This was taken from my 24th floor office during a very heavy snowstorm today. You have to look closely, but you can see the snow between my building and the adjacent building falling up. At times during the day it was also moving in sideways and round-and-round fashion.

Last night we had some fun taking some pictures of various things around the house. Here are a few samples:

Colored text from a book, 100x

Thumbprint, 100x

Carpet, 100x

My shirt, 200x

The back of our couch cushion, 100x

Glitter on a New Year's Eve hat, 100x

Curly ribbon, 100x

Green nylon fabric, 100x

Wood from my desk, 200x

Pink ink on a post-it note, 400x

Band-aid, 100x

Laptop screen, 100x

Laptop screen, 400x

Also left to complete is the floor tiles on the deck and the paint on the skirt around the deck, but both of these have to wait for warmer weather.

When completed, it will look something like this:

Sunday morning we went to Menards and Lowes to buy supplies. That afternoon and evening I completed the deck framing.

Crowbar at the ready to destroy the junky old builder steps and railing

Stairs removed, and the garage floor scrubbed clean. (oops, got a little water on the drywall)

Deck framing completed.

This evening I finished the subfloor, sheathing and stairs:

Subfloor and sheathing installed

Stairs built and installed.

Thanks to the grandparents (both sets) and my sister Chris and her family for helping to fund this project.

Christmas Eve:

This year Katra and I wrapped our gifts for each other using Furoshiki, or the Japanese art of cloth gift wrapping. The fabric can be used over and over, and allows you to wrap in some pretty elaborate styles.

A beautiful example of Katra's wrapping

Another one Katra wrapped. For this one she sewed two sheets of fabric together back to back.

A small box I wrapped for Katra

Kyle woke up (at about 6:30 am) to find his stocking laying next to him, stuffed full of toys.

The first sighting of the huge pile of presents under the tree

Ian checking out his stocking

Dr. Kyle makes a house call

hmmmm...let me see....You need a band-aid.

Kyle flies the Bat-Copter

Ian! To the Bat-Cave!!

When I asked Katra to get a spoon for me, she was surprised to find this new silverware drawer divider I made for her. The wood is maple (to match the drawer box) with cherry inlay (to match our cabinet doors). The bottom is black velvet over foam board. If you look closely, you can see that the divider pieces (with the inlay) are not straight on the top – I made them with a gentle curve down towards the front of the drawer.

Close-up of the drawer divider.

Now, whenever Katra opens the silverware drawer, I hear a happy little giggle.

While we were waiting for the parade to start, Ian had some fun with some other kids his age:

Only 2 years old, and already chasing cheerleaders around...

The afternoon parade included all grades, so it went on for quite a while. Kyle proudly marched along in the beautiful Harry Potter robes mommy had made for him.

Kyle (Harry Potter) with his aide

On Saturday (Halloween), we went over to the high school, where they had games, prizes and bounce houses for the kids to play in. Later in the afternoon, we went out for trick-or-treating, and came back with a ginormous bag of candy.

Wand at the ready, in case any monsters show up

LUMOS!

Ka-CHOW!!

Look out! Behind you!

This afternoon when Katra picked up Kyle from school, his aide told her there was a surprise for us in his backpack. This is what she found:

Kyle is going to be Harry Potter. (for Halloween)

The note from his teacher reads, “He was not prompted. He came up w/ this sentence on his own. Kyle typed this on his own. Barb sounded out the words to him and he spelled them.” And there’s another note next to “Pottr” saying, “he knew this word needed two t’s.”

We were thrilled by this, to say the least. Seemingly out of the blue, Kyle starts spelling words from a sentence he made up himself. It may not seem like much, especially considering the spelling, but this is how they start teaching writing and spelling in our school district. The focus is on identifying the sounds that make up words and the letters associated with those sounds, and not so much on spelling every word correctly. They learn spelling for a group of words each month, and are expected to spell those words correctly, but for other words they are only expected to find an approximation.

Kyle was able to break up those words, identify the letters that made the sounds, and type them all into his computer. What makes this so amazing to us is that we have never seen Kyle do anything like this before. He has known all of his letters since he was 3 years old, but has never really known how to spell anything other than his name and a few other words.

Kyle has done a lot of things to amaze us and make us proud, but this one has to be at the top of my list. Way to go, Kyle!