Nothing monumental is going on, so I'll just combine lots of small things into one wonderfully compact update.

Sicky McSickenheimer:
I got sick last Sunday and was out of commission for a few days.  I went for a ride on Thursday, but felt absolutely horrible and could barely pedal.  I cut the ride short and crawled home.  I layed low for a few more days, and went out for a ride yesterday (Sunday).  It was better, but still felt sickly.  Today was even better.  Slowly but surely, I'm recovering. 

The Banana Belt early season bike race series started this weekend, but I was in no condition to ride in it.  I don't think I'm going to make it to any of them this year at this rate.

House Plans:
Plans on our home expansion project are moving forward.  More on that later.

Food:
I've made a few recipes out of Farmer John's Cookbook.  Curried butternut squash soup on Friday, and acorn squash stuffed with kale and pears last night.  It's amazingly good stuff.  Farmer John farms on a community supported farm, and this book not only contains seasonal recipes, but interesting stories as well.  I like how the recipes are listed chronologically, so you just flip to the time of year you're at, and you find recipes for all the common CSA produce that's in season. 

Junior Digital Photography:
Mette got a digital camera for her birthday and has been taking gobs of pictures and photos.  When she gets together with her little buddy Violet, they chase the boys around and take pictures of them.  The boys are now accustomed to running away and holding something over their face, claiming they're being chased by the paparazzi. 

Teeth:
Mette has three more loose teeth.  Woo hoo!  The tooth fairy better go to the ATM this week.

Horse Whisperer:
Annelis is still doing horse riding lessons.  She fell off for the first time a month of so ago, but is back in the swing of things.  She was going over very small jumps last week.  I can't wait to see what happens this week!

We spend a couple days at Nedonna beach this weekend.  We were amazed with the amount of debris that's washed up on shore.  I guess it's never been this bad before.  I guess it's pretty messy, but it was a lot of fun, too.

 

There certainly was a lot of premium fort building material:

 

We had a good time walking around on all the logs:

Mette had her first loose tooth.  It was hanging by a thread, but she just would not pull it out, and she certainly wouldn't let us do it. 

Every day, that tooth got more and more wiggly.  Finally, on Saturday, she could blow out her mouth and the tooth would literally flap in the wind.  Now that's loose!  But would she pull it out?  No, she would not.

Practice.  I decided what she needed was practice.  So I got out some raisins and some pine nuts.  I stuck a pine nut (the tooth) into a raisin (the gum) and let her pull it out:

We practiced over and over.  It was so easy.  Surely now, she'd pull that tooth out, right?  Nope.

Defeated, I decided to take a quick shower.  During that 5-10 minutes, big sister bribed her to pull it out for one dollar, and it was a done deal.  Kids these days.

Regardless, the tooth is now out, and I can once again look at my daughter without getting the willies from seeing it flap in the wind.

I was walking with my 6 year old daughter today, singing silly songs and saying silly things.

She stopped, looked up at me and said:

Why aren't you like a normal man

I laughed loudly and told her that was never going to happen!

Mette crawled into our bed this morning and asked me why a forehead is called a forehead.  I tried my best to explain.

I then asked her why a finger was called a finger. 

Well, maybe they put a bunch of random words into a jar and mixed it up like the barrel of surprise and then picked out the word finger.

I followed up with "who's they?"

Ummm...Oh, George Washington!  Or maybe Orockobamma?

The cat started tearing apart the bathroom at this point, so she went to investigate that instead.

Mette (6) just sang a festive holiday song, to the tune of Joy to the World

Joy to the world
the phantom's dead
we barbequed his head!

And don't forget the body
We flushed it down the potty

And round and round it goes
And round and round it goes

And round and round and round it goes

Annelis helped her work out that last part.  She claims to have just made it up, but I'm not so sure I believe that.

We joined the Pacific Whale Foundation (based in Walluku, Hawaii) this summer.  Their mission:

To promote appreciation, understanding and protection of whales, dolphins, coral reefs and our planet's oceans.

They're about to publish an educational book entitled Humpbacks of Hawaii: The Long Journey Back.  They sent out a request for photos to their members this summer, and they picked one of ours to be in the book. 

The photo (at right) is from a kayak whale watching trip we went on.  On that trip, we saw a pod of male humpbacks getting a little rowdy, so we paddled out towards them.  We kept a safe distance and enjoyed the show. 

The whales soon made a sudden change in direction.  Bobbing up and down, blowing water spouts as they went, they came straight towards us.  Just before the reached us, they all went under water and went silent.  We looked around, and realized they were swimming right underneath us.  I could see their white front fins, each one larger than our little kayak.  It was amazing.

Donna snapped a few photos, and this is the one we sent for consideration in the book.  That's Mette in the front of the kayak.  She's getting a lot of press...perhaps we should get her in commercials. 

In the latest edition of Velonews, there's a photo just inside, a double page shot of the SSCXWC.

On the left of the picture, there is a chain link fence. Behind the fence is a little girl. That little girl is METTE.

Hopefully the first of many appearances in this publication.

Oddly enough, I have no cyclocross race report.  Weird.  I barely rode my bike, I think once since Friday.  Uh oh.

So we spent Tday with Donna's family.  23 people under one festive roof.  It was pretty good.

Friday, we went and got our Christmas tree with the Hallquists.  This is getting to be a long standing tradition, and we enjoy it very much. 

After plopping the tree in a bucket of water, we piled into the car and drove to the Oregon coast for a weekend on the beach, at my parent's place.  The weather was fairly warm and damp, and the ocean waves were huge.  I had a nice ride up Highway 101, and couldn't help but notice the hundreds of SUVs flying UO or OSU window flags for the Civil War football game.  OSU got trounced, damn it.

I put a few pictures up here.

How'd you spend your Thanksgiving weekend?  Hope it was nice.