Anna's latest hobby

Anna recently moved up to "big girl" bike with training wheels. She spent some time with Dayton who very patiently helped her get used to the new bike and then felt quite comfortable on her, much bigger, new ride.

Karen's Birthday Pictures

Our new ride...

This is a Honda Fit. We pick up our hog later this week.

We've grown weary of our current gas guzzling Volvo. We love the car, but it's ten years old, and starting to become a black hole of maintenance. We probably could have avoided some of this stuff coming due all at once, but we neglected the GD OLBOY while I was in grad school. We gambled and lost on the last round of replacements and tune-ups and now we're just going to get out of the car to break even.

The Fit is surprisingly big, for a go-cart. It actually is quite comfortable, with a shockingly large trunk. The real sweetness is the gas mileage in the manual transmission model - an average of 36mpg in Consumer Reports road tests. That gives this Cheetah about a 400 mile range on a 10.5 gal. tank. In our household that translates to $30 less per fill-up, plus 50 extra miles. Cha. Ching. This is our first new car, as well, so we're pretty excited.

Anna wanted a red one, but the sensible "storm silver" in the picture won out.

Death Defying Squirrels

We have the bravest squirrels in our neighborhood. Or the craziest. We have recently seen them upside down, feeding off of our new bird feeder. It causes quite a commotion when they see us and try to run away.

Actually, we have yet to see an actual bird at this feeder. Maybe it's just a squirrel feeder. Hmmm. Gotta take that thing down.

Disneyland Trip

We just spent a week in SoCal with Karen's folks (Grammy and Grampy), uncle Dennis (Karen's brother), great aunt and uncle Dave and Patty (thanks for housing us!), and first cousins once removed Tyler and Ashley. Very Fun.

After a few days at the beaches (Newport, Laguna and Huntington), we did two days at Disneyland. It was my first time at Disneyland, being a Disney World kid growing up. Lot's of relaxing fun for everyone!

Our New Hog

Here's a picture of our new tandem bike and trailer combo. We have enjoyed two excursions so far: one to a dance performance in Oak Park, and one to the Oak Park Farmer's Market. The bike is a low-end tandem cruiser, but I've used my bike shop experience to get it running pretty well. Anna loves riding in her trailer and brings books along to read. It's a good life.

The Reason for the Silence

Ok, so I know the Castleman's blog has been pretty quiet, save the two great videos that Dayton recently posted. I thought I'd offer this explanation in the two minutes before we take off for California and Disneyland!!!!

Dayton has been finishing up grad school (which he graduated from on Sat., May 17th!!) and applying for a great job (which he got!!!!) as a sculpture teacher at Trinity Christian College just south of Chicago. (No moving involved!)

I have been in the process of auditioning for and waiting for feedback from my all time favorite dance company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. Just two weeks ago the director told me that he wants to have me in the company!!!! Only downside is that they don't have an opening right now. He speculated that they may be able to take me on by the end of November which is great and gives us some time to figure out what needs to happen to move ourselves into these new working situations.

Anna is still her sweet, happy, wonderful self and is looking forward to meeting Mickey and all the Princesses so we've gotta run!!!!

The Natural?

Oak Park Farmer's Market

ANNA (hands)

I just about flipped out this morning when I saw this. I was working at home this morning, and Anna was drawing on the floor. She said "Look papa! I drew my hands!" We've been working on tracing her hands, and she's definitely getting good at it, but this is the best that I'd ever seen her write her name. It's very exciting.

Anna says: "Um, I made that by myself. OK? I wrote my name all by myself. It was on my Magna-doodle."

Fun with Papa

Anna and I drove up northwest of Chicago for me to do a talk on art for the high/middle school youth groups from our church. We got up there really early so I decided to look for a place for Anna to burn off some energy. I saw no McDonalds, but there was an old mall, so I thought we'd explore. This is what we found, and had a marvelous time!

