Here's our annual holiday video, which seems to have less to do with Christmas each year! The shots in this took place last summer, on our summer holidays, so I guess there is a connection in that it was a holiday… Note: This video was made by our in-house video production expert, Liam! Download Mountolympus2

Ourselves, Vanessa and Will ran home from the Smokedaddy BBQ restaurant in Wicker Park before the "brutal" -34c winds hit Chicago (it was a balmy -10c when this photo was taken).  It took us half a hour to get our car out of the frozen snow/ice this morning for some last minute shopping.

Sunday’s red moon show was a real treat, one of their best, with lots of highly engaged toddlers!

We had a fun saturday at park voyagers where the kids got to share their collections, miles brought his greek mythical heros, liam brought his rotofugis and cindy brought her antique soviet cameras {which were a big hit}

Liam with his friend at emry at feed

One of our favorite treats is to go to feed restaurant, which has the best southern chicken we’ve ever tasted, we went there tonight with liam’s friend emry

A belated thanks to everyone we shared Thanksgiving with, the extended Haasen-Knox family, my parents, and Vanessa and Will! We had a great time. Here's Vanessa, who with John Knox, lit the many candles in record time. Note the lovely china that mom and dad brought from their house in KC! Dinner theater: MacBeth (Miles) leaps onto the stage for a swordfight with MacDuff (Erica). MacDuff defeats MacBeth, holds up his severed head (Halloween yard decoration) and crowns Malcolm (Liam) King of Scotland. Malcolm's attendant (Jane) stands in waiting. Note: the ensuing action was too fast and dramatic for this…

We went to flying saucer last weekend and, seeing our waitress's haircut, I realized I was done with long hair for now. I did some haircut thinking during the week and Beatriz came over yesterday morning to cut my hair. I really like it! And fortunately I have an excellent collection of scarves to keep my newly exposed neck warm!

We got a couple of inches of snow! Also, John ordered a cover for the smoker, here he is, putting it on in the snow. By the way, he took it off again today, we are smoking a brisket right now!