photo of the week

Anomaly Jewelry

My friend JT's wife Karen designs the most unique jewelry. If I could only find that suitcase full of cash I keep dreaming of, I would be decked out in her stuff and each of my friends would have one of her Zodiac Kids necklaces. (Scorpio and Aquarius especially blow me away) And the fawn pendant....and the statues. See what I mean? She's ridiculouly talented. So for you folks with Christmas money to burn, why not get yourself some Anomaly Jewelry and make yourself the coolest kid on the block, in the bar, or in your class?

christmas 2008 made me laugh...a lot.

i came home last night to this surprise

i came home last night to this surprise, originally uploaded by Hollis Queen.

a while back, our friend jt used a photo of angus to help him pose a pet portrait. here is the link to a post on the blog
brownmomma.blogspot.com/2008/08/cisco-by-jt-yost.html
last night i came home to a wonderful surprise print of the portrait. i love it so much and am taking it to get framed this week. jt, you rule. go check out his work, folks. he's good people and he does really great things. www.jtyost.com
and also at theholyyost.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-chihuahua-portrait-c...

good times, good friends, good music

photo of the week

The Lackluster 2008 Santa Photo

2008 Santa Photo, originally uploaded by Hollis Queen.

Our boys really know how to show their excitement about the upcoming holiday, don't they? You'd never know that the boy on the right has been talking incessantly about Santa since July. Or that the baby on the left screams "Tanta! Tanta! Tanta!" every time he sees an image of the Big Guy's likeness. Looking alive, guys. Way to be. (Doesn't Angus look like a marionette puppet without a puppeteer to bring him to life?) Oh well. I think next year may be our year to shine.

stretching a dime

i am a bargain hunter. i comparison shop, thrift, use coupons...all that. and i can tell you that sometimes, paying full price to get the taste you deserve is the way to go. so i was skeptical when i saw the kroger store brand version of nutella. nutella, sweet sweet nutella...the preferred treat of my childhood. but honestly, kroger hits the nail on the head with their other generics, i must say. they have an organic chocolate soymilk that tastes better than silk. lactose free milk that tastes just like lactaid. really, they do a great job of not sacrificing taste for value. so i did it. i bought the fake nutella. and oh. my. god. it tastes JUST LIKE real nutella. for a dollar less. merry christmas to me. it really sucks that angus is allergic to nuts. he'd love this stuff.

photo of the week

i chose this one only because it shows the ferosity i will unleash with my new-to-me hand-me-down lenses.

hey boy

i love the blow. i heard paper television once and it became one of my all time favorite albums. i still listen to it regulary, two years after first buying it. highly recommended. go out and get it now. here is khaela maricich performing "hey boy" in london. i am sharing this clip mostly because she tells the most katie-fied story...so katie-like that it could be the one and only katie landon right there on stage. also, the song is cool. but really, the banter is what's great.

six random things

i was tagged by jessica to post six random things about myself. i did one of these last year, so i am finding it difficult to think of six other things. i am basically an open book. but i think these are things that most people don't know about me. unless your name is mary jo, tony, or morgan.

1. when i was little i used to bite my toenails.
2. when tailgated in traffic, i will deliberately drive slower just to piss you off.
3. i have many vivid and verifiable memories from before the age of two years old. most of them involve me being a pain in the ass to my poor dear mother somehow. and most are funny in some way.
4. when i was 8 and 9, i took dance and baton twirling lessons that i hated and would make myself get severely painful psychosomatic headaches to avoid having to go. it never worked and my mom still made me go until she was convinced enough that i really really hated it. now that i am a mom, i can see why. you don't want your kid to be a quitter, but you also don't want them miserable. she had to wait and see which it really was.
5. when i was 10 i helped put a flasher in jail. he was dumb enough to flash me while wearing his military uniform with his name and rank right there across his chest. people that stupid should be locked away. and people who prey on kids don't deserve to live. harsh? nope.
6. i was voted "wittiest girl" (actually, co-wittiest...my friend julie wight and i tied) in my senior class and had an incredibly unflattering photo recognizing that achievement in our yearbook.

so there it is. no deep dark secrets, but random nonetheless.
so here are the folks i am tagging: tracey, katie, danielle, and j.t.
play along if you like. although i know it is the holiday season, so no biggie if you don't.

happy birthday, sherrie!

val, marie, sherrie, originally uploaded by Hollis Queen.

we love you immeasurably.

three christmases as a family of four

2006

the james center/ omni hotel has great elevator doors, originally uploaded by Hollis Queen.

