My Very First Christmas Card(s)

Mom says she is working on a Christmas card and year-end letter to send you all in January. But Christmas is only ONE WEEK away, and I don't want to wait that long to tell you "Merry Christmas."

Here are the two options I'm toying with mass producing. You can vote and let me know which one you like best!

Above, this is me and my mom at a Daughters of Norway Christmas tree decorating party. I helped drape the Scandinavian flags and hang some ornaments, and when we were all done, we danced around the tree in a circle, holding hands. Well, it was really just walking around. I liked the part where we bowed at the end. Mom showed me how to fold one arm across my belly and the other across my back, and bend at the waist. All the old ladies thought I was cute.

With a name like Soren, I think I could do no wrong. I even finagled two cookies off the potluck table.

All the songs we sang were in Norwegian, but it's because of my Danish heritage that Mom could join the Daughters of Norway if she wanted to. Did you know I am named after my great-great-grandfather, Soren Sorensen?

"Glaedelig Jul" is how you say "Merry Christmas" in Danish, but the Norwegian version is on my Christmas card.

This second photo is of the tree and the Santa train at our church. See him waving from the engine cab? The track connection was loose and the train wasn't running, but me and my dad fixed it. Then I ran around the tree 10 times, racing the train.

Well, whichever greeting you choose, know that I mean it!!

Photos of My Toes

I'd been wondering about this thing called a "camera" for a while. My mom's been pointing one at my face since the day I was born (often at very odd times, like when I'm yawning or have spaghetti noodles all over my face or am sitting on the potty), and she usually lets me peek at the little screen and see the pictures right after -- although sometimes I have to wait until she downloads them onto the 'pewter. Then we look at them on the big screen.

But Mom never let me HOLD her camera, which has always looked like the fun part. To be behind the lens, I mean -- framing the shot, deciding when to press the shutter button, freezing a snapshot in time. Then came a visit from Auntie Nora, and she said "no problem, Soren, I'll show you how to use MY camera." And she did! Aren't aunties the best?

I took about a hundred pictures that afternoon, I think. My own toes made quite a lovely tableau. I took a photo of every houseplant, then every door in our house, then every chair. I was really into series.

Mom was on a walk, and when she came back, I took her picture and GUESS WHAT? She wanted to peek at the back of Nora's camera and see it! I almost didn't let her, but then I was nice and I did.

I wish I had my first portfolio to show you, but Nora didn't leave the pictures on our 'pewter before she left. I think they're still stuck in her camera. I hope she didn't delete any.

After all that practice, and showing Mom how careful I was with my auntie's camera, she let me use hers this week at Playschool. Here's a picture I took of Teacher Erin and her ukelele.

And here's a picture Mom took of me at Playschool. That's something I still haven't figured out -- how you can take a picture of yourself. I hear there's a way to do it, though. I can't wait to learn how.

Pix of Me and My Old Dad -- I Mean, Old Pix of My Dad!

APOLOGIES, THIS BLOG WAS DRAFTED AND SHOULD HAVE BEEN POSTED TWO WEEKS AGO. THE SNOW IS NOW ALL MELTED...

It snowed again this past week, hooray! I got to go sledding and I discovered it's more fun to lie on my belly on our toboggan than to sit up -- then I don't fall off so much. I also realized mittens are a good thing, and kept them on my hands. Thanks, Grandma Gloria, for finding this warm and waterproof pair for me.

Mom took this picture of me and Dad and she says we look like peas in a pod, whatever that means. I think we look more like blueberries, myself.

This revelation inspired Mom to pull out some old pictures of Dad, back from when cameras couldn't record the color in the world. So I don't know what color Dad's snowsuit is here (oh, he says it was black with yellow stripes), but there is some similarity, don't you think?
And then here's Mom on a snowbank when she was 2-1/4, with her Uncle Clark. She liked blue snowsuits and light blue mittens, too!
Dad might be older than I am in the snow picture (he thinks he's 6 or 7), but these other two are from when he was 2-1/2, the age I am now.

And for further comparison, here's a photo of Mom when she was just the age I am now. She had a six-month-old sister at that time in her life! Whew, I can't imagine a baby in our house. I'm glad to be the one ruling The Roost.

Which parent do YOU think I most resemble?

The Year of the Rabbit is Here!

2011 is the Year of the Rabbit in the Chinese calendar, and their new year is a month or so after ours, or whenever the first new moon of the year appears. My parents and I traveled to Vancouver, B.C., Feb. 5-7 to help all those Chinese-Canadians celebrate! Here are some of the photos we took.

The first picture shows a pagoda in a public garden in Chinatown, surrounded by tall buildings.
This is the view from our downtown hotel. We were on the 10th floor! There was a swimming pool in the basement!
There's a big parade on the Sunday closest to the Chinese New Year, and here are me and Dad before it started, looking for a good spot to sit and watch. Note the Chinatown gate in the background.
Since it was the Year of the Rabbit, there were quite a few kids wearing rabbit costumes.
Dragons chase away evil spirits to start the New Year with good luck, and we saw many dancing dragons. This one was warming up before the parade started, swaying to drum beats and cymbal crashes, and I liked its googly eyes on springs. The poor kid in back has to lean over the whole time!
We found a spot on the curb, Mommy and Daddy and me, and my friends Matisse and his dad Vince. Vince is from Hong Kong originally. He knows the best Chinese restaurant in Vancouver, and just what to order: sweet bean pudding and tapioca custard!
The parade started with a fellow just walking along, lighting and throwing strings of firecrackers onto the street -- bang, bang, bang! Then there were drums and dancers in colorful costumes and lots of people marching. This red fiery dragon was the longest one in the whole parade.
I really didn't want to leave Vancouver, or our fun hotel, but Mom and Dad enticed me into the car with promises of visiting a train museum. We drove an hour north to Squamish and found out it was much more than that. It was the West Coast Railroad Heritage Park and it had dozens and dozens of restored train cars and several locomotives. I enjoyed climbing on this wooden one.
The park's showcase locomotive is a Royal Hudson steamie, a beautiful 4-6-4 (referring to the numbers of leading, driving and trailing wheels). It is housed in a brand new roundhouse. This is the biggest locomotive I have ever had the privilege of being close enough to touch.
I'm not even half as tall as one of the driving wheels! (Here I am with Mom, and that's me and Dad above.)

I do love trains. Even my favorite songs right now are train songs. You've gotta hear my medley of "Casey Jones," "I've Been Working on the Railroad," and "Freight Train." These tunes roll really well into one another.

And Dad just built a train table in our basement for an honest-to-goodness electric train! I'll post pictures of that soon.

P.S. Mom wants me to tell you she finished the post about my potty training and added lots more scintillating details. Yeah, I bet!