Last post of 2014: Froyo and Star Wars

Here we are at the end of another year.  Lucy is very excited to stay up until midnight.  In previous years, she believed she had stayed up until midnight, but it was usually only 9 or 10 pm.  This year, I think she really is too smart for that, so we are trying to use logic with her regarding sleepiness, and the general not so awesomeness of being up at midnight.  Not sure it's going to work.

We had a lovely Christmas here, with Christmas Eve at the Szczesiul house, and then Christmas Day dinner at the Kenny-Morabito house.  Good times.  Lucy was pretty excited about her "drone" (we got her a quad-copter), and about her Zhu-Zhu pet (yes, the wildly popular toy of the year 2009).

We were able to get out for a nice hike on the day after Christmas, which was surprisingly warm.  We did another the following day.  That day, however, is now known in our household as "The Worst Day Ever."  It is not really all that bad, but here is what happened:

I took Lucy with me on some (boring) errands.  As a surprise treat, because she was really being a trooper about doing boring errands, I said, "hey! Let's go to this Orange Leaf and get some frozen yogurt!"  (Note, while I have no interest in frozen yogurt, Lucy loves these places where you pick your flavors and then pile on the candies and toppings.)  So we pull up, hop out of the car, and only then read the sad, sad sign: Closed.  And not just for the day -- closed forever.  There were literally still "Grand Opening" signs in the windows!  In fact, the google claims the place is still open, as does Orange Leaf's own website, so this is a pretty recent closure.

Lucy kept her chin up, and I promised that we'd just go down the road -- after all, there are tons of frozen yogurt places in town.

Next, we drove to the Frozurt in Lowell (in the Sunrise Plaza where our Market Basket is): CLOSED and all signs taken down (not sure when this happened.  Frozurt's website still has it as open.

Next, we walked (because it was walking distance away) to the Berryrich Frozen Yogurt: CLOSED with a sad sign saying they could no longer keep the business open.  The google also still claims the place is open, but that's clearly not the case.

Next, we drove to Sweet Kiwi Frozen Yogurt in Chelmsford (where we also took a hike, so it wasn't a totally wasted trip): CLOSED and all the fixtures were removed.  There were a couple of teenaged girls standing there, too, saying "but we were just here a little while ago!"  Sweet Kiwi's website still says they are open.

FOUR frozen yogurt places all closed.  Apparently, the bottom has fallen out of the frozen yogurt business, at least around here.  I should note that we actually tried one more place -- the ice cream stand at Great Brook Farm State Park -- and it too was closed, but only for the season (which we totally expected).  The rest of these places all seem to be closed forever.

So it was a pretty rough day for a kid to go through FIVE different frozen treat opportunities and have them all fail.  Finally, we called the number for the Orange Leaf in Chelmsford, and they were indeed open, so she did after all that get her froyo.  We were the only customers in the store.  I am guessing 2015 is not going to be the year of the Froyo.

We're staying close to home tonight for New Year's Eve.  By which I mean, we are staying at home.  We'll be watching Empire Strikes Back with Lucy.  Yup.  We're pretty excited.  On the day after Christmas, we watched Star Wars (episode IV) with her.  True fans (shoutout to my brother and Rube and Phuc if they are reading) will be glad to know that we showed her the ORIGINAL UNALTERED 1977 edition.  It's the "de-specialized edition," unadulterated by Lucas's later (ill-advised) editing and fancy graphics.  It was delightful.  Jake found it online.  We spent a lot of time (OK, Jake spent most of it, and then I consulted periodically) on which edition to use, and then, perhaps even more importantly, WHAT ORDER.  This is a biggie. 

One school of thought abides by the Episode Order, which, as anyone could figure out, means: I, II, III, IV, V, and VI.

The other (better) school of thought believes in Release Order, which would mean IV, V, VI, I, II, III.  We are of the "Release Order" school.

We absolutely felt we needed to watch IV (A New Hope) first.  But there are some problems, as you can find explained at very great, absurdly long, and incredibly geeky length at this guy's website: http://www.nomachetejuggling.com/2011/11/11/the-star-wars-saga-suggested-viewing-order/

At this point, we are planning to follow the sage, nay, jedi-like wisdom of that site, and go with ALMOST "Machete Order," which apparently is also called the "Ernest Rister sequence," (which Ernest Rister calls Narrative Structure Order), which involves watching IV, V, and then -- I know, this is crazy -- I, II, III, VI.  Note that "Machete Order" -- which removes Episode I ENTIRELY -- is still on the table.  We have to make a serious decision.  Perhaps the most serious parenting decision of our lives.  Assuming we watch V (Empire Strikes Back) tonight (which is the plan) the very first decision we have to make in 2015 is whether or not to watch Episode I with her or not.   I don't know if I can stomach it, but, at least one advantage of almost-Machete order (or Machete order) is that it puts the carrot of Return of the Jedi at the very end.

At any rate, some viewing notes so far: Lucy was delighted with the movie and said afterwards that she didn't find it as scary as she thought it was going to be (we had to set a backup plan in case she found it too scary, and thankfully, she was OK with it).  My favorite comment of the night was "R2D2 is my kind of robot!"  So that was pretty great (yes, I know, droid, not robot).  She also wondered aloud why C3PO was so worried all the time.  On the fly, I explained that C3PO is a protocol droid, and as such, C3PO knows ALL THE RULES.  And when you actually know all the rules, and those rules are all the time ever-present in your mind, you are worried.  A lot.  My explanation pleased me and satisfied her.  Like Jedi am I.