2007

Christmastime 2007, originally uploaded by Hollis Queen.

2008

my favorite one, originally uploaded by Hollis Queen.

oh well, maybe next year

For the past few years, we have attempted a Christmastime family portrait using the elevator doors at the James Center. So far we have managed to capture each of our kids wrigling free from the parental grip. Ahh, traditions. Here's this years series. Maybe next year we'll get one with all parties involved cooperating.

spidey vs. goblin, on a budget

CGI can suck it! noah doesn't need all that to enjoy a good hero vs. villain fight sequence.

imagination vacation

Recently, it has been becoming more and more obvious just how heavily Noodle has been blessed with a wildly creative imagination. I have been meaning to write about this for a few weeks now--- the way this child plays. Tony's mom said it is just like Tony played as a kid. He basically has two modes of play: Quiet Mode and Full Throttle. Here's a basic sketch of each.

When he is in Quiet Mode, he will sit and act out fantastical scenarios, mostly fight sequences, between the oddest pairings of toys. The other day Shrek was being mauled by one of the Lion King hyenas, but then Shrek made a comeback and fought the hyena off and somehow mightily tamed the beast through a thorough scolding, and then Shrek was able to ride the hyena like a pony. And yesterday I watched as be played out a battle royale between Spiderman & the Green Goblin (for the 208th time) with ghetto action figures.....the part of Spidey was played by the Spiderman Band-Aid box while the Goblin was played by the Spiderman movie's DVD insert. This one was a rerun. He's been carrying on with this non-stop since the boys watched Spiderman two Fridays back. The kid is so into Willem Defoe's Green Goblin, which is a truly great performance....but why do my children always root for the villains? Darth Vader, Green Goblin, Gaston from Beauty & the Beast. WTF? Anyway, don't worry, Santa has been notified of the need for some real action figures so the kid can put the tattered pieces of paper down.



And then there is Full Throttle Mode. This is when people end up hurt or in tears, something is broken, someone is in a timeout or occasionally all of the above. In Full Throttle Mode, Noah generally has two games he plays with himself. One is Hot Pursuit and the other is Narrow Escape. Hot Pursuit is when he is running at full speed from an imaginary villain (or more likely it's a good guy chasing Noah the Villain...hmmmm) while periodically dodging obstacles and shooting glances over his shoulder. Sometimes he thinks he has to sucker punch you while he runs past you as he acts out this scenario. He thinks you're stupid for scolding him, since you didn't get out of his way. And because his game is temporarily halted while he serves his time in the penalty box.

Hot Pursuit usually then melds into Narrow Escape, wherein he barely, just barely, escapes capture by either jumping from something he shouldn't be jumping from, sliding on his stomach under something not meant to have a child pinned beneath it, or by using another human as a crash-landing pad. And the sound effects! Oh they rule. Lots and lots of gasping and dramatic ugh! and oh! sounds. It's really quite cinematic. My favorite is Narrow Escape on Bike. This version always ends with a very noisy and spectacular bike crash that leaves him sprawled out under his bike and needing to pry himself free before crawling safely out of danger. Once during a heated Hot Pursuit/ Narrow Escape combo, Noah jumped off the kitchen chair and onto his bike seat like a cowboy jumps from the window of a saloon onto his horse's back. It looked so painful, but that little sucker just scooted away, gasping and panting and throwing glances over his shoulder at me.

And all I could think was, "Noodle, you are just naturally cool."