Blackmail Photo, Paint

One day, G will bring home a girl he really wants to impress. This is only one of many great photos we will bring out:

We painted the bathroom upstairs yesterday, which is not finished but close. Here's the color of the top half:

The Green Fairy

Absinthe makes you crazy and criminal, provokes epilepsy and tuberculosis, and has killed thousands of French people. It makes a ferocious beast of man, a martyr of woman, and a degenerate of the infant, it disorganizes and ruins the family and menaces the future of the country.
a critic of the liquor, as quote by Conrad III, Barnaby; (1988). Absinthe History in a Bottle. Chronicle books. ISBN 0-8118-1650-8 Pg. 116

Rebecca and Kirk found a store that sells absinthe, which is still relatively rare since it's only recently become legal. We've all wanted to try it, as it was the drink of choice of Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Hemingway, Wilde, Manet, and many others. People used to believe that is was hallucinogenic, but it isn't. It also looks like it's very high in alcohol content, but it's drunk with only a small amount of absinthe and lots of water. It smells like black licorice but doesn't really taste like anything. It was exciting to finally get to try some, but it didn't give any of us epileptic seizures or tuberculosis, and only Matt went crazy... but we suspect he was already halfway there.

Yeah Detroit!

Here's an excerpt from an interesting news story we found in The Independent (British) newspaper. You can read the story in its entirety here.

Choosing a name for a new baby is always tricky. Should it be classical or modern? Safe or a bit zany? One can only wonder how the parents of one unfortunate girl in New Zealand came up with... Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii.

Bathroom Remodel, Day One

But before we rush to the bathroom for some explosive pictures, here is a video of the Chipster. This one is destined to become a classic.

So Mom (K) had the same idea we did about redoing Chip's bathroom this week, and we figured that if everyone is thinking the same thing, we might as well get started. Here are a few "before" photos. Do you think this wallpaper just screams "four-year-old boy and his youngish parents" or does it just make you want to scream?

Now, here are the photos of work in progress. Gabriel had the great idea to go around the house finding things we could put the wallpaper in. He found garbage cans we didn't even know we had and took out the bags. He waited outside the bathroom and caught all of the pieces. He was very helpful.
So we have the walls cleaned off. The next step will be to spackle and paint the molding/maybe the ceiling.

Famille Heureuse/Familia Feliz

We just had a Skype call with Erica, Raul, and the nino, and we wanted to share a cute screen shot we took of the happy family. We wanted to reach right through the screen and pinch his cheeks! So cute.