Christmas Images, and the Longest Christmas Break Ever

As of today, Andrew and Sam have been out of school for Two Entire Weeks. This is thanks to 3 snow days, and a generous scheduled break. We (mostly me) are getting a little stir crazy with crummy weather and too many video games, but we'll try to enjoy the next few days anyway.

Alan is thankful to have Pennsylvania teams to root for this year. We're looking forward to the Penn St. Rose Bowl game, the Eagles being in the NFL playoffs, and still savoring the Phillies WS win in October. The boys and I had these newspaper images framed for him for Christmas.

It's looking like a White Christmas

We're snowed in, and have been for several days! Sam may never have such a snowy birthday again. We're trying to avoid going stir-crazy with sledding, snow football, and Christmas preparations. Shannon ventured out to play 4 performances of "Messiah" over the weekend, but otherwise we were stuck home. The symphony did cancel one performance, the Sat. night, and it was the first concert they had canceled since the 80's.

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All I Want for Christmas is One of My Front Teeth

Sam had what he called "a little drama" last night, as his lose tooth twisted out of position while he was brushing his teeth. But that must have done the trick, because when he woke up, the tooth was gone! Mom found it in the bedding and Sam has put it in a bag with a note for the Tooth Fairy asking if he can keep the tooth. You may be able to read Sam's note if you double click on the picture.

We have also been visited by the Snow Fairy this week. Andrew and Sam had two hour delays on Monday and Tuesday, then snow days on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday...and now, two weeks of Winter Vacation! Dad got to play principal for a day at his old school in case students showed up, since the real principal was snowed in. But as the empty parking lot attests, the kids went sledding instead - they're no dummies! Andrew and Sam have been enjoying their new sleds, too, and they are learning to go fast!

P.S. More snow is expected on Sunday.

The Patient

Bailey is acting more like her usual self each day. She successfully licked the dirty dishes in the dishwasher this afternoon, and seemed to have no trouble balancing to do so. We took her to the vet for a check-up and to have her pain patch removed this morning. Everything is healing like it's supposed to. She'll get her stitches taken out on Christmas Eve.

Weekend Update

We've had a busy few days, and most of our outings and events have been about Sam!

Sam and I listened to a Seattle Symphony dress rehearsal on Thursday morning. My friend and colleague Ben Hausmann is performing a Vivaldi oboe concerto this week, so we went mostly to hear him. He sounded amazing, and I think Sam had fun at Benaroya Hall, especially picking out a snack at Starbucks.

Later on Thursday, Sam had his first basketball practice. He liked that too, and was looking pretty stylish with the new basketball shoes.

And, we celebrated Sam's birthday with some of his school friends at our house tonight. We had pizza, cake, and some games. The kids were mostly interested in playing with Sam's new stuff, and with our normal stuff. It's amazing how kids love playing with anyone else's toys.

After the party, it started to snow! It's very pretty with the lights....we'll see if it lasts.

Bailey is doing pretty well. She's a real trooper. She rests a lot, and gets around okay with some help. I just took her out in the snow, and I think she liked it.

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December update

We're still here......

Last weekend, Andrew and Sam played at "Festival of Trees" in Tacoma. It was tough to get photos at the performance, but here they are next to the Rainiers tree.

They also worked on this Lego ship over the weekend. It's not as huge as some of their creations, but it has plenty of details.

We've been preoccupied with Bailey since just before Thanksgiving. We found a bump on her foot, and it turned out to be cancerous. Fortunately, her vets determined that it is localized, but in order to remove the entire tumor (and be sure that they get all of it), they will amputate part of her leg. We are all very sad about this, but have been assured by several vets and other dog people that she should adapt pretty easily. She'll have the surgery on Thursday, come home Friday, then we will run a dog rehab center here for a while. She should get her stitches out just before Christmas, and hopefully she'll be feeling pretty good by then.

Thanksgiving Day and Sam's Early Birthday

We're in Oregon for Thanksgiving this year. It was a loooong trip down I-5 on Wednesday night, nearly 5 hours total in some ugly traffic. Since we've been here, we've had a nice and relaxing time. Andrew and Sam have played non-stop with Nate and Ian. Dave made a delicious turkey on the grill, and we all ate too much at our Thanksgiving dinner.

Today, we celebrated Sam's and Dave's birthdays. Sam loved his presents, especially his new clothes (Favre Jet's shirt and Phillies jacket), and Lego Star Wars ship.

Better Luck Next Year, Art

Sam made a cutout of his hand at Sunday School that became a "turkey feather" on a big, paper turkey at church. He showed it to me tonight when we took Andrew to his religious ed. class. On each finger was written something he is thankful for....Mom, Dad, Andrew, Bailey...and Pam.

(Art, Grandmas, Grandpa, don't feel too bad. I'm sure he's thankful for you too. But Pam is special because she rhymes, and he knows how to spell her name.)

Andrew made his "feather" tonight. He's thankful for his DS, the Wii, home and friends. The 5th finger on his became the turkey's head.

"Cool Your Heels"

Here's Andrew's latest writing assignment. He had to pick an idiom and write a story that used it both literally and as an idiom.


“Cool Your Heels”

There was a scientist named Dr. Woggles. He made robots of all different kinds. His robots had controllers that made them walk and talk. They talk to each other unless they are turned off. They like to talk about science fiction and science non-fiction.

During that time, Dr. Woggles was making TXT4000, a very high-tech robot.

One night, TXT1000 woke up without being turned on. It turned on all the other robots, and they decided to have a journey. So, they went out of Dr. Woggle’s lab and into the night.

