Today, we uploaded our 20,000th image to our Flickr Pro account. Actually after uploading pictures from Felicia’s Birthday and today’s Rotary Bowling Party, we currently stand at 20,150 … and counting.

We started taking digital pictures almost nine years ago, when Jocelyn was in gestation, and Grandee convinced us to take some pictures of Karen’s growing belly. Soon after, we started our family website. The rest is history.

Scholars may debate exactly which image was our official 20,000th. Flickr’s numeric winner was a minor little birthday snapshot from Friday. But since there are probably a few duplicates — and quite a few of our “blogged” images are actually cropped versions of larger originals — absolute certainty could be controversial.

But I choose this one. Not only was it included within the bulk upload that eclipsed the milestone, but it itself is a picture of three other people taking a picture of Felicia’s birthday cake. And the two pink cameras are new gifts from Grandee & Grandpa, and their mere existence should result in future exponential growth of Martin-Keller digital images. So many layers of irony and appropriateness …

Felicia’s birthday festivities on her actual birthday centered around a special playdate at Lincoln Glen Park, featuring lots of friends from our SJPPNS preschool class, along with some other special guests. … oh, and cupcakes, too!

We brought cupcakes in both chocolate and white cake, and both were covered in orange frosting, personally chosen by Felicia. Here she is pondering the beauty of the cupcake. As you can imagine, her Third Birthday photoset on Flickr includes lots of orange and purple frosting smeared all over the faces of her friends.

It’s Felicia’s third birthday, so it’s time to continue my annual tradition of the special “Birthday Book from Daddy” … I’m sort of continuing the theme from Christmas, where I gave the women in my family matching shirts with their letters …. “F is for Felicia” etc …

Some of Felicia’s favorite books to read over the past few months have been from our Richard Scarry collection. She especially enjoys “Cars, Trucks and Things That Go” and “Busy, Busy Town.” So this year’s birthday book brings Richard Scarry into the mix as she begins to learn the alphabet and numbers … Richard Scarry’s ABC Word Book

Of course, Scarry was an enormously popular children’s author and illustrator who published over 300 books. To make this gift more special, I managed to find an original copy of the 1971 publication run. It’s been well-loved by its previous owners, but it should last for several more readings in our family.

For Kicks, I threw in an older (but not quite original) copy of his “Best Word Book Ever.” It’s the 1991 edition (slightly different from the 1963 original), and it’s in excellent shape.

Sometimes, it’s the parents who say the silly things …

Felicia celebrates her third birthday on Wednesday this week, and the festivities began on Tuesday with a round of “Happy Birthday to You” at her preschool.

One of Felicia’s classmates really wanted to join her for the traditional blowing-out of the birthday candle (pictured here with Teacher Sharon). Ryan moved in-and-out of the picture frame throughout the proceedings, and may have actually succeeded in extinguishing the flame before Felicia could. Our little Sweetums was completely untroubled by her friend, and didn’t even seem to notice his involvement.

It was a different story for Karen. … So focused was she on the young man’s presence, that when we came to the last verse of the song, she sang “Happy Birthday, Dear Ryan” instead of saying her own daughter’s name.

We just got back from a great weekend adventure at Lake Tahoe! We joined Jocelyn’s good friend Giuliana and her family for a long weekend in Truckee. We went to Northstar on Friday, and then spent the day at Sugarbowl on Saturday.

Felicia joined us halfway through the weekend, and got to play in the snow and ride a snowboard for the first time! She also rode her snowboard for a little bit at Tahoe Donner, and we’ve took some video, too.

For allof the pictures, visit the Flickr photoset: “2007 Calia Family in Tahoe”

… Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

The soundtrack for Mary Poppins continues to be in heavy rotation in our car … Felicia still enjoys the song that includes her own name, and recently she’s discovered another familiar name in the soundtrack …

From Wikipedia: “A Man Has Dreams” is the leit motif of the protagonist, “George Banks” as lyrics express his despair. The song is performed as a conversation between Bert, the chiminey sweep (Dick Van Dyke) and George Banks (David Tomlinson) is operatic in nature, sung dialogue, and was highly unusual for a musical film of that era.

Anyway … at one point in the song, George laments “that Poppins woman” and expresses his dismay over the word “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” — but he can’t pronounce it properly. He tries, but he stutters over it:

George Banks: “Super-ca … Super-ca …”
Felicia: “Why he saying my cousin’s name?”
Daddy: “What do you mean, Sweetums?”
Felicia: “He saying Tiana’s name.”
Daddy: “Oh, Super-K …..”

It’s Girl Scout Cookie season!

Jocelyn spent a big chunk of time this weekend selling Girl Scout Cookies to our friends and neighbors, including a sales call at Crossbow on Monday.

She’s already reached her official goal of 130 boxes (she sold 108 last year) … and she’s set a new, personal goal of 200 boxes. If you need cookies, Jocelyn wants to sell them to you …

Of course, she had a little help from her sister, who was a very able assistant salesperson, sharing her own stories about her favorite cookies. Jocelyn also dressed for success this year, wearing her Brownie Vest and some matching brown boots. And each time Jocelyn got a nice comment about the boots, Felicia would feel the need to show off her tennis shoes.

Felicia is well on the way to becoming potty-trained. Officially.

She’s made tremendous progress this week, as demonstrated by the trail of snowman stickers on her small potty. When the trail ran into the floor, we had to start another one. Since we’re also running low on snowman stickers, we’ll probably switch to penguins next.

Indeed. There’s no question that having a stay-at-home-father has an influence on our girls. For one thing, Felicia — who is constantly categorizing and naming the world around her — knows with absolute certainty that everyone has a daddy.

It started a few months ago. During our Teacher Sharon infatuation, in addition to seeing look-a-likes at every turn, Felicia also speculated on who Sharon’s father was. “That’s Teacher Sharon and her Daddy,” she said, pointing at a standard picture of a couple inside a frame for sale at Target.

Any woman accompanied by an adult male is obviously with her father. About any woman without a male escort, Felicia asks, “Where’s her daddy?” All men are daddies, even those who might not be daddies, even teenagers.

On a drive home from Roseville last week, Felicia announced that “Grandpa is Grandee’s daddy.”

By the way, she seems totally content with the idea that our Cousin Kiana has two mommies. Cool, eh?