thursday night

playing yahtzee with chanda and greg . . 

 

friday night dinner

father's day

 it has been quite awhile since i've sat at my friend janet's table and helped her sew costumes.

 maybe it's been a year? she always has lovely things lying around . . homemade pottery, celery plants sprouting in bowls, avocados and apples waiting to be eaten, and an old bottle of wine waiting to be boiled down . . i never found out for what.

 she was desperate today for some sewing help, so when i called asking for advice in regard to my airbnb woes and she had to quickly hang up for a costume emergency, i decided to just go over and discuss my problems while i helped her with her's.

here she is madly searching for a missing dress . . happily, it was found!

 hot! it's been hot again after a respite of three days.

 beautiful flowers along the path home . . 

 since it was father's day, chanda and i made greg one of his favorite meals: sautéed broccoli rabe with faicco's chicken sausages. chanda went with me to faicco's and i guess it's been awhile since we went together. our faicco's worker looked at her and asked if she was my daughter. he was surprised by how much she had grown. he's been at the pork store since 2004, which is a year or two after we first began shopping there. we talked a bit about how the time goes and that all the children he knew when he first started working are all grown up now.

 since it was father's day, greg got to choose the game: dix-mille, from a box of die that he bought about a year ago (just to have extra die on hand).

 hermione melted while we played . . 

 the cats' fur floats around the apartment these days . . and when i pet them or pick them up, their hair sticks to my eyes and nose and mouth.

 you score with ones (worth 100 points) and fives (worth 50 points) and rolls of three: 2's being 200, 3's 300, etc. a roll of 4 of a kind equals 1000, a straight equals 1500.

 chanda rolled a straight!

 and i managed to get four of a kind . . 

 greg was happy because he pulled ahead of chanda's lead and won the game.

 pics of our hallway renovation which has been going on for three months now (too long!) and which i sent to morgana. 

 they've had trouble with the new stair treads that were ordered and had to try a new type. we have not heard when they will finally be installed.

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morgana is traveling once again . . back to munich to catch a plane to nice to see our neighbor victoria. she really enjoyed her audition in innsbruck. she worked privately in a workshop with a voice teacher and an acting teacher. the school had changed the audition date to a different weekend, but she already had her train ticket and insisted on going.  it was nice they still worked with her.

 on the train . . 

 she had a few hours in munich before meeting her austrian family for lunch. they were on their way home from greece where they had spent four days. the children were happy to return to papa (he had remained home to work). it had been their first time on a plane. the pic above is from a cafe she found in a technical school in munich. she had heard about this cafe, but didn't have any information on it except that in was in the school. she wandered around the building until finally running into several people with coffee cups in their hands. i think they directed her through the last few turns.

 she had heard about the beautiful view the cafe had overlooking münchen . . 

it did not disappoint . .

three kings day and my knitting project

most everyone in the city has returned to their regular routine. however, we are still celebrating the twelve days of christmas and today was epiphany. it's not easy maintaining the holiday as the girls get older, as dance commitments and travel opportunities and field trips arise. luckily, greg is usually able to take off from work, which always makes it feel like a holiday. today we had a performance at the new victory theatre. new dutch theatre performed rumplestiltskin and greg went with chanda. morgana was supposed to attend, but lori belilove asked her to dance at the town school with several other duncan dancers, so she left the apartment at 7 am.

morgana and chanda first investigated beneath the tree to see if there might be a gift for them. each found a book and a needlework craft: the arabian nights; and the dragonfly pool (by eva ibbotson).

with everyone gone (korrina is still in buffalo), i had a breakfast to myself . .

with jack for company in the armchair across from me.

here is this year's three kings project. i've been working on a shawl for chanda. i still have about a quarter of the way to go. the yarn is very fine and i'm up to 400 stitches for this section. it'll cut back down to 200 when i get to row 6 of the pattern . . but i still have three rows to go of 400 tiny stitches. it has taken me longer than i thought, and i still have two more to make! i'm enjoying it, however, and i think it'll look beautiful when completed. i'll give more details when i finally finish this. i'm still trying to keep the girls in the dark about the final outcome. do you see the lovely stitch markers? christine made them for me!

what christmas music do we like to listen to? (well, morgana, chanda and i. and korrina? greg likes to claim that he doesn't care for christmas music). we have folk songs from the seeger family, a time-life treasury of "pop" christmas songs, the vienna boys choir, a jazz piano christmas, nomad christmas (a nice middle eastern jazzy touch to christmas songs) and an italian christmas . . with fun "pop" christmas tunes italian style.

in the evening i lit the little candle house janet made for me last year.

we had our traditional epiphany dinner of wild alaskan salmon, brown and wild rice, and steamed asparagus with butter sauce, followed by desserts of peppermint bark, biscotti, gingerbread cookies, and french chocolates.

and we played yahtzee afterwards! (after we sang a few christmas songs--we three kings, and here we go a wassailing--and morgana played her guitar) and even though the game did not go well for me at the beginning (i almost cheated, after which i almost quit) i ended up getting a yahtzee at the very end and winning! actually, i haven't gotten a yahtzee in YEARS so it was quite fun. (i used a score sheet from several years ago . . it's interesting to see what one's results were in the past). i'd like to go to sleep now, but i'm waiting for korrina to call and say she and her friend are back in buffalo from having visited toronto. i neglected to check with her what time she thought she would get home. but . . she probably wouldn't have known the answer to that question anyway. she lives too spontaneously these days. i think i remember doing that . . happy twelfth day of christmas!

(we also read the three kings chapter from mary's little donkey last night, and tomie depaola's the three wise men this evening).