Art Star

Karen has a friend named Sally Gulde. Sally is a fantastic photographer. She's even won an award. Perhaps you've heard of it? Does Grammy ring a bell? Here's their Christmas card this year:

I kind of flipped out when I saw this card. No mere amateur makes a card like this from scratch.

Sally agreed to take a new head shot of Karen as she anticipates an upcoming audition or two. They actually met at the Oak Park public library to take the shots. Apparently it offers some really nice natural lighting. Well, in addition to the head shots Sally snapped several pictures of Anna and Karen frolicking around. Here's the Flickr set from their session.

This one of Anna might just be my favorite picture of all time. How I helped produce such a cool kid I will never know...

The Family Makes it to an Opening

On Wednesday night Anna and I met Karen up at Loyola U when she was finished teaching and we all attended an art opening at the school together. This was the view of Lake Michigan from the gallery's atrium:

What you're looking at in this small cell-phone picture are giant mounds of ice being pummeled by huge waves buoying even more ice. Were it not for the foliage and other signs of humanity, I'd have sworn I was standing on the coast of Antarctica.

Tonight we expect our 35th (yes, 35th) measurable snow of the winter. Brrrrrrrrrr...

A New Convert

Note the weather detail on your right there. See the current temp in Chicago, IL? Today I understood for the first time the importance of a term that I had previously only associated with wealthy folk or retirees. The term is "snowbird". I am determined to become one. I decided today that if I live in Chicago for another year (which I fully intend to do), I will be out of town for the month of February. Very out of town. The entire month. Period. Anna might not mind, but I do. She was born in Philadelphia, I, in California. We are two different breeds!!!!

Another embarrassing tale in the saga of "Disaster Housewife and Mother"

So for weeks I've been complaining about the spine chilling scratches and screeches I have heard coming from the walls between our kitchen, bedroom and bathrooms. They are quiet enough to the rest of the family (imperceptible to Dayton), but to me they indicate the presence of an army of small rodents who have miraculously escaped the two cats who inhabit the first floor of our dwelling, and have taken up winter residence within the walls of our second floor apartment. The only peace I have on the matter is that there has been no visible evidence to suggest that the mice ever leave the security of the walls to seek for their desired comforts inside my home. Now, in the past two weeks I noticed a dramatic decline in scratching, screeching and general carrying on within the walls and had hoped that the feline pest control of the first floor may have proven their worth. Unfortunately this decrease in auditory disturbance paralleled an increased olfactory disturbance which was not alleviated by frequent garbage removal and dish washing. I, of course, jumped to the most natural conclusion. The mouse had died within my walls and its decaying flesh was poisoning the airways of my home. Anna even noticed the smell and we lamented it together while trying to bake cookies in the kitchen one night. The stench increased daily and after about a week or so I could stand it no longer. I had visions while standing at my sink washing dishes of taking an ax to the portion of the wall that I assumed held the offending former creature. That night when Dayton got home from school, I begged him to come into the kitchen and commiserate with me. "Stand here," I said about the place where the smell was the strongest. Dayton stood, reeling in the stench of it. "What about that?" he said, looking up. Directly overhead hung a shiny, golden trio of baskets, holding a few onions in the middle and a sack of potatoes at the bottom. Together we sniffed in the direction of the potatoes and immediately my previous explanation melted away like so much butter in a frying pan. What lay before me was perhaps worse for its being so necessarily tangible. Dayton reached for the bag of potatoes and as it arched its way across the kitchen to the trash can, a sickly, brown, deluge rained down on everything in its path (namely, a corner of my sweat pants and a toy dollhouse that had been awaiting repairs). The kitchen was filled anew with the sounds of scrabbling and squawking as we both dashed for antibacterial wipes and extra trash bags.

As a bit of an afterword, I have three things to say in my own defense:

1) There were most definitely mice living in my walls.

2) I had purchased the bag of potatoes no more than two weeks before. (Who hasn't kept a bag of potatoes for two weeks before?)

3) I shop at a grocery store, the freshness of whose produce is now most decidedly questionable.

Welcome to the Windy City Castlemans' Blog

I thought we could kick things off with a classic: