Andy Smallman

So for years Chloe and Ella would head over to Brenda’s & Greg’s for a night of pumpkin carving, fun eating, movie watching, and sleeping over, an event dubbed “Pumpkin Weekend.” It’s legendary in the family, complete with special photo books to commemorate each year’s event.

Up in Canada, as she is now for college, Chloe is unable to participate. But that doesn’t stop her from thinking about it or doing her best to replicate it. Today’s photo came via email under the subject heading used as today’s blog post title and with the following text:

Today me and my group of girlfriends baked an apple pie, made caramel apples, and carved pumpkins (well just me and my friend Simone were up for carving!). Here’s a pic of the pumpkins (mine’s on the right)… we just finished! 🙂

Cheers! Love you all,
-Chloe

ps: It’s (lightly) snowing!!

6 years and 1 day ago Perrin was born, a big day for a lot of people in our family (but, certainly, biggest for Perrin). If you’re new to the blog or don’t remember, Perrin is the daughter of Brenda & Greg. Brenda is Melinda’s sister, which makes Perrin Melinda’s and my niece, and Chloe’s & Ella’s cousin. I’m sure I could complicate things further by adding more genealogy references, but I’ll leave it at that and try to stay focused on the fact the birthdays are tons of fun when you’re 6.

As it turns out, Perrin has had her share of celebrations related to this birthday. There was the kid party, the acknowledgement at school, the party with her grandparents, and then tonight’s present and cake consumption event with Melinda, Ella, and me and from which today’s picture comes.

What more can be said than a big happy birthday to you, Perrin!

What could be further from a “cute-off” than a picture of me, right? But just look at me! I’m actually hula hooping and the hula hoop isn’t just falling to the ground. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s a still photo and I could just be leading you to believe (is it working?) that I was having some moderate success with the hula hoop through this description. But would I, the guy who told you he traded Melinda for Rick Steves, lie to you?

This picture was taken during our break time at the Nutrition & Fitness for Life class that Ella, Melinda & I are taking on Thursday nights, the class I told you about three weeks ago. About halfway through each session we take a break to get some exercise.

And, yes, I did a little hula hooping.

So yesterday I mentioned the “cute-off” taking place on Facebook between a friend and me. I post a cute picture of one of my kids, she posts a cute picture of her kid. Each picture ups the challenge a notch. Now others are joining in, taking sides, playing along. Throughout the day today I had a big smile on my face because of it.

In response to my post yesterday, my friend, whose name happens to be Sarah, introduced me to the concept of being “snuggle-punched.” Crediting a friend for the term, she wrote, “It’s that moment when you’re just about to leave the house or switch gears in some way, and your kid sucks you back in with their irresistible cuteness…you just have to drop your stupid adult agenda and snuggle!”

In today’s photo, that’s Melinda in the center having been snuggle-punched by Ella, on the right, and Olivia, Ella’s cousin, on the left.

So last night I stumbled across a picture of Chloe when she was just over a year old and posted it to Facebook, admitting that things don’t get much cuter than that photo. In response, feeling a challenge of some sort had been declared, a friend posted a photo of her adorable son and challenged me to what she dubbed a “cute-off.”

Fair enough. Let the games begin!

In response, I present this photo of preschooler Ella, dressed, as she described it at the time, as a “cowboy-girl.”

Oh, and here is another entry point to Amazon (meaning anything you buy at Amazon having entered their site from this link nets a tiny proceed to Melinda’s and my Kind Living project). You’ll see how the item I’ve chosen is related to today’s post. 🙂

Today’s photo is a partial screenshot from the web stats link WordPress provides for this blog. It’s an overview of yesterday’s blog visitors broken down by country. There were 49 unique visitors (or views) from inside the United States, 3 from France (hello Boudeaus & Bertails!), 1 from Canada (hi, Chloe!), and 1 from Uruguay.

Uruguay? Who in Uruguay is looking at this blog? Do you think it was a lost visitor, or someone who clicked on some link somewhere that takes you to an unknown site (like Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button)?

On a side note, I paid the 30 bucks needed to make it so ads no longer show up on this blog, at least for the next 12 months. Want to help me offset this cost? If you use Amazon.com, you could go there from the link below, one that I’ve customized to include a special code that provides Melinda and me a small percentage of any item purchased when people connect to Amazon through such a link.

And what is this link? A travel guide to Uruguay, of course!

I’m just back from attending a concert. I’m done with those big venue gigs. This was in a person’s home and sold out with 30 people. The musician was somebody I *discovered* while we were in France, a guy named Jeremy Messersmith. If I could sing and write songs, I like to think I would sound like him. He was wonderful and very friendly. Don’t believe me? Check out this song, one he played on the same guitar tonight. The only difference? I bet he was wearing shoes when this video was created. The house tonight was a shoes-off zone.

Ella has always had these dazzling eyes that sparkle with kindness and friendliness (Okay, sue me. I’m her dad. I don’t have to be impartial). As a little kid, people were regularly drawn to her. In fact, when we moved into our house in Seattle in 1998 (Ella was not quite 2), our next door neighbor said, “I think an angel just moved into the neighborhood.”

Now that she’s 15 (16 in December), the same overall cute factor might not always be there. I mean, what person can be as cute as they were at age 2? But her eyes have retained a friendliness and a dazzle.

As many of you know, I’ve been offering interested people the opportunity to consider and engage in acts of kindness as part of Seattle’s Compassion Games. My idea, given these are games and all, is to have people think of themselves as secret agents performing missions of kindness. Well, this morning I offered the fourth and final mission.

My kindness class illustrator Fish Astronaut has been extra busy creating images for the missions. He’s created a different image to accompany each of my messages. With three messages per mission and four missions, that’s twelve new images!

Today’s picture is the image Fish created to go along with the new mission, to partner up with a kindness buddy. Thanks, Fish! I really like it!

Some things to know about this photo:

• it must be around 10 years old
  
• it was taken inside a Baskin & Robbins ice cream shop in Bellevue, Washington
  
• Chloe’s teeth have a blue hue because of the ice cream she just ate (it was probably rainbow sherbert)
  
• Ella is missing some teeth
  
• I’m wearing my grandfather’s wedding ring
  

Questions or comments?