the sign messages!!

Congratulations to Bridget's Evan's Scholarship success. Presume this means that she and Colin must have broken par! Probably a family record.

Everyone has to be grateful that Maura's determination to do her duty on a bad driving day did not result in significant injury. Know it means a set back, but pleased to learn that so much concern and

interest was generated in the Baraboo community. All of us benefitted from her blog entry which she had time to compose while recuperating. The photo provided a vivid "MODIFIER" to her remarks.

Really appreciated Freya's Jingle Bell dance! It is great to watch as it happened, after it comes jerkily along thru our dial up! Think we heard her say "Do it again, Daddy" !! With all the thoughtful gift hints for this whirling girl, perhaps she will soon be ready for the

Encylopedia Brittanica. Way to go Freya.

Thanks for the Arvada Thanksgiving group photo. Know we'll have more first hand reports on those goings on from Lyn, Kevin, Magdalena and Declan in the coming days.

HAVING TROUBLE TODAY KEEPING THE DESIRED FONT AND SIZE. STOPPING AND STARTING AGAIN AFTER GOING TO "DRAFT' IS A PUZZLE.

SPOKE BRIEFLY TO DOMINO ABOUT THE HER FENCING. LEARNED THAT SHE HAD NOT BROUGHT ANY 'WEAPONS' WITH HER THIS TRIP, BUT LEARNED THAT THEY HAVE SPECIAL PACKING CASES/BOXES FOR STORAGE AS BAGGAGE ON FLIGHTS.

SO, WE WON'T BE ABLE ASK HER FOR A SHADOW FENCING DEMONSTRATION.

WILL COMPLETE AND POST AFTER OBSERVING THAT THE O'CONNELL-LONG BACK PORCH PICTURE GIVES AND INDICATION THAT YOU SOMETIME CAN STOP AND GET TOGETHER. OUR COMMENDATIONS TO THE PHOTOGRAPHER. NOT ONE OF YOU LOOKS LIKE YOU HURRIED BACK AFTER SETTING A TIMER!

THANKS TO DAVID FOR THE MENU UPDATE. WE WILL TRY TO TALK TO HIM TONIGHT TO LET HIS KNOW WHAT WE WILL TRY TO BRING. WE'LL TRY TO PUT IT IN AN E-MAIL, TOO SO WE CAN HELP ELIMINATE DUPLICATIONS.

THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE. MORE BLOG SAVVY IS NEEDED HERE.

LOVE AND PRAYERS--------

GRANDMA JEANNE AND GRANDPA GENE

Backboards

Thank good- ness the back- board was just precau- tionary in your case! I love the detail that you only saw pants and shoes of the people who stopped to help... How long will you be on your back watching old SNL reruns?

Speaking of, I was in Chicago yesterday for the Writers Guild picketing in front of the Disney Store on Michigan Ave. and old SNL guy Tim Kazurinsky was in the picket line, leading a chant of "Four More Cents! Four More Cents!" When you're picketing with writers, there's a lot of pressure to come up with a clever sign. I think I did all right, but my favorite was one that simply said: "We Write. They Wrong." My goal was to win one heart and one mind for the day, but it was complicated by my friend Kevin Peterka's sign getting caught in the wind and bonking a passerby on the head... If I won a heart and mind, he lost one of each right there.

Anyway, in dressing for the day, I realized I actually do have a great new pair of long johns from last year that I plumb forgot about.... so I'm cancelling my request for long undies from my secret santa :)

Four More Cents!
Four More Cents!

Mark-will the writer's strike ever end? Watching ancient SNL stuff. Nowhere near as good as Freya rocking out (she was really making me dizzy), Scrooge, the mad fencer who is really a sabre dancer? and the long awaited Evans interview invite! All very good news. AND New Jersey ended the death penalty today.

Tim has kept everyone up to date. Thank you for all the good wishes. Tim's using the photo for his new wallpaper. I am still flashing thru it, don't need to see the photo much. For whomever has my name for Christmas, I 'd like a new car.

Ford Escape Hybrid, 4WD, seat warmer, sync system, tomtom or Garmin, moonroof, 6 CD player. Yikes, the last thing we needed with yet another state slowdown in payouts. Clients and co-workers have been wonderful and reset eveything. I really liked my Focus and Ford isn't making the station wagon model any more. Tim needs a project so he will look for a replacment vehicle.

