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.