Lilly has been participating in a heart health program at her school. She went from two consecutive jumps to 50 at a time in about a week. She’s also been skating, with and without a hockey stick, and has a fine-looking swing with a bat. She spends more time than ever on her living-room trapeze, [...]
Laura gave a presentation about the Chinese language for a 7th grade class at her cousin Adam’s school today. She was a little nervous, but she got through it, and her turtle joke went over well. Mary took a couple of severe, Salgado-like pictures to capture the atmosphere at St. Bede’s.
Auntie Nic was here the last few days. She seems never to stop doing crafts and stuff. The kids dig it. Here they were making little painted glass refrigerator magnets. (As usual, click on the picture for more.)
December is always multiple madness month at our house. Lilly’s birthday, then Laura’s, then Christmas and New Year, then (today) Mary’s. Here are some pics of all the stuff we crammed into the week between Christmas and New Year. The Santa summary: Mary got the Kitchenaid mixer she’s been wanting. I got the pair of [...]
We threw a party for Lilly’s birthday a week after her actual birthday. All the aunts and uncles and cousins came over. The best present was a tablet on which you paint in water and it shows up like black ink, but disappears when the water dries. Her grandfather showed her how to hold the [...]
Well that was interesting. I was just at Lilly’s kindergarten class for a song-and-snack to mark her birthday. When I walked into the classroom, an African-American boy named Durrell took one look at my gig bag and said, “That’s a five-string.” A five-string what, I asked him. “I don’t know. A five-string.” After the songs [...]
Laura has been uploading her own fiction to the Artemis Fowl fan site at fangathering.com. Take a look. There’s more on the way. She writes it out longhand and then types it in, editing as she goes. I like the level of detail that goes into her scene descriptions, and her dialogue can be kind [...]
Lilly calls him “my uncle Peter.” He has certainly become accomplished at the uncle-ly arts, chief among them that of making mere dads look kind of stodgy and lame by comparison. Right, thanks for the clothes, dad. Now uncle Peter, he gave me this cool set of knitted finger puppets that will encourage my creativity [...]
When I got back from India, Mary and Laura picked me up at the airport and we hauled ass to the Playmates preschool harvest festival, where Laura and I were booked to do some pickin’ and grinnin’ with our friends Breck and Stanley. We played a few tunes and had a blast, even though I [...]
This site has an impressively long list of education policy blogs that a person could spend all day looking at. I can’t do that, but I can reprint the list right here for those who are interested: Andrew Pass Barnett Berry Bill Jackson’s Education Blog Board Buzz The Chalkboard Charter Blog Chris Correa Cranky Professor [...]
Laura’s web site is up and running. It has a comments area, which she invites everyone to use, and will soon have some of her awesome art. This weekend she graduated from MS Paint to Paint Shop Pro and has already been producing some impressive stuff. Stay tuned.
I should say something about the concert we saw last weekend. Mary, Laura and I went over to Berkeley to see the New Lost City Ramblers, who have been collecting and performing old-time, mostly Appalachian music since well before I was born. The leader is Mike Seeger, who is brother to Peggy Seeger and half-brother [...]
I’ve always got an eye open for musical role models that Laura might like. She has pronounced likes and dislikes already, but she hasn’t heard all that much. (She digs Arlo Guthrie enormously, and she’s been liking the very impressive Abigail Washburn CD we got recently, to give you an idea of how her tastes [...]
Did Rothko have MS Paint when he was a kid? (Click picture for slideshow.)
Lilly spent the last couple of weeks of the summer going to day camp at Starr King Elementary, getting ready to start Mandarin immersion kindergarten there. (Started now, and going well, thank you.) We had a couple of playground get-togethers to meet the other families in the program. It’s a nice mix of people from [...]
Catching up on some of the summer activities: In the middle of August, on an impulse, we grabbed the last empty spot at the Henry Cowell campground up in the hills above Santa Cruz. We spent the weekend there hiking and goofing off, and then descended on the beach boardwalk on Monday for some intensive [...]