Years of yoga turned out to be most useful-to the firemen's/EMT's dismay, I stood on my head and lifted myself out of the seatbelt on my own power as soon as they got the door openand the back board in place. The car is really crunched. Very reasuring tho to have so many people I know there digging me out and getting me to the hospital. Our alder lives just a door down and has made it a personal goal to have first class emergency response folks and equipment and it really showed. I was only a mile east of town on 33. Fire and ambo got there in minutes and two witnesses stopped immediately, called it in and talked to me til the EMTs arrived. I hope their names are in the accivdent report, so I can thank them, 'cause all I saw was trousers and feet.

FYI- its great to have a celll phone for emergencies, but you have to push the call button after punching in 911. If you don't push that button, nothing happens. And, FYI, its hard to read 9 , 1, and 1 when hanging upside down from one's seatbelt. I wear my phone on a lanyard around my neck- I would never have been able to get my purse and fish it out.

Spent lots of time thinking of Kevin and Mark while riding around on a backboard.

Mom, I forgot to tell you, you would be proud, I was wearing clean underwear. Which was cut off. Whomever has my name, that's okay, I'll get my own new underwear. Thank you folks for the wish list info.

Cool, the old SNL has Pavarotti doing Adeste Fideles. What lungs that man had. Nice way to end the day. 'Nite.

Scrooged!!!

Capri was all set to play Ebenezer S. today for her 5th grade play, but we were blind-sided by the weather...

No word yet if or when the play might be rescheduled, but at least I have a picture of how she looks in costume. Enjoy...

(You must imagine that she would not actually be grinning as Scrooge)

If Freya can do it....

...so can I.

I could use some nice new long johns. Seriously. And I'm with Freya on the 'No Dora' thing.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Grandma has asked us twice now to get her information about what Freya would like for Christmas. Sorry, Grandma. Hopefully this post will give "her person" some ideas.

Freya likes reading stories the best of all things. Recent favorites include "Stellaluna" and the Spot books by Eric Hill...though I think she's got most all of those now. We all really enjoy Todd Parr's books for the bright colors and nice message. "Otto Goes to Camp" is one she does not have, as well as "Do's and Don'ts" and "The Mommy Book."

Freya also loves music. She watches oodles of YouTube videos and likes Laurie Berkner and Justin Roberts, a couple of popular kids singers.

She wears 24 months clothes. Let's see...what else? Oh, we are trying like crazy to avoid licensed characters, so please, no Disney, no Dora, no Pooh stuff. She also enjoys doing puzzles and is now doing some with about 12 pieces. She loves to dance and is pretty good at pretending.

I hope this helps!

Christmas schedule??

Hi all,

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted here (or even looked in) but Freya's dizzying Christmas dancing was worth coming back for! (How did she keep from falling over at the end??)

I had an interesting trip this week. I went to LA on Sunday, then came back Tuesday through Detroit, but Northwest couldn't get us in to Mitchell Field because of the snow. They rerouted us to Grand Rapids, MI, where we almost collided on landing with another rerouted plane, then we got to stay at a lovely hotel in Grand Rapids for the night. The next morning they still wouldn't let us take off for Milwaukee, then they announced that they would be flying us back to Detroit to find us another plane back to Milwaukee! That's when I lost it. I called the work travel agent, who found me a car from Hertz, and I got up in the plane and said "I'm driving back to Milwaukee! If anyone wants to car pool, I'd be happy to share the ride!" Only one guy took me up on it--I had expected to be fighting people off with a stick! Anyway, we made it to Milwaukee in 4 hours, and planes still didn't seem to be landing at Mitchell Field!

I'm wondering how Christmas plans are shaping up? I'll have the kids the weekend of the 22nd and 23rd, although Nemo works on the 23rd. His shift is supposed to start at 1, but he can push it back to 4 or so, but that still kind of cooks the day for us. So, Saturday would be better for us... it all comes down to what the New Jersey folks are up for!

Next Tuesday Capri debuts as Scrooge in her school's production of A Christmas Carol! Can't wait!

