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 Special
Holiday Edition at Twenty Months!
Look at the left margin for older pictures!
The weather has gotten cooler, but this has not dissuaded Mason from
exploring the back yard. His routine first thing each morning is to check
out the back yard and ensure his stuff is still there. Then he selects a
twig and he carries it around the house for the rest of the day. If he
can't find a twig, substitutions, such as this bicycle safety flag, will
suffice. Mason's still good at sharing - here, he offers to trade a book
for jam drops. Our builder likes to wear his hard hat while he's mixing
stuff in his buckets; and wonders when someone will come out to play!
Right before Thanksgiving, Mason inspects the Southlake Town Center
Longhorns; helps Daddy wash Mommy's Christmas present; fights with Hailey for a
ball; and reminds us that the countertops are no longer safe.
Thanksgiving!
We decided to get an early start on Christmas and got Mason's picture taken
with Santa before Thanksgiving Day. Unheard of! Mason compares his
foot with Grandpa's; tries to get to the horses; and poses for the family
portrait.
Mason now moves these heavy cases of Coke to counters so that he can get a
better view of what's on them; allows Daddy to measure him; reads the magazines
with Daddy; and enjoys playing in the rain with his stick.
Christmas!
Christmas was spent in Australia and it was a whirlwind! First stop was
Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, where
Mason and Mommy got to hold a koala and Mason got to feed kangaroos. He is
apparently a celebrity in Japan and he took many pictures with Japanese
schoolgirls.
Auntie Tatiana gave us tickets to the
Outback Spectacular, which
really is a nice dinner show focused on life in the Outback. Mason has no
interest in stacking blocks, but he found stacking hats on Daddy's head very
amusing. Mason's favorite toy is this little lawn mower; Mason cuddles
with Cousin Cooper while he thinks of new ways to terrorize the little guy; and
Nana tries to convert Mason into a metrosexual.
Christmas Day finally arrives and Mason's anxious to dress the part. He
voluntarily got the Christmas cracker hat an put it on. Daddy rests with
Mason and Coops between festivities and we get a portrait of Mommy's side of the
family. After gifts and lunch, Mason puts on his sun suit and enjoys the
pool; and finally gets a start on the dips before the guests arrive.
Things slowed down after Christmas. Mason shows us that he enjoys corn
on the cob; does more swimming; has a fantastic time blowing bubbles and relaxes
with his lunch in the shade.
On this day (Courtesy of
Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia)...
Events
- 1450 -
Battle of Formigny; Toward the end of the
Hundred Years' War, the
French
attack and nearly annihilate
English
forces, ending English domination in northern France.
- 1632 -
Battle of Rain;
Swedes
under
Gustavus Adolphus defeat the
Holy Roman Empire during the
Thirty Years' War.
- 1738 -
Premiere in
London of
Serse, an
Italian opera
by
George Frideric Handel.
- 1755 -
Samuel Johnson's
A Dictionary of the English Language published in London.
- 1783 -
Preliminary articles of peace ending
Revolutionary War ratified.
- 1802 -
William Wordsworth and his sister,
Dorothy come across a "long belt" of
daffodils,
inspiring the former to pen
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.
- 1865 -
Abraham Lincoln dies after being shot the previous evening by
John Wilkes Booth.
- 1865 -
Andrew Johnson becomes the 17th
President of the United States.
- 1892 - The
General Electric Company is formed through the merger of the Edison
General Electric Company and the Thomson-Houston Company.
- 1912 - The
passenger liner
RMS
Titanic sinks at about 2:20 am after hitting an iceberg almost
three hours earlier.
- 1915 - The
Armenian Genocide began when the
Ottoman Empire undertook the systematic annihilation of
Armenian
intellectuals and entrepreneurs within the city of
Constantinople and later the entire Armenian population of the Empire.
- 1920 -
Anarchists
Sacco and Vanzetti allegedly murder two security guards while robbing a
shoe store.
