Quebec Trip

Lydia's French class at Diamond had a field trip this spring to Quebec -- here are some photos.

In the runup for the trip we discovered that Lydia's cell phone (an old Nokia inherited from Ethan) was in the process of dying -- although it would receive texts and calls for some reason things were broken on the outgoing side. I ordered her a new one (Moto G) and got it set up so that she would have a way to communicate.   I think the old phone did us a favor by kicking the bucket at just the right time, since the new one has (of course) a much better camera.

After scrupulously careful packing and organization, Lydia and Amy and I arose at the ridiculously early hour of 5am (yeeks) and had a nice breakfast of oatmeal and fruit, and we got her lunch all packed and ready to go. I drove her down to Diamond parking lot where she piled onto the bus. I chatted for a while with some of the other parents, then got in my car and started to drive off when at the last minute I noticed Lydia chasing the car to try to get me to stop. It turned out that she had forgotten her wristwatch, so I zoomed back home, got the watch, drove back to the parking lot, ran as fast I could over to the bus and delivered the watch (whew). Drove back home again, only to see Amy running out the kitchen door waving something. It was Lydia's wallet (with all her money) -- she had left it on her chair at breakfast. So I got in the car again, zoomed down to the parking lot, but the bus had already left at this point. Oh well -- we texted her about it and just told her to ask one of the teachers for a loan of some spending money.

Packing and departure mayhem aside, she had a fine time on the trip.

En route, stopping for a snack of "poutine":

Nous sommes arrivés...

This is the Chateau Frontenac hotel I believe

The tourist info center, where else...

More city photos

Cool mural

One of several breakfast photos. I can see that Lydia is making sure to get her daily minimal dose of chocolate...

This water bottle looks like something out of a Tintin cartoon for some reason:

Church visit:

 

Visit to a waterfall:

 

Friends:

Lunch! Looks like C.M.?

I love this photo --

More meal photography, NB -- what are these teenagers drinking?

 

Reading on the bus ride home:

The new phone was great for her to have on the trip, but it wasn't until she got back that it really began to kick into high gear-- the circle of friends with whom she'd been hanging out on the trip started a "group chat" via text, and her phone was absolutely deluged with text messages the following week.  It became fairly clear after a few days (and several thousand messages) that the prepaid plan was no longer going to cut it; we actually had to one that included unlimited texting. Dragged kicking and screaming into the cell phone age...

Mass Middle School State Championships

Today was the 2015 Massachusetts Middle School Track and Field Championship Meet -- big day for the Lydia and the Diamond Middle School track team.

Early bus from Lexington (7:30am); Lydia and were up well beforehand and had a nice breakfast of oatmeal and fruit. At around 11 my brother drove up from his place and we piled into the car to drive out to Fitchburg State University to catch the big event.

The weather, thank goodness, was perfect-- much cooler than last year. Sunny, breezy, high 60's (which down on the track translates into low 70's, since the astroturf heats up a lot in the sun). The scene:

This is a shot from one of the earlier heats -- one of Lydia's teammates (7th grader) running:

Lydia was in the last (fastest) heat for the girls 400M. Here are some shots. Tight pack of runners coming aroung the curve:

Starting to spread out:

Into the final stretch:

Lydia came in third, with a new personal record at 1 minute 3.6 seconds. Very close finish (she was 0.4 seconds off the leader). Third in the entire state-- wow!

Rustin, who was a very good sport sitting through 5+ hours worth of middle school track races one after the other (it gets sort of mind-numbing after a while):

Lydia getting her medal for the individual event:

After that it was a whole series of other events, then finally around 5pm it was the 4x400M relay. I don't have any photos of the actual race -- at the point that it started I realized that I had left my camera in my other bag, phooey.

It was a lot of fun to watch, I can tell you that. Lydia ran the first leg, and she opened up an absolutely huge lead over all the other runners; when she handed off to her teammate I could see the rest of the girls on her team were totally energized, and the other teams were already looking a little desperate.

Her team finished way, way out in front of the the rest of the pack; must have been a new school record for girls 4x400M, at least that would be my guess.

Medals for the relay:

Drove back home and made spaghetti for dinner; Lydia was pretty hungry when she got home.

Final results for the meet here.

Senior Recital

Ethan had his senior viola recital this past Friday -- we drove up to Andover to listen in, and I did some recording. I am not an especially skilled camera man; I bungled the start of the second set of pieces, but most of it came through.

Here they are uploaded to youtube. First piece, very technical/tricky:

Johann Sebastian Bach, Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor, BWV 1008

Second and third pieces, a bit more accessible:

Franz Schubert: Sonata Arpeggione for Viola and Piano in A Moniro, D. 821,
Edward Elgar: Salut d'amour, Op. 12

The Elgar starts at about 9:15 into the video.

Fourteen

Ethan's birthday card for Lydia:

Excellent quotes...

SnowBegone

2015 has been a truly punishing winter from the snow perspective -- we are up to 100 inches of snowfall so far, and we're not even through Feburary. Definitely the snowiest winter I have ever been through, bar none. Photos from the first big snowstorm:

Lydia was a huge help this winter on the shoveling front -- she always did her share, and never complained:

Back in Jan you could still sort of see our mailbox:

Between the storms: serious cold. Many weeks we never got above freezing (or anywhere near it), so no snow melting to speak of.

Here we are on the second big snowstorm (or was this the fourth? can't even remember). I myself managed to miss the third one (24") since I was away visiting in California; Lydia and Amy had to do all the shoveling on their own. Pix:

Our poor mailbox has been whacked by the snowplow and is now just sort of stuck in the snowbank, off to one side. I am going to wait for a while to repair it (not especially looking forward to digging it out):

View from the front porch. If you are familiar with what it normally looks like, this will give you a sense for how deep the snow is:

Photos from this morning (Feb 22). Upon hearing dire threats of rain this weekend, I spent several hours yesterday shoveling the roof (weird experience), throwing down vast quantities of white stuff and a ton of ice. Just to be contrary I also decided to shovel our front walk, although I left in a snow tunnel just for good measure:

View from the front porch again, this time after shoveling:

And last but not least -- short snow video.