Blogkeeping -- Fall 2014

Blogkeeping time!  These 100 were watched from August (bottom) to December 2014 (top).  Coming to a close on the Disney movie-thon, and so much Amazing Race!

The Amazing Race (Season 13) **** / Creature Comforts: Merry Christmas Everybody [r] ***** / Mickey's Christmas Carol [r] **** 1/2 / Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas **** / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) * 1/2 / The Amazing Race (Season 12) *** 1/2 / The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies ** 1/2 / Wreck-It Ralph [r] *** 1/2 / The Amazing Race (Season 25) *** / The Amazing Race (Season 11) *** / Survivor: Blood vs. Water 2 - San Juan del Sur (Season 29) *** 1/2 / Winnie the Pooh [r] *** 1/2 / Belle *** 1/2 / The Hundred-Foot Journey **** / How To Train Your Dragon 2 ** 1/2 / Tangled [r] **** 1/2 / The Amazing Race (Season 10) **** / Peter Pan Live ** / The Princess and the Frog [r] ***** / Maleficent [r] *** / Toy Story That Time Forgot *** 1/2 / The Spoils of Babylon [r] **** / The Giver **** / Kristin Chenoweth: Coming Home *** 1/2 / The Pirate Fairy *** / Interstellar ** 1/2 / Hercules (2014) * 1/2 / Heart & Souls [r] ***** / Big Hero 6 *** 1/2 / The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 *** 1/2 / The Hunger Games: Catching Fire [r] ***** / The Hunger Games [r] **** 1/2 / Yellow Submarine [r] ** 1/2 / Bolt [r] *** 1/2 / David Copperfield (1999) **** / Meet the Robinsons [r] *** 1/2 / Help! *** / Chicken Little [r] ** / Bleak House [r] ***** / A Hard Day's Night *** 1/2 / Transcendence ** 1/2 / Home On the Range *** 1/2 / Edge of Tomorrow *** 1/2 / Inglorious Basterds *** / Brother Bear 2 [r] *** / Brother Bear [r] *** 1/2 / Death Comes To Pemberley *** 1/2 / Treasure Planet [r] **** / Run Fatboy Run [r] **** / Hotel Transylvania ** 1/2 / Project Runway (Season 13) *** 1/2 / Leroy & Stitch ** 1/2 / Stitch! The Movie ** 1/2 / Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch *** / Lilo & Stitch [r] *** 1/2 / Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter * 1/2 / Atlantis: Milo's Return [r] ** 1/2 / Atlantis: The Lost Empire [r] **** / Kronk's New Groove *** / The Fault In Our Stars **** / The Emperor's New Groove [r] ***** / The Spoils of Babylon (Season 1) **** / Dinosaur [r] *** 1/2 / Fantasia/2000 [r] **** 1/2 / Tarzan II *** 1/2 / Tarzan & Jane [r] ** / Tarzan [r] ***** / The Monuments Men *** 1/2 / Coraline [r] **** / Mulan II [r] *** 1/2 / Mulan [r] ***** / Alice In Wonderland (1999) *** / Alice in Wonderland (1985) ** 1/2 / 47 Ronin ** 1/2 / I, Frankenstein * 1/2 / Hercules [r] **** 1/2 / The Amazing Race (Season 9) *** / The Hunchback of Notre Dame II [r] ** 1/2 / The Hunchback of Notre Dame [r] **** 1/2 / The Amazing Race: Family Edition (Season 8) ** 1/2 / Divergent ** 1/2 / Pocahontas II: Journey To a New World [r] *** 1/2 / Pocahontas [r] ***** / The Amazing Race (Season 7) **** 1/2 / The Lion King 1 1/2 [r] **** / The Lion King [r] ***** / The Amazing Race (Season 6) *** 1/2 / Aladdin and the King of Thieves [r] **** / The Return of Jafar [r] *** 1/2 / The Amazing Race (Season 5) **** / Aladdin [r] ***** / Beauty and the Beast: Belle's Magical World ** / Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas [r] **** / Beauty and the Beast [r] ***** / The Amazing Race (Season 4) ** 1/2 / The Rescuers Down Under [r] **** / The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning [r] *** 1/2 / The Little Mermaid II: Return To the Sea [r] *** / Guardians of the Galaxy *** / The Little Mermaid [r] *****

