Thanksgiving!

Our Thanksgiving this year was just the three of us. But then it usually is. Like I've said before, not a whole lot has changed for us. 

Mom and Dad have a couple of Thanksgiving traditions that we kept alive this year. The first one is listening to "Alice's Restaurant" while we eat. It's one of Dad's old hippie songs. It's a war protest with a funny story, and it's REALLY long. 

They also watch the Lord of the Rings movies over Thursday and Friday. Not because the movies have anything to do with Thanksgiving, but because they love the movies and they've almost always been off work those two days. (Dad works on the weekends.) We watched in Dad's office this year, with the big screen hooked up to his stereo. He just got his office (mostly) done. I love hanging out in there with him!

In the movie, the hobbits mention eating seven meals a day... breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper. We've tried that ourselves a couple of times, including on Thanksgiving Day. We barely managed to do it, because we were all stuffed! But we made sure to leave room for dinner, which was our main event as far as meals go.

Even Chip got to have some Thanksgiving dinner with us!

As my dad likes to say, I hope you all had a Thanksgiving dinner that can't be beat. (It's an Arlo Guthrie thing.)

That's a Lot of Hair!

Dad was just saying that we were lucky during all the lockdowns. Where other grown-ups were out of work or had to work remotely, Dad was already working from home. Where other kids were out of school or had to switch to remote learning, I was already being homeschooled. And where other people had to give up haircuts, Mom actually went to cosmetology school way back before she became an accountant and used to cut hair for a living. 

My hair was getting shaggy, so it was time for Mom to get out her scissors. She had to cut out a huge snarl... and that doesn't even include this crazy mess! Look at that! 

A whole dustpan full of hair. That's enough to make some kind of small animal.

Next is Dad's turn. He used to have long hair, and he's talking about letting it grow out again. He's such a hippie.

Beanie Boos!

Back when Mom and Dad both worked and brought in money, they were generous with buying me lots of stuffies. I have some really cool collections, like my Furrybones and my Galoompaglaots monster troop from Manhattan Toys. I'll have to tell you all about Maynard sometime. He's a Galoompagalot, and he's been my buddy since I was a baby.

When I get bored, I go up to our attic and dig through my trash bags to play with some stuffies I haven't seen for a while. It's like playing with something brand new! The latest group to come down to play has been my Ty plushes. The Beanie Boos are SO CUTE!

Since I'm homeschooled, I don't get to do things like show-and-tell in front of a class. So Mom and Dad let me do presentations in front of them. And I got the idea to pile up all my Beanie Boos in a chair and tell them what I like and don't like about each. It's so fun going through the big ones, the small ones, the new ones, the old ones, everything! 

Some of my newest additions are Jamal the camel... and this!

I just found her at the store last week. Dad told me I had to pick just one, and I couldn't decide which one to get... until I saw the name of this adorable blue poodle. She's called Mandy. Just like me!

Dad says people used to collect Beanie Babies way back in the 1990s. Rare ones would trade for hundreds of dollars, he said. That's nuts! I have no plans to sell any of these guys. I'm just happy to have a lot of Beanies to play with!

And there's the whole lot of 'em, so far.

Dad's Weird Stuff

My Dad decided to take our biggest room upstairs for his office. He has a video conference coming up, so he gave us a deadline to help him get his space finished. It's going to be part office, part rec-room, and part man cave. He's going to have all his crazy pictures of Marilyn Monroe, his CDs and LPs, all the family's DVDs, and his Atari 5200 in there, along with a big old teacher's desk he got for free from a friend of ours here in town. A little bit of everything, really. And I'm sure I'll be hanging out in there with him a lot, playing the Atari and watching movies. 

All the random stuff he has around the house is going up there, including his pipe collection. Dad has, like, a zillion pipes, made out of all kinds of different materials.

I'm not sure what he gets out of these things. You can only smoke one at a time, right? But I thought this old clay pipe was kind of funny. It makes you look like a hobbit. (Don't worry, it's not packed with tobacco or even lit up.)

Then there are all his weird records. We unboxed all those and helped him arrange them on a shelf in his office. He says his favorite music comes from right around the time he was born. Like this one. What the heck?

That's In the Court of the Crimson King, by King Crimson. Dad says he was "minus-2" when this album came out. He's so weird. 

See those stars above my head? The people who owned the house before us decorated the sloped wall in Dad's office with stars and the moon. We called it the Space Room before it became Dad's office. Dad decided to keep it that way. 

Dad says I can share more pictures once his office is done. More to come!

Family Tattoos!

They're actually just temporary tattoos, but I talked Mom and Dad into putting some on along with me. Just some good, fun family bonding...

Resin

Mom and I have been making some neat crafts out of resin. 

Our friend Daphne made some really cute little resin bears, and Mom bought a couple of them for me. (Daphne makes part of her living selling crafts.) Then Dad mentioned that he thought it would be fun to work with resin. He likes these things called orgone pyramids, which are supposed to make your body and mind work better, or something like that. It has something to do with how the metals and gems and crystals react with the resin. Sounds weird to me, but the pyramids come out looking nice. Here's a test one Mom made, with just some marbles and colorful stones. I like it!

We bought some silicone molds to pour the resin into. Mom likes making these coasters.

Then she made a resin seashell with some little turtles and a sandy beach inside. 

But here's what I'm working on. An army of resin bears! We have the same mold now that our friend Daphne uses. 

Next up is a resin unicorn army to fight the bears. Stay tuned!