- 1923 -
Insulin
first became generally available for use by
diabetics.
- 1924 -
Rand McNally publishes its first
road atlas.
- 1927 -
Douglas Fairbanks,
Mary Pickford and
Norma and
Constance Talmadge become the first celebrities to leave their
footprints in cement at
Grauman's Chinese Theater in
Hollywood.
- 1940 - The
Allies
start their attack on the
Norwegian
town of Narvik
which was occupied by
Nazi Germany.
- 1942 -
George Cross awarded to "to the island fortress of
Malta - its
people and defenders" by
King
George VI.
- 1945 -
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp liberated.
- 1947 -
Jackie Robinson debuts for the
Brooklyn Dodgers
baseball
team, breaking that sport's color line.
- 1955 - The
first
McDonald's restaurant opens in
Des Plaines, Illinois.
- 1983 -
Tokyo Disneyland opens.
- 1985 -
Marvin Hagler defeats
Thomas Hearns by a knockout in round three to retain
boxing's
world
Middleweight championship at
The War.
- 1989 - The
Hillsborough disaster, one of the biggest tragedies of
European
football,
occurs as
Liverpool F.C. fans get involved in a
crowd stampede that kills 96 people.
- 1989 - Upon
Hu
Yaobang's death, the
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 begin in the
People's Republic of China.
- 1994 -
Representatives of 124 countries and the
European Communities sign the
Marrakesh Agreements revising the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and setting up the
World Trade Organization (effective
January 1,
1995).
- 1997 - Fire
sweeps through a campsite of
Muslims
making the Hajj
pilgrimage; the official death toll is 343.
- 2001 -
Easter day
(not again until
2063).
- 2002 - An
Air China
Boeing
767-200 crashes into hillside during heavy rain and fog near
Pusan,
South
Korea killing 128.
- 2063 -
Easter day
(for the first time since
2001)
Births
- 1452 -
Leonardo da Vinci, artist (d.
1519)
- 1642 -
Suleiman II,
Sultan,
Ottoman Empire (d.
1691)
- 1684 -
Catherine I of Russia (d.
1727)
- 1688 -
Johann Friedrich Fasch, composer (d.
1758)
- 1707 -
Leonhard Euler, mathematician (d.
1783)
- 1793 -
Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, astronomer (d.
1864)
- 1800 -
James Clark Ross, explorer (d.
1862)
- 1815 -
Mary Ann Day Brown, wife of
John Brown (d.
1884)
- 1832 -
Wilhelm Busch, poet, graphic artist and painter (d.
1908)
- 1843 -
Henry
James, author (d.
1916)
- 1858 -
Émile Durkheim,
sociologist (d.
1917)
- 1861 -
Bliss Carman, poet (d.
1929)
- 1878 -
Robert Walser, lyricist and narrator (d.
1956)
- 1879 -
Melville Henry Cane, U.S. lawyer and poet (d.
1980)
- 1883 -
Stanley Bruce, eighth
Prime Minister of Australia (d.
1967)
- 1889 -
Thomas Hart Benton, U.S. muralist (d.
1975)
- 1894 -
Bessie Smith,
blues singer (d.
1937)
- 1895 -
Clark McConachy, billiards and snooker player (d.
1980)
- 1901 -
Joe Davis,
English
snooker
player (d. 1978)
- 1902 -
Fernando Pessa,
Portuguese
journalist (d. 2002)
- 1912 -
Kim
Il Sung, dictator of
North
Korea (d. 1994)
- 1916 -
Helene Hanff, author (d.
1997)
- 1917 -
Hans Conried, actor (d.
1982)
- 1920 -
Richard von Weizäcker,
President of Germany
1984-1994
- 1921 -
Georgi Beregovoi,
cosmonaut
(d. 1995)
- 1924 - Sir
Neville Marriner, English conductor and violinist
- 1930 -
Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, former
President of Iceland
- 1931 -
Raymond McNally, author (d.
