October 2012 busy weekend, a set on Flickr.
I mean, not for nothing, but we were busy.
It was homecoming weekend at my oldest son's high school, which meant many loud and festive events, starting with Thursday's parade and the Battle of the Bands. D's band has played in BotB every year so far, and they do fairly well. They should have won this year, because of course they were the best, but 3rd place is pretty fun, too. I'm not sure how loud the actual Homecoming game was on Friday, but I bet BotB was louder. (I make it a point to avoid high school football games, after 3 years of going to every one of the dang things during my marching band days.) (This particular point will be snapped off like that of a crummy pencil in a couple of years, when K starts high school and his own marching band career. What do y'all think the odds are of my convincing him to drop sax before then?)
So then it was Friday, which was so long ago I can't even remember, but probably something happened. It usually does. I worked, I came home, I wrote some words. R took K shopping.
And Saturday. D was up early because auditions for All-State Orchestra were that morning. (Good luck to him. And the other orchestra guys. Except not as much luck as I am wishing D, in case that means he doesn't get in and they do. It would be rude to wish ill luck on the kids I don't know, so I'll refrain, what with me being a stellar human being and all, but... good luck to D, especially, above everyone else.)
K's soccer team finally didn't lose! They tied. Which, at the tail end of this season, is a pretty nice result.
Also Saturday: the Homecoming Dance. One of those pics up there is D with his very cute girlfriend. Did I mention, I learned how to tie the bow tie? Because, thanks to the consistently helpful folks over at Tie-a-Tie, I can now add 'almost decent at bow tie tying' to my skills list. (Tie-a-Tie is one of the secret powers I've picked up after 19 years of living with only males.) (Sorry, dogs, you don't count. Mostly because neither of you ever let me dress you up in frilly things.)
Here's a fun parenting game: when your kid gets all dressed up for something, spend as much time as possible adjusting his tie, picking lint off his lapel, fidgeting with his hair, etc. That way, when you get to his date's house, he'll be totally nerve-wracked. It's the best!
(By the way, that whole Flickr set thing I have going up there? I have no clue how to make my mac & iphone be effortless as I feel they should be with photo sharing. They seem to be a couple of two-year-olds afraid to lose their favorite dump trucks. So this is my probably-temporary solution.)
Sunday. Oh, Sunday. You know how there's this hurricane that everyone on the East Coast is freaking out about today, because of the whole 'perfect storm' aspect? Well, the sun was shining prettily here in Houston, but it didn't stop Sunday from being a little perfect stormy anyway.
9-12:45 - K at religious school & Hebrew tutoring (his Bar Mitzvah is 2 1/2 months away. Not that I'm freaking out. At all. Don't be silly.)
2-4 - all of us at the Eagle Court of Honor for one of D's BFFs. R was the adult speaker (he had the best speech of the 4 adults speaking about the individual scouts. And not just because he left off pointed political rants about our president, even. Though that helped. Not that he would have.) (Note to self: go vote tomorrow. Even though there's no chance that my vote will count electorally in Texas, I'm all in favor of bumping the popular numbers.) (Hi, I'm a liberal. In case that wasn't clear.) Anyway, it was very sweet to see G get his Eagle (D isn't too far behind - another thing about which I will be sure to freak out soon.) He's a really stellar kid, and I loved seeing all the photos of him (often with D beside him) over the past dozen years that we've known him.
4:45-6 - (again, family, I'm sorry I was so - um, forceful about ensuring that you left the scout thing on my timetable.) (Even if I was right.) (I should have been nicer. A little nicer.) My aunt's temple is getting a new Torah this year, and she had K inscribe a letter into it as his Bar Mitzvah gift. It was so cool, you guys! After dressing up all nice and stuff (look at my guy in his suit), we went up and ritually washed our hands (honestly, they felt so very clean afterwards, I was amazed) and then sat up with the scribe, who told us about the letter K would scribe (Ches) in terms of the 8th day after Creation and explained why it's written differently in the Torah than in regular Hebrew. Then we all got to touch the feather on the quill he used to scribe the letter. And we all smiled, and the photographer got a nice shot of the gang (my family, my parents, my sister and her family.) There were a few things to do after that, reflective moments, as much as the 9 of us plus a couple of aunts and some random people we ran into there can be reflective.
6:05-8:30 - to that same aunt's house (she's really nice) where we had a celebration of my dad's 70th birthday, which was last week. His brother and his in-town sisters were there with their spouses, and a couple of my cousins, and us all. It was barely more than 20 people, which is practically intimate for this side of my family, and it was nice to get to visit with everyone. We had it catered by a hot dog place. You heard me. Hot dogs. A couple of dozen delicious hot dogs, with a million toppings (okay, a dozen), side dishes, and this magical thing called a savory cheesecake as appetizer. It's cheesecake, but savory! We had four flavors, and while I would kick you over to get to the smoked salmon-Gouda one, I'm hardly adverse to the Santa Fe, either. The other totally congruous thing this hot dog restaurant does is cake balls, so naturally we had them create a tower of 70 of the things (sorry, had to excuse myself for a minute to scrounge a lemon flavor out of my fridge) for Dad's 70th birthday. (Some of the cake balls were cheesecake. See - not just an appetizer! So versatile!)
Meanwhile, we got a message that K's team actually won a game while we were at all of these events. Go, Thunder! See, perfect storms have silver linings, sometimes. (You know, because of thunder? Storms? ...Get it?)
For the record, I didn't pull over to have R drive home from the party because I was drunk. Don't listen to my kids. My contacts were doing that weird blurry thing to alert me that I needed to take them out instantly, and it seemed like maybe putting R behind the wheel for the interstate portion of our trip home would be wisest.