By morning, they were in the jungle and Dr. Woggles didn’t know where they were. During their journey, TXT500, a dumber robot, was going a little fast, so TXT2000 said, “Cool your heels!” and TXT500 jumped in a puddle and lost his technology.

About two weeks later, TXT4000 was done. Dr. Woggles let him outside and used his control to make a satellite wave that contacted the other robots.

They were so excited to go back that TXT2000 started running, so TXT3000 said, “Cool your heels!” and he stopped. When they got back, Dr. Woggles took TXT1000 and looked at his wires. One was loose, so he fixed it.

Recital and update

Andrew and Sam played their fall violin recital on Tuesday night, and they both were great! Andrew played a pretty hard piece, "Gavotte" from Mignon, and he did a great job of remembering all of the sections (there were 6 all together). Sam played "Song of the Wind", and he also stayed focused and played really well.

Last night, we went to watch Lauren Jerde, Andrew and Sam's favorite babysitter and daughter of Alan's colleague Susanne, play soccer for her HS team in the 1st round of the state playoffs. Lauren scored the only goal in a 1-0 win, so now she's even more their hero than she was before! We might go and watch them play again on Saturday.

Phantastic!!!

In honor of the WORLD CHAMPION Philadelphia Philles, here are a few pictures from our first and only visit to Citizen's Bank Park, in the summer of 2003.

And, one more from when Andrew (age 2) and I met Jaime Moyer. He couldn't have been nicer to us that day, and we couldn't be happier for him now!

Drama

I was all ready to enjoy some peace and quiet (hah!) this afternoon after I took Sam to school when the phone rang. It’s the school. Andrew fell off the fire truck climbing structure and has a cut in the back of his head. So, I picked him up, and we went to Group Health to get it checked out. It stopped bleeding pretty quickly, but the school nurse thought we should have a dr. look at it. I’m glad we went, because after they cleaned him up they decided that he needed some stitches. So, we got that done, and he was really brave during the whole process. The cut looked a lot better after it was stitched. And, with Andrew's hair, you can't even tell. We made it back to school in time to pick up Sam, and Andrew was greeted like a wounded war hero by his class as they were coming out to the bus. Apparently they had all seen him bleeding, and he bled quite a bit when it first happened. He told them about the stitches, and they were really impressed.


Of course, Andrew described it all in detail to Sam, who was really concerned, not for Andrew, but that someday he might have to have stitches and get a numbing shot in the back of his head.


The dr. cleared Andrew to play soccer tomorrow, which surprised me a little bit. Game on!

More from Pennsylvania...

Here are some more images from our trip....Washington's house at Valley Forge, the Liberty Bell, the Nittany lion cake at the rehearsal dinner, and dinner with the bride and groom at Ruth's Chris.

Art and Pam's wedding

October 11, 2008

Vocab

Andrew was looking ahead at some of his assignments that he will be taking on our trip. Each week, he has a (rather difficult, I think) vocabulary word that he has to define, find synonyms and antonyms for, and use in a paragraph. This coming week's word is "meticulous". Alan suggested that the recent Lego ship might make a good subject; it was built in a meticulous way. Andrew's response, "No, I already wrote about that. It was "unprecedented"."

Getting Ready....

Today featured haircuts for all three guys in the house. Andrew and Sam got the "spiky" finished look, which we might try to recreate for the wedding.

And, your soccer update includes 3 games today. Sam's team finally got some competition. They played to a 1-1 tie in the first game, and lost the second in a blow-out. Sam made the only goal in the first game, and one in the second too. Andrew's team was winning at half-time in a blow-out, so his coach made a sportsman-like move; he suggested to the other coach that they switch some players around for the 2nd half. So, two of Andrew's teammates played for the other team, and two of their players came over and played for us. It made for a really competitive 2nd half, and was fun to watch.

Now, it's all about laundry and packing for Monday!

Spider Patrol, Lego Masterpiece, and more Soccer

Here's a random assortment of updates from our house this weekend:

• This is the final version of Andrew's Lego ship, which has now been dismantled. Sam was getting frustrated with not being able to build much, since Andrew had used many of the good pieces. It went out in a blaze of glory, i.e. Sam dropped it on the floor and it exploded into a million pieces.
• We have an autumn visitor outside our family room window. He or she seems to have found a good spot, so now we observe him/her eating, repairing the web, etc.
• There were 4 soccer games this weekend - Andrew played in a local tournament. His team came up against some good competition from Seattle, and went 1-2 this weekend. Sam had one game, and it was quite one-sided in their favor. The most interesting part came when Coach Bruno offered to bring treats to Thursday's practice if they passed the ball more. After that, there was A LOT of passing, to the point that they were passing up easy goals.

Spicciati Soccer Scoreboard, One Word Edition

WET.


I know, we better get used to it. The forecast said 30% chance of rain on Saturday, but it seemed like 100% to us. We survived 3 very wet games. The kids didn't seem to mind at all, but the parents did. Sam's team met up with some good competition this week. He scored 3 goals in the first game and none in the second. There was a lot less scoring overall - maybe they're starting to get the hang of playing defense. Andrew played well in his game, mostly as a defender. He had a nice "header", his first one in a game situation.


As a side note, Sam of the discriminating tastes decided he'd try a sip of my coffee during Andrew's game. He loved it, and now he sips my coffee every morning. Yesterday, he told me he likes the coffee we make at home better than what we get at Starbucks.

Preview

Modeling their finery for Art and Pam's wedding!

(They look like they could be running for president!)