Books!  50 of them from mid-October 2014 to mid-February 2015, finishing up my Disney Source Material Read-Through (see accompanying arts here) and plenty of board books:


How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Cats? (Jane Yolen and Mark Teague) *** / Unbroken (Laura Hillenbrand) **** / Boy and Going Solo (Roald Dahl) **** / Sidekicked (John David Anderson) **** / Wonder (R.J. Palacio) **** / Little Lord Fauntleroy (Frances Hodgson Burnett) **** / Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul (Jeff Kinney) ** / Birthday Monsters! (Sandra Boynton) **** / Let's Dance, Little Pookie (Sandra Boynton) **** / Tickle Time! (Sandra Boynton) ***** / Are You A Cow? (Sandra Boynton) **** / A Christmas Carol: The Graphic Novel (Sean Michael Wilson) *** / Santa Claus, the World's Number One Toy Expert (Marla Frazee) **** / Through the Animals' Eyes: A Story of the First Christmas (Christopher Wormell) ***** / Unfolding the Napkin: The Hands-On Method For Solving Complex Problems With Simple Pictures (Dan Roam) ***** / The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas With Pictures (Dan Roam) **** / Kate Greenaway's Original Drawings For the Snow Queen (Hans Christian Andersen) *** / The Snow Queen (transl. by Naomi Lewis, ill. by Angela Barrett) *** 1/2 / Rapunzel Untangled (Cindy C Bennett) *** / Calamity Jack (Shannon Hale) *** 1/2 / Rapunzel's Revenge (Shannon Hale) *** 1/2 / Rapunzel (Paul O. Zelinsky) ***** / The Frog Princess (E.D. Baker) **** / The Frog Prince, Continued (Jon Scieszka) ***** / The Frog Prince Or Iron Henry (transl. by Naomi Lewis, ill. by Binette Schroeder) **** / All the Wrong Questions: Shouldn't You Be In School? (Lemony Snicket) ***** / File Under 13: Suspicious Incidents (Lemony Snicket) *** / Kingdom Keepers: The Insider (Ridley Pearson) * / Kingdom Keepers: Unforeseen (Ridley Pearson) ** / Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck (Jeff Kinney) *** / A Day With Wilbur Robinson (William Joyce) **** / What's Wrong, Little Pookie? (Sandra Boynton) ***** / Hey! Wake Up! (Sandra Boynton) ***** / Happy Hippo, Angry Duck (Sandra Boynton) ***** / One, Two, Three! (Sandra Boynton) ***** / The Vanishing Act (Mette Jakobsen) ** / We Have Always Lived In the Castle (Shirley Jackson) ***** / Chicken Little (Rebecca Emberley, ill. by Ed Emberley) *** / The Remarkable Story of Chicken Little (Anonymous) **** / BabyLit: Dracula (Jennifer Adams, ill. by Allison Oliver) **** / Opposites (Sandra Boynton) **** / The Going-To-Bed Book (Sandra Boynton) ***** / Moo, Baa, La La La! (Sandra Boynton) ***** / Blue Hat, Green Hat (Sandra Boynton) ***** / Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson) **** 1/2 / Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire Essential Guide (David John) *** / The Day the Crayons Quit (Drew Daywalt) **** / Atlantis: Unsolved Mysteries (Ann Margaret Lewis) *** / The Emperor's New Clothes (Hans Christian Andersen, ill. by Dorothée Duntze) **** / The Steadfast Tin Soldier (Hans Christian Andersen, ill. by Fred Marcellino) ****

(1 June 2015)

Three Months and a Happy Face

This little girl celebrated three months yesterday, and she's doing great.  (When The Wife writes her blogpost, I'll post it here.)  She seems to have discovered her lungs, and she knows how to use them, but she's also discovered how to smile and coo and giggle and squeak, and generally just be alert and responsive and delightful.  She's sleeping pretty well, and eating just fine.  She's about average in weight, but well above in height, so she's a tall and lean girl, but she's fattening up nicely, especially in her round and chubby cheeks.  She likes to be held (and sometimes decidedly does NOT like NOT being held), and she's starting to be quite amused by big brother.  She's good in the car and she likes to be passed around to aunties and uncles and cousins and grandparents, so she's generally beloved by all.

