Odds and ends

• How might one spend a Saturday as a family in January in Colorado? Doing yard work. In short sleeves. We trimmed the bushes and bagged leaves. Some people were watering their lawns!
• The mothers' "playdate" happened! On Thursday four of us left our husbands to put the kids to bed and went downtown to a wine bar, where we sat on couches by the fire and managed to talk about things other than our kids*--politics, the State of the Union, careers, immigration policy, the Colorado art market, everyone's career, and how to do a house swap with people in Europe--for several hours. This is a small town, though: The guy behind the counter mentioned running into our husbands at a nearby bar when they were out for their boys' night last week. It was so nice to spend some time getting to know people our age socially. We really missed that during our years in Princeton, especially after we left grad school housing. Now we're hoping to alternate the men and women going out every few weeks. 
• Tom and Edith are deep into Lord of the Rings, both the movie trilogy and the first book. Amazingly, she doesn't find it too scary. In fact, she has started going straight to bed after watching the movie, no need for stories, songs, water, anything. If you had told me we'd ever see such a day, back when she was 3 and bedtime was agonizing, I would have fallen on the ground and kissed it.
• Tom has received his kevlar vest and standard-issue police coat (no badge). He has learned that if at any point he's in a squad car alone with someone who has been apprehended, and the doors and windows of the car are closed, anything the person tells him is privileged information, and he can't be summoned to testify about that conversation. But if the windows are open, the confidentiality clause doesn't apply. You wonder how these rules get made, no?
• Yesterday Alice and I were playing in the driveway, and she instructed me to sit down "criss-cross applesauce." I asked where she had learned that expression. In the nursery at church? She nodded:

"We sit criss-cross applesauce at holy time."

"Do you sit criss-cross applesauce at bunny school, too?"

She shook her head reproachfully.

"Mommy, we not have holy time at school!"

Guess she'll be fully ready for church and state distinction when she heads to kindergarten...

Incidentally, if you ask Alice about holy time, which she seems to really like, the first thing she'll tell you is that the Holy Spirit is there. They also read the Bible, receive a blessing, and sing songs about God the Creator--but she likes the Holy Spirit best.

*(Okay, there was some discussion of the kindergarten curriculum and how our kids are faring in school. I have a kindergartner and a toddler; S. has a kindergartner and a second grader, B. has a kindergartner and a third grader, and K. has a kindergartner, a toddler, a second grader, and a third grader. And she's the most calm and collected of all.)