Vacation Begins

At least it does for Gram and Jim. Unfortunately, the vacation started with a dental procedure for lil Gram. He had a cap placed on a tooth and had one tooth pulled. He has a follow up to put a spacer in where the tooth was pulled so that there will not be a domino effect of teeth migrating to the wrong place in his mouth. He should be sleeping, but is restless and is instead playing with his DS while I hover over him like a mama hen. We'll have a lazy day today before going to pick up the girl later on. I had prepared for a traumatic day of him fitfully sleeping while I worried about him, but he seems to be a tougher hombre than I thought he was. We had a lovely weekend of holiday parties and have family coming to visit in the next few days.

More later...

Chilly Evening

So I promised Gram that I'd post an image for him after he saw the Wiggles picture on the desktop. The temp here is expected to dip to around 10 with wind chills near zero. That's TOO cold for this Florida bred boy. The wind is swirling but we are not getting much snow. We had some light flurries but there is no danger of a snow day yet. We have only four days left so I would appreciate being able to have them all to take care of business here as we wind down. Looking forward to the break - not that I'll get to sleep in much - but the rest will be good. We've got family traveling in and I think that this will be a fun Xmas for the boy and the girl.

Wiggly Wintertime

So Mo has been bitten by The Wiggles bug and they are now a fairly constant part of our lives again. Luckily, Gram has been VERY patient with this and has even decided that they are pretty amusing sometimes. We had a few days in a row where the temperature did not exceed 35 or so, but we should have relative warmth today where the temp may approach my age.

Wintertime in the Valley

A couple of photos of the kids from warmer days. A lazy, quiet thanksgiving break where we were the only ones in the dorm for a few days. We had a lovely pot luck at the UU church on T-Day. We made one dish, sampled many, and only had a few dishes to clean. That morning it snowed for awhile and it snowed again on Saturday. We are back to our regular hectic schedule now but I hope to be able to carve out some time on Monday evenings while I am on duty to keep this site updated.

Life Gets in the Way

So....

Let's see, since the last post, what has happened in our lives?

Let's do this as a list

A) Moving day - Truck shows up. Wife and son and cats and fish head off to our new NEPA home.
B) Still moving day - Foreman tells me that the truck will not hold all of our stuff. Little girl and I will have to find a place to stay so that we can meet another truck the next day.
C) Still moving day - Wife and son arrive, party to welcome us all starts to warm up. Moving truck finally arrives hours after it should have. Wife misses party. Girl and I miss party because we are still at old town. We have a lovely time with friends, but still...
D) Girl starts new day care, boy is making friends and is hardly ever in the house. New neighbors and co-workers seem pretty terrific
E) Girl gets ill and we end up in the emergency room as she suffers from what they call bronchial spasms. Pretty scary and pretty expensive since we are between insurance plans at this point.
F) Getting settled in and starting to work. One week down and the kids seem pretty impressive so far. There is a WIDE range of talent at the school and this adds to the sense of diversity here. We've got kids from all over the world, we've got post grads and teachers with years and years of experience. I've got a pretty good feeling about the place so far.
G) Girl continues to struggle with pretty bad coughing so the wife and I are getting very little sleep
H) My first full weekend includes dorm duty. Check ins at dinner and at 11 or 11:30 with a 12:30 quiet time warning for all. 82 boys to keep track of. First night felt very stressful, second night is much less so.

Visual Evidence of Vacations

The photos here are of the boy at Venice Beach and him chilling with his uncle while in CA. More on the way...

Our Last Week Here and thoughts on LA

So, next Friday at this time our house will be a whirlwind of moving activity. The movers are due around 9 AM. We are in our last stages of packing, I did the CDs and the Lps and now the house is looking less like a home and more like simply a clutter zone. Balancing the kids at home with errands and packing has been tough with quite a few one parent errands with the kids while the other gets some work done.

So, thinking back on the LA trip which was too long in the making, I have a few reactions. My brother has long commented on the weather there which was pretty remarkable. Although we were there at the end of June, we never got hot. Cool mornings turned into warm afternoons which turned into chilly evenings. I was unprepared to be cold and did not dress appropriately for hanging out in the backyard with the Prof and the Geek. The boy slept well so I had some peaceful morning time with the paper, the Prof and some coffee before heading out on any adventures. Some highlights: Griffith Observatory was beautiful and we spent a great deal of time there, we visited Travel Town first which was fun, Venice Beach was overcast and cool (my kind of beach day!), we ate at some fun restaurants, a great morning wandering around downtown Claremont and visiting a fine music store where I finally replaced my old ECM Steve Reich Music for 18 Musicians. Some lowlights; TRAFFIC, and far too much driving for my taste. I've been spoiled since leaving FLA and I now rarely have to be in the car for any length of time. I get grumpy being in a car too long and had to placate the boy by giving him FAR too much time with his DS while we drove and drove and drove.

Photos and FLA trip comments soon.