Love to all,

Mark

Pre Goodbye Thanksgiving Weekend

It only took 11 days for me to do this.

En Garde. Ready? Fence!

I fenced in my first fencing tournament yesterday. I can’t say I was entirely excited by the prospect at first because not only did we have to leave Vassar at 4:45am, but we were fencing against some really incredibly hard schools: Princeton, Penn State (the National Champs), NYU, UNC, and Harvard (last year’s National Champs), and I had to be ready to sub in for any of the three weapons, foil, saber, or epee, but predominantly epee. I’ve fenced foil for about three months in a class setting, saber for about two months training to compete, and epee for three days. Eek.
For the majority of the tournament Danielle (the other female sub) and I just watched. We very much enjoyed watching people on other teams do odd/stupid things and came up with a list of “Very Important Fencing Questions,” almost none of which actually have anything to do with fencing and have a lot to do with the strange mannerisms/ridiculous arguments of other fencers.
While we were facing UNC, I think, Jacinthe, one of the starting epeeists got a metal splinter in her hand from her blade. She had to go to the trainer and I had to fence her last bout. I had already decided that my goals for the day were to have fun and to score one touch (you need five to win the bout) against one opponent. I thought that was fairly realistic. And honestly, that would have made me perfectly happy. In my first ever epee bout, however, I scored two touches! Yay!
Jacinthe came back after my bout and fenced again, so I went back to observing. But Emmy, another starting epeeist, had a concert to be in at 8pm back at Vassar, so she left at 3pm, meaning I had to fence six bouts, three against Harvard and three against Princeton.
I won two of my three bouts versus Harvard! I lost to the Swedish National Champ (I think that’s who Sophie said she was…), but I was fine with that, especially since I scored two touches on her, and one of the girls I beat has been fencing for at least seven years!!! Olé! My favorite conversation of the day took place right after my second bout (where I beat the girl who’s fenced for 7 years)/right before my third (where I lost to the Swedish Champ) with the man directing the bouts,
Director: How long have you been fencing?
Me: Well, I’ve been doing epee for three days…
Dir: Really?! So you normally fence foil? (foil is much more similar to epee than saber is)
Me: No, I’m usually a saber fencer.
Dir: Oh! Well how many years have you been fencing saber?
Me: Um, two months…
Dir: What?! Wow, so I guess you’re just naturally athletic!
It’s okay, you can laugh. I certainly did.
The epee squad ended up beating Harvard! Sophie won two of her bouts as well, and Jacinthe won one. It was so much fun!
Then we fenced Princeton, and I got decimated. I scored two touches each in two of my bouts, and none at all in the third. Ah well.
It was a really great day/experience! I can’t wait for more tournaments! But I almost think I want to switch from saber to epee, because I love that there’s no right-of-way, and I really enjoyed fencing with it. I think I’m going to stick with saber until I’ve fenced with it in a competition, and then decide which I really like better.
I’ll leave you with number seven on the “Very Important Fencing Questions” list:
7. Is there an easier way to go to the bathroom in all of your equipment?

Festive Idaho

It has been quite the festive day around our place. My dad came over for a while this morning and Freya put on an early Christmas show. We're expecting a call from the USO as soon as this video is seen by the right people--she'll be entertaining the troops in Finland by Christmas, I expect! I'll be like Divine/John Travolta's character in "Hairspray," holding out for all the best contract perks--like free girdles.



Once she'd woken from her nap, we went to CostCo and picked up our photo Christmas cards (thanks to Uncle Kevin for one of the pictures we used), and then headed to Lowe's to get our Christmas tree. It's a beauty and Freya seems to really like having it in the house.

We had a wonderful time in Colorado with the Aleksandrowicz-O'Connells and David & Michele. We were sitting down to dinner tonight and Matt remarked, "This time last week, we were all feasting at Buca di Bepa." We did lots of good shopping, hung out at home and enjoyed really nice family time, and everyone had a safe trip. Can't ask for more than that!

We're thinking of Grandma and Grandpa and hoping they are enjoying Provence. Sending lots of good thoughts to Bridget in the hopes that the pain from her wisdom teeth removal gets better soon.
Love to all!
Casey, Matt and Freya