She's becoming so expressive.

Runners-up for the blessing outfit.  Thanks for nothing, Target slow shipping/USPS.

Always so daintily clasping her hands.

So, not to change the subject or anything, but lately I've been feeling bombarded by the world.  It seems like every time I go online or scroll through my News Feed that there are a million rotten things happening, often even to my family and friends personally, and it can start to weight pretty heavily on your mind and heart.  People are crazy, ideas are crazier, wrong is right and right is wrong, and it's just getting harder and harder to say and do what you believe in (unless of course you believe in exactly what certain people allow you to).  Anyway, just when I think the world is beyond hope or redemption, I see this and it reminds me that there's great and good and wonderful going on in the world too:

We love you, Little Miss!

2 Birthdays, 2 Years

These posts do seem to get combined more and more regularly these days.

Anyway, we had two big birthdays a couple of weeks ago!  We're starting to get the hang of this juggling of two special days one right after the other.  The Wife posted a fun update here, but by way of update here, I'll say that we had a lot of cake and lots of fun times.  For The Wife's birthday we had fun times at home with some fun surprises and cupcakes and ice cream (on separate outings), and then over the weekend she made one of her epic cakes (it's been a while!) and we had a fun turnout of friends and family.

Beautiful birthday girl.

Happy 1st, Wife!  Observe The Boy's leftovers on the right.

One of her favorite presents from The Husband (and The Kids)

Then on The Boy's birthday we had breakfast at Kneaders and then met up with my parents for a fun morning at the dinosaur museum (which he liked even more than he did last time), after which there were new trains and super hero getups, and then later in the week we had a fun playdate with some little friends, where bubbles and sidewalk chalk and a little chocolate cake abounded.

Fun and delicious times!

Presents and a little browniecake!

And now we have a two-year-old in the house.  This boy is clever and sweet and funny and lively, he says almost everything like a very enthusiastic question, he still loves tractors and trucks and cars and airplanes and helicopters and riding or pushing anything with wheels (especially his little lawnmower from his birthday, which he doesn't even know blows bubbles!), and he loves his baby sister.  He loves visiting cousins or Nana and Papa, he loves Nursery, and he always loved a ride in the running stroller or the car.  He will occasionally stop everything he's doing and collapse in hysterics, stretching out on the floor in his most recent version of a tantrum, but it doesn't take long for him to find something to distract him or to make his needs known.  He's putting together sentences and figuring out electronics (yikes, more reason than ever to have the phone out at an absolute minimum), and is getting pretty familiar with his alphabet and his 1-10 numbers.  He loves books, and he loves to look at pictures and videos of people he knows, especially himself.  He's done such a good job adjusting to having a little one in the house who demands so much of his parents' attention, though he's certainly not afraid of letting himself be heard!  He's just a good little kid.

Trying out baby's new bedding

Finishing up our Disney movie indoctrination education

Getting over a sad little sickness just before baby's arrival

So happy when they bounce back!

Hairy little mancub.

He's starting to do his part a little more.

Testing out his old things for Baby's future use.

A P.S. to the series.  The circle of life continues.

Just a dude hangin' out at the auto parts store.

He loves Papa's "tractor" SO much.

No way this boy's going to grow up without an appreciation of art.

This was a not uncommon morning occurrence for a while.

This kids loves having neighbors across the street with lots of fun toys.  He can't quite reach the pedals, but it won't be long now.

All by himself!  Well, he's getting the hang of it.

Starting early on our new and exciting new addition.  He loves the Tangled book for the plentiful horses.

Such a big boy with his new haircut!

Helping himself to Mommy's Mother's Day breakfast in bed.

Happy birthday, boy!  You are a sunbeam.