Highlights from Thanksgiving weekend

Our Thanksgiving weekend was full of family, great food, and kids having fun! Our turkey on the grill was excellent (we highly recommend it)
and the food this year may have been the best ever. We celebrated birthdays the day before Thanksgiving (Kathy, Sam and Dave), and the birthday party turned into a music and dance fest with Andrew playing the violin while the other kids danced. The day after, we took a drive up to Camano Island. The weather cooperated beautifully, though we couldn't handle the cold at the beach for too long. Andrew and Sam loved playing "Man vs. Wild" on our property with their Power Ranger walkie-talkies (thanks, Aunt Kelli!). The weekend ended with an unfortunate loss for our Huskies in the Apple Cup, but at least our Coug friends (and Apple Cup hosts) were happy.

Andrew's Last Soccer Game

Andrew's team had a great season. The other kid, coach, and parents were a very good group. Sam liked it too, especially snack and his "one man" games of soccer, football, baseball - whatever was available - on the sideline. Andrew was remarkably improved from the year before, a payoff of soccer camp and soccer at recess all last year. This year, he was most comfortable at sweeper (defense), but also scored some goals, as you can see in this video of his last one. It starts with Andrew taking a corner kick on the far side of the field. Keep your eyes on him!

Busy Friday

Sam and I attended Meredith Hill's Veteran's Day assembly this morning, to hear Andrew sing a solo part in one of the songs. Andrew did a great job and was cool as a cucumber. Then, Sam and I drove to the fire station to join his preschool class on a field trip. Sam thought it was pretty cool to see all of the firefighter's gear and trucks.

Lego creation

For as long as I can remember, Andrew has loved Legos. He started with the bigger Duplo blocks as a toddler, and has gone on to the microscopic pieces of Bionicles and other fancy sets. When Andrew was in preschool, every time we went on a field trip we would come home and recreate it in Legos. I loved Legos as a kid too, and my mom saved my big Lego sets and gave them to Andrew and Sam a few years ago. Andrew gets a Lego magazine, and you can send in a photo of something original that you've built. I'm going to send this one in for him...he built it over the weekend using my old blocks. We'll let you know if it gets published!

Loot

1 Blue Power Ranger + 1 Ghoulish Skeleton Guy = 1 Giant Bowl of Candy

Thanks to my cousin Jenny for giving us the idea for the "family candy bowl", i.e. all the candy goes into one bowl and everyone shares. This eliminated a lot of the post-Halloween whining about "he got such-and-such piece of candy and I didn't!", etc.

By the way, the eyeballs that they are holding are not candy, they're bouncy balls. Of everything that came home tonight, those were their favorites. They even light up, very cool.

The World Series of Pumpkins

Alan's getting pretty fancy with the pumpkin carving this year! These were way harder than Sam's Packer pumpkin from last year.

The boys, of course, are happily anticipating Halloween and trick-or-treating. Mom is happily anticipating sharing some of their chocolate!

Bailey would love some Halloween candy, but she was happy enough eating some of the pumpkin chunks that fell when Alan was carving. I think Bailey was a goat in a previous life.

New York in photos

I'm still recovering from our trip to NY last week....it was quite an adventure. The photos show some highlights. My favorite moments were connecting with friends (Emi and Victor), and family (Tony, Kathy, Jack and Marty) that I haven't seen for a while. I also loved the home of Hilary Tann, composer of several works on our recital program, and our host at Union College. It was built in 1770, and used by the British as a field hospital during the Revolutionary War. Hilary and her husband David have cannonballs on their mantel that were shot through the front of the house during the war. If you're interested in reading more, they have a website at http://www.themarshallhouse.org/. Mom and I enjoyed an organ concert at St. Patrick's cathedral in NYC, and sampling some of the city's great restaurants.