Monday, March 23, 2009

Aidan and I were waiting in the car for Pete and Quincy to finish up baseball practice. Bored. Grabbed my camera and snapped these - see how the one on the right is brighter? That is the result of holding up a piece of paper under his face on the right side of the pic. Amazing how reflective skin is. You can see the reflection of the paper in his eyes. I have a snap of him from this weekend where he is positively glowing green from surrounding grass. Fortunately I know how to correct for that...
I thought this was a pretty sweet image. The boys like to sleep together (in the small bed no less!) and read for a bit when they wake up. Quincy's reading has continued to improve in leaps and bounds and he is surprised to realize that he can now read chapter books.

The last pics of mouse. This was from 2 days ago. He had rapidly gotten extremely decrepit and was tottering around unsteadily. It was clearly only a matter of time. Today was his time. He is laying legs up in his tank awaiting discovery by the kids. They've been home a couple hours and passed by his cage numerous times. I for one will miss him.

Friday, March 06, 2009

Chess club! Aged 7 & 9. Who knew how fun it could be? Wed eve we decided to enroll the kids in "Academic Chess" after school once a week starting the next day. Both of their best friends apparently are doing it and did the previous session. I picked them up at 4.30 they were bubbling over with excitement. Huh? They learned the "fried liver" attack. Huh? They also both got to play chess with their buddies after the beginning of the class learning stuff from the instructor (they both know how to play so they didn't have to spend time with the intro instructor). After dinner they took on Pete. He parried the fried liver attack. But then... Aidan made a move, Pete made a move, Aidan went to move but Quincy stopped him - move here and you'll checkmate Daddy! Yup. The kids beat ole dad. Q is sometimes freaky good at games. I was skeptical about chess club (since they already knew how to play) but anything that they can get so excited about is well worth doing.




some snaps from our recent escape to Hawaii sans youngins. We left behind us rain and 2 boys very happy to be hanging with Uncle Chuck - burgers, pizza, ice cream nightly and lots of fun. This was our 5th trip to the islands (to our amazement). The first 3 times we recall as quite warm and balmy. The past 2 trips (both in Feb) were delightful for hiking but not exactly beach lounging weather. Supposedly we had 82 degree temps in Hawaii and 78 or so in Maui but very strong trade winds made it feel more like 65 as far as I could tell. We did go snorkeling a couple times and took some good hikes and visited 2 volcanos. Pete did excellent trip planning down to places to check out for our meals. We had a couple of stellar dinners in Maui - Mama's Fish House and Lahaina Grill are definitely worth the splurge if you are in the area. More pics on fotki of course.