Getting close to Christmas

We are definitely getting into the mood for Christmas; last weekend we went and collected a smallish tree, which the kids decorated in record time:

Lots of cookie-baking recently; Amy and Lydia made three batches (cutouts, some sort of chocolate thing, and then peanut-butter cookies with Hershey's kisses on top) and I did nut bars with Lydia. I am not as good at making them as my mom, but at least they come out tasting something like the way they are supposed to.

Also: snow! This morning we woke up to another 8 inches or so of the white stuff. Very powdery unfortunately, so no prospects for snowballs or snow forts. The kids did their other favorite game, which is to make a huge snow mound and then tunnel through it:

 

 

Ok, maybe a little too much snow at this point. Time to head in side and warm up:

 

Word games

Ethan has been having fun with a cool web site: www.wordle.net. Here is a Wordle that he created with it to describe his World Geography class (currently his favorite at Diamond):

Kind of neat. You can create your own by typing in a bunch of words (including repeats for particularly important words), and it will arrange them in interesting styles for you.

Off for a Bike Ride

Here is an inter-generational photo of some assorted male family members getting ready for a bike ride, just after Thanksgiving.

Pretty motley crew. Rustin is on his commuter bike, Ethan is riding Rustin's old mountain bike (a superb ride), I'm riding my ancient road bike, and my dad is stuck with my beat-up old moutain bike, which is in horrendous shape-- it never fully recovered from a year of hard use in England. I am somewhat amazed that he managed to make it all the way through the ride without a catastrophic breakdown of some sort.

We had a nice Thanksgiving meal, then hosted Janet and Tom for brunch the following Sunday. Their son Theo is now four months old and is an incredibly good-natured and cute baby-- lots of smiles.

Kitchen stuff

We had some work done on our kitchen this fall-- new cabinets and a new countertop. Amazingly, it was pretty much finished before Thanksgiving (we had tempted fate by scheduling the work in the second half of November). Here is a shot of the semi-completed product:

 

We are still waiting for the cleanup and final coat of paint, however. Oddly, the guy we hired seems to have completely disappeared on us, even though there is only a tiny bit left to do. Home improvement is a mysterious process...

Cross country

Ethan had a good season this fall running on the cross country team at Diamond. Here is a picture of him (taken by Amy) running at the state championships in Devens:

He did well this year, won a number of his races and placed 21st in the statewide championships in his age group. He's a very intense runner -- from his expression he is definitely not out for a stroll in the park.

He is also so much faster now than I am that it is almost embarrassing for me to go jogging with him (he keeps on saying things like "Why are you going so slowly, dad?" while I huff and puff). Much more fun to watch him race from the sidelines than it is to try to keep up with him;

The Diamond cross-country team has a couple of good coaches, a nice course to run on (runs through a nearby wooded area) and is very well attended. The girls team is especially good-- they won nearly all their meets this year.

The races for Ethan's age group around usually around 1.4 to 1.8 miles long. His best pace for that distance is about a 6:10 or 6:05. Yikes!

Tutoring a tooter to toot

Lydia is now learning to play the trumpet; our house is now regularly filled with toots, bleats, squawks, peals, warbles, blaats, honks, and other dulcet tones from her horn. She is making good progress and it enjoying the classes; the teacher that Amy picked out for her is almost ideal for her learning style. Lydia has learned a couple of simple songs and likes to roam around the house with her instrument looking for opportunities to play for her brother and her parents, to wit:

Good stuff. Her goal is to get good enough to play the theme from "Wallace and Gromit".

Kitchen work

Here is a picture of Lydia enthusiastically kneading some sort of yeast dough (I think this was a batch of cinnamon rolls-- can't quite recall):

She really has the cooking bug these days-- wants to help with just about everything (even cooking dishes that she won't eat afterwards).

Our other kitchen-related news is that we are getting some new cabinets and a new countertop. Not too much longer to wait now-- the countertop guys are supposed to some in next week and do the installation.