Three Thanksgivings

Three is a lot of Thanksgivings but we enjoyed all of them, especially since we had a six-and-a-half day weekend in which to entertain ourselves.  The first Thanskgiving, on Thursday, was at Danny's sister Jill's house.  I brought mashed potatoes and acorn squash vinaigrette, and made the gravy when the time came.  There were a a couple people there I didn't know, and in introducing ourselves, we found we were relatives:  one that I spoke to was my husband's sister's husband's sister's husband's daughter from his first marriage.  It reminded me of Spaceballs.  Dinner was lovely and so was the after-dinner music, provided by the houseful of accomplished folk musicians in attendance, including Danny on recorder, Kari on mountain dulcimer, and Aaron on drums.  Jill's husband Tony is a fine singer and songwriter; among other things, he adapted (and copyrighted) "Michael Row The Boat Ashore," and taught it to Pete Seeger.

Second Thanksgiving was at my friend Sam's house, with her family and several other colleagues, along with some of her relatives and a collection of friends of hers with young kids.  I contributed three kinds of cranberry sauce.  Jordan was the oldest child there by a couple of years and thus the ringleader, a role he enjoys.  We enjoyed our children's independence... all these other parents were there with their toddlers and infants, juggling plates and spilled drinks, and there we were lounging around, carrying on sustained conversations and occasionally offering to help.

Third Thanksgiving was with friends from Aaron's school, a pair of families we enjoy a lot.  We all have kids who are very well matched in age and temperament, and the adults like each other too, so it's always fun to get together.  I brought three kinds of pies:  a pumpkin, an apple galette, and a cranberry-almond-caramel tart.  Dinner was delicious and even more relaxed than at Sam's; we have graduated to actually having a kid table, as you can see, and at some point the kids run off on their own, leaving us to linger over our wine.  Wow!

I am amazed, and so grateful, that we have such a wealth of family and friends here.  What a great place to live.

Very cold and snowy

We got 6.5 inches of snow on Monday.  I measured it very directly by putting a ruler into the deep snow on our patio table. Startling! That's a lot more than they had downtown, and even Kari and Danny, over in Sammamish, only got half what we got.  We are quite socked in, not only because there's just a lot of snow and ice on the ground, but also because we live at the top of a steep hill.  Here are some folks in the Capitol Hill neighborhood last night:




I used this video to show the boys why we weren't driving to the zoo today.  They are home, of course; school closed at lunchtime Monday and will not reopen until after Thanksgiving weekend.  It's awesome to have a big backyard at a time like this, so that you can play in the snow and then go inside as soon as you get cold.

However, if you are willing to take a walk to Dahl Field, you get to some awesome sledding spots.  Did I say walk?

On the way, you pass groups of hardy teenagers sledding straight down the steep streets.  One guy was actually snowboarding and had built himself a little jump out of snow; we saw him jump it and them blam, on his belly on the sidewalk.  Ouch.  He seemed fine.  Another guy was riding what appeared to be a skateboard, but with a single short ski instead of wheels.  Others piled onto garbage can lids or what have you and went down the icy hill in piles, crashing into the bushes at the bottom.

The family-friendly zone is the big, not-too-steep sledding hill that curves out into a giant flat snowfield.  Dale took the boys there yesterday and they looooved it.  Today, it was pretty darned cold and they didn't last long.  It's supposed to get into the single digits tonight.

Finally, here's a picture of the boys on the way to school on Monday morning, when there was still school.  The trike did fine in the minimal snow we had then.

Parent-teacher conference

We managed to actually attend our parent-teacher conference for Jordan today, before all school-related activities closed down from the snow.  It was great!  Miss Wodrich was a keen observer of Jordan's strengths and was optimistic and constructive about the areas in which he has more room for improvement.  She said she really enjoys having Jordan in class, that he's funny, and that in particular, he asks fantastic questions during science discussions.  She can always count on him to take it to the next level, apparently.  Is that not a terrific skill to have?  We love that.

He is also strong in math, which we knew.  (Yesterday he figured out what 20 + 11 is; he said, "Mommy I know that 20 plus 10 is 30, and then eleven is one more than ten so I figured it must be 31 because that's one more than 30.")  And he is well integrated socially.  The areas where he has more work to do are reading and writing.  These are both fine, above the state average for his grade, but somewhat behind the targets for the advanced class he's in.  Miss Wodrich said that he is very good at sounding out unfamiliar words, and he has a good attitude.  (I say Miss Wodrich has a good attitude, too!  I appreciate that she knows what he is good at and is building on that.)  We can help by setting up a more structured routine for him to read to us regularly at home (right now, this just happens if we're all in the mood).  Supposedly the reading will help with his writing, too.  He's enthusiastic about writing (I have yet to post the pictures of the book he authored and illustrated last week!).  Now we want to help him step it up in terms of consistently putting spaces between words, using spelling that we can understand better, writing letters forwards, and so on.

Three cheers for first grade!

Snow

There was snow in the forecast, but I wasn't expecting this much!  Schools are closing at 12:35.  I am working at home this morning, and I'll get the kids; Dale will arrive soon after that, and I'll spend the afternoon at a coffee shop.  Within walking distance.

Looking back at our adventures two years ago makes me grateful to be in our snug home.  I wish I had more groceries, but we'll make do.

We love Robert!

We have a new kid-sitter, and he's quite a score:  our rabbis' thirteen-year-old son.  (We have a husband-and-wife team of rabbis, in case you thought the apostrophe was misplaced.)  His name is Robert, he looks like Harry Potter, he has lovely manners, and he is a huge hit with the kids.  He is not an experienced babysitter, but I spotted him doing a nice job looking after the kids at a temple event, and his parents gave us the go-ahead to get him started.  The first time he played with Jordan and Aaron he brought his gigantic cartridge-loaded nerf guns.  This time, he brought this amazing remote-controlled toy helicopter.  They are inclined to idolize a friendly teenage boy under any circumstances, but with these props, he's a superhero.  His mother was a little anxious as to whether we would be okay with the guns, but for pete's sake what's the point of having a boy babysitter if you don't let it rip with the cartoon violence?  And Robert is really great with the kids.  Tonight we left them alone for the first time and went out to coffee while he put them to bed.  Okay, they duped him into reading the longest book we own and leaving the aquarium light on and the door wide open...  he's a rookie.  But no harm done.  And we get a date night every other Sunday.  Whoopee!

Blog changes on the way

After a scare in which we suddenly wondered where all those old Kodak Gallery photo albums were that we used to send out, and couldn't find them online (but then we did), we decided that as fun as cloud computing is, we need to be committing our family archives to paper.  The blog too.  This is easy and is apparently achieved by "slurping."  Once that's done, some long-overdue changes are going to be implemented... for example, we're not going to be "changing Washingtons" anymore, and thank goodness for that.  So heads up.

In experimenting with updates to the title, styles, etc, I accidentally made changes I didn't mean to make yet, so if something looks a little off that's why.

Movies we'll never see

"Batman Reads."

"The Penguin Goes To The Zoo."

I have too much to remember

Another creative use for Wikki Stix:

P is for Prescription
T is for Tires
R is for Registration.