Also for the record, the wine was good.
I mean, not for nothing, but we were busy.
It was homecoming weekend at my oldest son's high school, which meant many loud and festive events, starting with Thursday's parade and the Battle of the Bands. D's band has played in BotB every year so far, and they do fairly well. They should have won this year, because of course they were the best, but 3rd place is pretty fun, too. I'm not sure how loud the actual Homecoming game was on Friday, but I bet BotB was louder. (I make it a point to avoid high school football games, after 3 years of going to every one of the dang things during my marching band days.) (This particular point will be snapped off like that of a crummy pencil in a couple of years, when K starts high school and his own marching band career. What do y'all think the odds are of my convincing him to drop sax before then?)
So then it was Friday, which was so long ago I can't even remember, but probably something happened. It usually does. I worked, I came home, I wrote some words. R took K shopping.
And Saturday. D was up early because auditions for All-State Orchestra were that morning. (Good luck to him. And the other orchestra guys. Except not as much luck as I am wishing D, in case that means he doesn't get in and they do. It would be rude to wish ill luck on the kids I don't know, so I'll refrain, what with me being a stellar human being and all, but... good luck to D, especially, above everyone else.)
K's soccer team finally didn't lose! They tied. Which, at the tail end of this season, is a pretty nice result.
Also Saturday: the Homecoming Dance. One of those pics up there is D with his very cute girlfriend. Did I mention, I learned how to tie the bow tie? Because, thanks to the consistently helpful folks over at Tie-a-Tie, I can now add 'almost decent at bow tie tying' to my skills list. (Tie-a-Tie is one of the secret powers I've picked up after 19 years of living with only males.) (Sorry, dogs, you don't count. Mostly because neither of you ever let me dress you up in frilly things.)
Here's a fun parenting game: when your kid gets all dressed up for something, spend as much time as possible adjusting his tie, picking lint off his lapel, fidgeting with his hair, etc. That way, when you get to his date's house, he'll be totally nerve-wracked. It's the best!
(By the way, that whole Flickr set thing I have going up there? I have no clue how to make my mac & iphone be effortless as I feel they should be with photo sharing. They seem to be a couple of two-year-olds afraid to lose their favorite dump trucks. So this is my probably-temporary solution.)
Sunday. Oh, Sunday. You know how there's this hurricane that everyone on the East Coast is freaking out about today, because of the whole 'perfect storm' aspect? Well, the sun was shining prettily here in Houston, but it didn't stop Sunday from being a little perfect stormy anyway.
9-12:45 - K at religious school & Hebrew tutoring (his Bar Mitzvah is 2 1/2 months away. Not that I'm freaking out. At all. Don't be silly.)
2-4 - all of us at the Eagle Court of Honor for one of D's BFFs. R was the adult speaker (he had the best speech of the 4 adults speaking about the individual scouts. And not just because he left off pointed political rants about our president, even. Though that helped. Not that he would have.) (Note to self: go vote tomorrow. Even though there's no chance that my vote will count electorally in Texas, I'm all in favor of bumping the popular numbers.) (Hi, I'm a liberal. In case that wasn't clear.) Anyway, it was very sweet to see G get his Eagle (D isn't too far behind - another thing about which I will be sure to freak out soon.) He's a really stellar kid, and I loved seeing all the photos of him (often with D beside him) over the past dozen years that we've known him.
4:45-6 - (again, family, I'm sorry I was so - um, forceful about ensuring that you left the scout thing on my timetable.) (Even if I was right.) (I should have been nicer. A little nicer.) My aunt's temple is getting a new Torah this year, and she had K inscribe a letter into it as his Bar Mitzvah gift. It was so cool, you guys! After dressing up all nice and stuff (look at my guy in his suit), we went up and ritually washed our hands (honestly, they felt so very clean afterwards, I was amazed) and then sat up with the scribe, who told us about the letter K would scribe (Ches) in terms of the 8th day after Creation and explained why it's written differently in the Torah than in regular Hebrew. Then we all got to touch the feather on the quill he used to scribe the letter. And we all smiled, and the photographer got a nice shot of the gang (my family, my parents, my sister and her family.) There were a few things to do after that, reflective moments, as much as the 9 of us plus a couple of aunts and some random people we ran into there can be reflective.
6:05-8:30 - to that same aunt's house (she's really nice) where we had a celebration of my dad's 70th birthday, which was last week. His brother and his in-town sisters were there with their spouses, and a couple of my cousins, and us all. It was barely more than 20 people, which is practically intimate for this side of my family, and it was nice to get to visit with everyone. We had it catered by a hot dog place. You heard me. Hot dogs. A couple of dozen delicious hot dogs, with a million toppings (okay, a dozen), side dishes, and this magical thing called a savory cheesecake as appetizer. It's cheesecake, but savory! We had four flavors, and while I would kick you over to get to the smoked salmon-Gouda one, I'm hardly adverse to the Santa Fe, either. The other totally congruous thing this hot dog restaurant does is cake balls, so naturally we had them create a tower of 70 of the things (sorry, had to excuse myself for a minute to scrounge a lemon flavor out of my fridge) for Dad's 70th birthday. (Some of the cake balls were cheesecake. See - not just an appetizer! So versatile!)
Meanwhile, we got a message that K's team actually won a game while we were at all of these events. Go, Thunder! See, perfect storms have silver linings, sometimes. (You know, because of thunder? Storms? ...Get it?)
For the record, I didn't pull over to have R drive home from the party because I was drunk. Don't listen to my kids. My contacts were doing that weird blurry thing to alert me that I needed to take them out instantly, and it seemed like maybe putting R behind the wheel for the interstate portion of our trip home would be wisest.
Also for the record, the wine was good.
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