2024, December 9-15

We are coming into the home stretch of the year. Christmastime is in full swing at home and at work. 

At Starbucks, this means festive samples season. Here is Hallie's coworker Nevaeh spreading holiday cheer!

We're going to have Kai all the way through and past Christmas. Woot! 

Two of Hallie's insulated cups got stuck together. The boys tried all sorts of approaches to get the cups apart, to no avail. 

Mike finally came up with a way to separate the cups, and it worked! Unfortunately, when the cups separated, the inner one went flying and tumbled to the floor. Cue sad trumpet. 

Landon came to visit Hallie at work. He had samples. 

Eliza and Mom went over to Dutch Bros for one of their promotions and got keychains. 

The girls had done this activity prior to Eliza going to TKD and leveling up to her blue-brown belt. 

As there are issues with getting belts, Eliza is borrowing the belt of one of her instructors until her own belt comes in. 

Jocie invited Landon to see her in concert at the high school, so he and Hallie attended. L's friend Sonny (along with several others we don't know by name) played as well. 

In his after-teaching/AI work/job search time, Mike has taken advantage of the new MacBook to do some drawing (tracing?) this week. He digitized the little bee mascot he drew over the summer, 

used generative AI to create an image of his arms, 

and created digital versions of various paper snowflakes old and new.

The original of this image is some 25 years old, 

while the original of this one was cut early this year.

We had snow at the school Mike taught at this Friday. During recess, he showed some students how to cut their own paper snowflakes. 

Anyway, it's been interesting to get back to using tools that he would like being able to apply to some other context or bring in some needed revenue. That said, sometimes hobbies have value on their own. 

Some of the snowflake work involves tracing existing images. The below is based on a real snowflake Wilson Bentley photographed back over a century ago. Clearly Mother Nature has a lock on intricate ice work and we humans are merely poor imitators.  

He also did some updated logo work. 

On Friday, Eliza went riding at BUH. This is how the snow looked over there. It was all very beautiful, but most of the morning's snow had melted by the end of the day. 

Eliza's horse was a little feisty, but Eliza kept her cool and impressed her coach with her poise under stress. 

Hallie has discovered a better version of one of the holiday-themed drinks she makes: add Sprite!

Mike and Eliza did some Christmas shopping while Mom was at work on Saturday, during which time he also got his shingles vaccine. Better that than the illness itself, eh? 

Eliza must have had a long night, because she spent a lot of time Sunday asleep. With cold weather's return, we're bundling up and getting cozy, all in the spirit of befriending winter. Even so, both kids dress as if it's still summertime. Anti-freeze for blood, the both of them, and their So Cal parents freeze just looking at them.