2002)
- 1933 -
Roy Clark,
country musician
- 1933 -
Elizabeth Montgomery, actress (d.
1995)
- 1933 -
Boris Strugatsky, author
- 1938 -
Claudia Cardinale, actress
- 1940 -
Jeffrey Archer, author,
Member of Parliament
- 1942 -
Walt Hazzard,
basketball star
- 1944 -
Dave Edmunds, musician
- 1950 -
Amy
Wright, actress
- 1951 -
Heloise,
newspaper columnist
- 1954 -
Seka,
pornographic film actress
- 1955 -
Dodi
Fayed, businessman (d.
1997)
- 1957 -
Evelyn Ashford,
track
athlete
- 1959 -
Emma Thompson, actress
- 1959 -
Thomas F. Wilson, actor
- 1960 -
Tony
Jones,
English
snooker player
- 1962 -
Nawal El Moutawakel, hurdler
- 1965 -
Linda
Perry, musician
- 1966 -
Samantha Fox, singer
- 1967 -
Dara
Torres, swimmer
- 1968 -
Stacey Williams, supermodel
- 1969 -
Nicolás Pinkus,
Argentina,
Master in Communications, Poet
- 1972 -
Arturo Gatti, world champion boxer
- 1983 -
Ilya Kovalchuk,
Russian
NHL player
- 1990 -
Emma
Watson, actress
- 2005 -
Mason Bollar, baby
Deaths
- 1621 -
John
Carver, first governor of Plymouth Colony
- 1718 -
Ignacije Szentmartony,
Croatian
geographer (b. 1793)
- 1843 -
Noah Webster,
American
lexicographer (b.
1758)
- 1854 -
Arthur Aikin, English chemist, mineralogist and scientific writer (b.
1773)
- 1865 -
Abraham Lincoln,
President of the United States (b.
1809)
- 1888 -
Matthew Arnold, English poet (b.
1822)
- 1888 -
Father Damien, Belgian missionary priest in
Hawaii (b.
1840)
- 1898 -
Kepa Te Rangihiwinui,
Maori
military leader
- 1911 -
Antoine Lumière, photographer, industrialist, father of
Auguste and Louis Lumière
- 1912 -
John Jacob Astor IV, businessman (b.
1864)
- 1912 -
Benjamin Guggenheim, businessman (b.
1865)
- 1942 -
Robert Musil, novelist (The
Man Without Qualities) (b.
1880)
- 1949 -
Wallace Beery, actor (b.
1885)
- 1964 -
Rachel Carson,
American
biologist
and author
(b. 1907)
- 1969 -
Victoria Eugenie Julia Ena Maria Christina of Battenberg,
Queen consort of
Spain
- 1974 -
Giovanni D'Anzi, Italian songwriter
- 1980 -
Jean-Paul Sartre, philosopher and writer (b.
1905)
- 1982 -
Arthur Lowe,
British actor (b.
1915)
- 1984 -
Tommy Cooper, comedy magician (b.
1921)
- 1986 -
Jean
Genet, author (b.
1910)
- 1988 -
Kenneth Williams, actor and comedian (b.
1926)
- 1989 -
Hu
Yaobang, leader of
China (b.
1915)
- 1990 -
Greta
Garbo, actress (b.
1905)
- 1993 -
John Tuzo Wilson, geologist (b.
1908)
- 1993 -
Leslie Charteris, author (b.
1907)
- 1998 -
Pol Pot,
Cambodian
dictator (b. 1925)
- 2000 -
Edward Gorey, illustrator (b.
1925)
- 2001 -
Joey
Ramone, lead
singer for
The
Ramones (b.
1951)
- 2002 -
Damon Knight,
science fiction author (b.
1922)
- 2002 -
Byron
White, US athlete and Supreme Court justice
Holidays and Observances
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