Merry Christmas and Happy New Year From State of Nature

We had a relatively quiet first Christmas in New Jersey.  As quiet, that is, as things can be when the six of us are together in one place.  Some creature is pretty much always stirring around here.  We missed our extended family on Christmas day, but fortunately were able to get down to Washington for a lovely four-day visit.  Here are some pictures I took on Christmas.  Next year, let's have some visitors, please!!

Stephen is Five!

Notwithstanding Miss Manners' opinions regarding the questionable etiquette of blogging, we here at State of Nature forge on!  Here are pictures of Stephen's birthday party at the local bowling alley -- always a big hit with the little ones.  There are also a couple of bonus shots at the end of the aftermath of brownie baking for Stephen's party at preschool.   

Tomorrow . . . pictures of Christmas!

Christmas In New York City

So we decided last weekend to load everyone into the car and venture into New York City to catch some of the Christmas sights and sounds.  The key items on our agenda were to see the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center and to visit FAO Schwarz on Fifth Avenue.  The crowds were huge, making keeping track of the kids, and getting out of town at the end of the day, signficant undertakings.  But the kids did a great job staying with us and braving the cold, and really enjoyed our day in the big city.  I even managed to get a few pictures.

Tulane

Here is Tulane's recently-announced plan to retrench and come back from Katrina.  The school will open for next semester, but with some significant changes.  On the positive side, something like 86% of the students enrolled at the start of this year will be returning.  On the negative, several sports (including swimming), some academic majors (including all engineering except for biomed and chemical) and several graduate programs, will be eliminated.

Seaside

Here's an interesting article about Seaside, Florida, from today's New York Times.  For those of you who are not regular Florida Panhandlers like us, Seaside is a beach community between Destin and Panama City, that is somewhat renowned in urban planning circles for reasons discussed in the article.  A couple of summers ago, we spent two weeks in the next community over -- Seagrove Beach.  Beautiful country, but as the article discusses, it's character is threatened by the quite disparate problems of (1) recent hurricane damage, and (2) overcrowding.

That Tree Is Not At All "Trim"

Not trim, as in slim, but it is now trimmed.  We tromped through some snow last Sunday and found a good, fat tree, which we then decorated that afternoon.  Patience being in short supply here at State of Nature, it was not practical to have the tree spend days outside in a bucket of water first.  It's now a week later, and so far so good.  It still has most of its needles, Matthew has not pulled it down on himself, and conflagrations have been confined to the fireplace.  I've posted here some pictures of the kids decorating.

A Crack In The Axle of Evil

Who says the newspapers are only full of bad news?