Photoessay #1894 - James in the dining room

Let's go a bit lighter, not trying to put ourselves in the context of the Jewish Pale of Settlement. I didn't even know about it until the other day but one set of my grandparents participated in that huge emigration.

Last weekend, we went looking at those condos with Jsn and knew we would have to leave immediately to go to this birthday dinner for Dennis' aunt in Tacoma. When we got back, we saw James' big van sticking out of the driveway. James, our trusted contractors of many years had done a big project in the summer. Parts never got finished, plus we added back in the gas fireplace. We have a running joke that he's always working on our projects during Christmas week because nobody else wants work done at that time. He joked in the summer that he would miss Christmas week. Au contraire, I think he will be here Christmas week after all. He had said that he might come over this weekend to look at ways he might be able to run the gas to the proposed fireplace. And the moldings and doors in the hall, etc.

So I come upstairs and ask Naomi, "Where's James?" She replied "in the dining room." I go in there and I find James.

Or at least that bottom half of him.

It just looked so funny.

When he emerged, he declared that he would be able to run the gas line just fine.

Plans for Naomi's birthday are coming together. What kind of family planning did we use (oh, right, no family planning, none at all) to have two kids with birthdays in the last half of December. So far, we will go out to dinner with three of the four kids and two significant others at a new Italian place, I will make a lemon pie on Friday and maybe we'll look for an IPad case.

Plus we will have Melina on Saturday. We never quite finished her birthday celebration last month. We had promised her some cupcakes and something from The Burke Museum of Natural History gift shop. Instead, she talked Dennis in waiting by the football stadium for over two hours so she could see the UW band, cheerleaders and the football team. I gave her a UW hat which she really liked. I have a certificate to the University Bookstore and we'll get her a Husky sweatshirt for Christmas.