Another great moment for me was when the Stormtroopers were looking for the droids on Mos Eisley (after the incident in the Cantina) and they walk up to the door where the droids are actually hiding, find that it is locked, and then they JUST MOVE ON TO THE NEXT DOOR.  Lucy yelled out loud, asking why they would move on from a locked door -- why wouldn't they break it down? Smart kid.

Also, at the very end of the movie, Luke and Han get these big medals during the procession/celebration in the final scene.  Chewbacca walks up with them, but does not get a medal -- WHY NOT?  Lucy found this very unfair (we did too).

It was fun to watch it with her, remembering watching it when we were (roughly) her age, and seeing what she noticed.

Looking forward to Empire tonight!

Happy New Year to all!

IV, V, I, II, III, VI

IV, V, I, II, III, VI

Christmas Eve!

Lucy is crazy excited about Santa.  We invited Ruth and Woody over just so she'd be distracted!

Here's  her letter to Santa:

Important notes: "zozo pet" means "zhu zhu pet," the toy craze of 2009.  Seriously.  So the good news is that Lucy is virtually unaware of current toy crazes.  More good news: it's not hard to find a zhu zhu pet relatively cheap these days.  Also note: Lucy believes in Santa!


And here's a little thing she did at school:

My favorite bit is the lower right, where she explains that she is going to buy a book ABOUT BEN FRANKLIN for her buddy Dylan.  Why this is specificity of subject matter?  Why this subject matter?  I do not know.  But wow.

Jake is baking and cocktail-crafting, I am wrapping and such.  Alice is at the Social Pup to get out her energy before tonight's party.

It's going to be a fun couple o' days.

For those of you who we will be seeing, here's what we're bringing for you to drink:

Yup, Nine Ladies Dancing.  It's amazingly yummy!  I'm sorry we can't mail it to the rest of you!!!

Merry Merry Merry Christmas!

Stockings hung (check)

Ok, so they're hung on the stairway, since we don't have a fireplace.  That's the best we could do.  I should mention that the stocking all the way on the right is the new edition -- for Alice.  And now I'm feeling bad that we never made one for Carter.  He never complained.  Anyway, Alice's stocking is a real heirloom keepsake, being made from the shiny silver-infused burlap from Abby's wedding shower last summer (here's a photo from the event, and one here includes the table covering in the background!) and is adorned with some lovely lace that's actually from my mother's wedding gown.  I am not kidding.  (Sorry, Mom!)

We're getting ready.  Toll house cookies in the oven and everything (at 8 am!).

Mrs. Claus delivered pajamas last night -- Lucy found them in her pajama drawer -- because today is Pajama Day at school. Lucy also has a holiday party at her school today, so we all know there is a very educational day going on today.

Update: Here's Lucy and Ruth at the party:

 Yes, Lucy looks a bit scary, and Ruth looks a bit scared.  You have no idea how much sugar they have just injested.

And here's the whole class:

Apparently, it was a great day.

I wonder what else is in store.....

MAKING CHRISTMAS!

Some reader may know that my title refers to the maniacal song, "Making Christmas," from The Nightmare Before Christmas. I like to sing it, loudly and out of tune, when I am crazily trying to both prepare for Christmas and finish off a semester.  Good times.

I finally submitted grades today, so that part of the job is over (there are so many other, much less pleasant parts to come!).  So now we're full-throttle on MAKING CHRISTMAS!

We went to the Lowell Humane Society to get Alice's picture taken with Santa:

She was kinda freaked out by Santa, which is why she's on the floor and *not* in his lap.

This experience led us to the knowledge that Lucy still very much believes in Santa.  Out of the blue, she asked "What are we going to do with Alice on Christmas?" We weren't sure what she was talking about, but after a few more questions, she revealed that she was concerned that Alice would bark at Santa when he arrived (middle of the night, as is his fashion) and scare him off.  We have solved this with a promise that Alice will sleep in our room on Christmas Eve so that she does not spook Santa.

Lucy's school has been buzzing with activity, including a visit, this week from the Lowell Spinners Holiday Caravan.  We got a lot of details from Lucy (she got autographs!), but we also read about it on Lucy's school's blog!  Sounds like it was pretty exciting.  And this just in, there is apparently video of it that was on the news!

Our tree is up:

It's much smaller than our usual tree.  We were worried about a certain four-legged-member of the family having tree issues.  Mostly, I was worried that she'd wag that lovely long tail of hers and take out swaths of ornaments.  So the tree is perched on the table, and Alice has taken little interest in it.  Success!

In other local news, we went to the Open House and Artbotics event at the New England Robotics Validation and Experimentation Center (NERVE) here in Lowell.  Lucy got to fly a quad copter and also be chased by the same.  We played with lots of robots and it was awesome!  I for one welcome our new robot overlords  (so long as they're validated at NERVE!).

Today we went to an event at the Spinners Park

There were very long lines for pictures with Elsa and pictures with Santa, so we just went to the unbelievable short line: FOR PUPPIES!!!

 We tried to put this one inside our coats and walk out, but they wouldn't let us.  The puppies were from Great Dog New England, another great local rescue organization.

More soon, we hope!  But for now, back to MAKING CHRISTMAS!