"Hey, did I tell you guys about the retarded guy who kissed me at lunch today?"

My cousin Andres and his wife Sara had a Wig and Wine-Tasting party. Most of the blond Estos showed up with jet-black wigs. At one point, too many of us crammed into a tiny powder room and much mayhem ensued. Kulli must have been the instigator because she cleaned it up without being asked. The following weekend, Kulli and I and several friends went down to Bethany Beach for a girls' weekend. There was snow on the beach and LOTS of margaritas in the blender... A highlight from the weekend was when Kulli did charades depicting her lunchtime experience that day.

Bowling and painting

We went to a bowling birthday party for our friend Eric. This was in the upstairs of a rowhouse, basically. Cool place for a party, and it made for fun bowling since the lanes weren't exactly level... Maili painted a mural on her wall and of course Aavo wanted to paint his room too. He has since decided that green is the color he wants, and insisted that we could use this little bottle of paint to do it. Aavo likes painting almost as much as Maili does, and lately he likes "helping" with anything at all. He helped my mom address envelopes for my great aunt's birthday party invitations. Also, I had to throw in a picture of Marina's drawing/writing. She really concentrates when she's drawing, so much that her hand starts to shake. She's too cute!!

More pictures of the kids being goofy, plus the helicopter that hovered over our house for 30 minutes filming the funeral procession for a policeman. The processions always come right past our house and get on the expressway. You can see the cars up in the top of the pictures, way up the expressway, and they were still getting on the on-ramp at the bottom for at least half an hour. Good day to rob some houses, I'd imagine. Also, our builders devise a plan for getting cement from the top of the lot down back to the area outside the sub-basement. They made a trash bag slide and shoveled it from there as quickly as possible into wheelbarrows. They must have made 30 trips with those. Amazingly, they did not spill cement all over the place as I had been certain would happen, given their track record. They are not the most efficient guys I've ever met...

Wintery stuff

Here's Maili at the Estonian School Christmas program, Aavo showing off his stitches, and some pictures of a beautiful snowfall we had. A week before Christmas, Aavo fell and needed 5 stitches under his chin. He was so good at the emergency room, never even had a worried look on his face, no tears or anything. After 5 days we went to get the stitches out and that time he cried a little bit because they had a hard time getting them out. Before we left, he told the nurses "Sorry I cried." Then on Christmas Eve, he banged his chin again (on the pool table at Leho and Lili's) and part of the gash opened up but we just stuck a bunch of band-aids all over it. For New Year's we went to Leho's again and played Rock Band on XBox 360 late into the night and talked about Kulli, who wasn't there. All good stuff, of course.