Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Time flies and I'm not entirely sure how it can possibly be December already. We still have lots of Christmas shopping to do (well, some of us do). But Paela is napping better (most days) and sleeping pretty well (even if it is in her baby papasan instead of her crib). She wakes up in twenty minutes in her crib, but sleeps for hours in the papasan (or on us). Coincidence? I think not.  read more »

Ah, it's Christmas time again.

While the first half of the week was warm, the second half was really cold and it was time to get out warm jackets and stop running around in sandals. I still ran around last night until my toes needed some defrosting.

Wednesday we went to our local Creche exhibit in Palo Alto. This was their 20th anniversary exhibit, so since I grew up in Ann Arbor I spent the day comparing the two exhibtions. While the Palo Alto exhibit was a few years younger and a lot smaller, there was no hesitation in declaring how much more posh and elitist their exhibit was. Instead of a simple card explaining where the nativity scene originated from, it was a full declaration of how it was acquired on the collector's "fourth trip to Switzerland from a master carver," etc. Quite humorous, really.  read more »

We have a large collection of Dr. Seuss, and it's my goal to own all of his books someday (or, in some cases, two since I want our kids to read them too ). While Wayne argues that books not written by Dr. Seuss, but with the beginner books label, are worthless -- I think there are a few good ones out there. But for those of you interested: here is our current collection list.

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Yet another semester bites the dust for Wayne. He finished up finals and final projects this past week, including a 10-page paper for Thursday and a journal article Monday. He was a little worried he wouldn't finish because he didn't start on things as far in advance as usual, but I knew he'd get it done and get done he did.  read more »

It always starts with a double flight, at least for us. Who knows? Maybe someday we will get lucky enough to have a sibling tip us off to a cheap direct flight before we buy tickets, but until then we take double flights. While our flight out of San Jose wasn't originally scheduled terribly early, over the course of six weeks prior it was bumped earlier and earlier. We arrived at 6 am to find a long line for the airline as well as security.  read more »