Friday, November 29, 2013

Thanksgiving 2013

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 This being an odd year, we had our traditional Thanksgiving dinner in Old Town with Nancy & Danny.  We may well have set a record this year for the most people their place for Thanksgiving. Christopher was there of course, Dad came with us to dinner, and Mom & Don were there, along with Katherine, Lee and Makayla.  Adrienne joined in for her 10th Thanksgiving in a row with Nancy & Danny, and she even brought her Mom this time!  The table was so big this year that Danny, sitting at the head of the table, was actually in a different room.  Nancy made her famous mole gravy, Danny cooked a superb turkey, Christopher meticulously placed all of the mini-marshmallows in perfect order on his sweet potatoes, Mom made her grandmother's dinner rolls, and Elaine indulged me with my favorite pumpkin pie.  It was a wonderful time to stuff ourselves silly, and be thankful for such wonderful family and friends.

 Allen & Katherine
(click here for all the pictures)

Monday, November 11, 2013

On Belay!

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Back in High School, I spent many hours bouldering on the rocks at Great Falls, and after a few too many close calls, decided that I better get a rope and learn to properly rock climb.  So I took some rock climbing classes in college, and learned how to do things the right way.  In grad school, there was a group of us that did quite a bit of climbing in Austin and elsewhere around Texas, but I haven't managed to get out climbing much since moving back to DC.

For the last couple years, Owen has shown some affinity for scrambling around on the rocks whenever we go to Great Falls, so I knew that sooner or later we'd have to get him roped up.  When Andrew, one of my climbing buddies from Texas, checked in on the morning of Veteran's day and asked if Owen and I wanted to join him and his son Luke climbing at Carderock (on the MD side of Great Falls), of course we had to jump at the chance.  I dug out my old climbing gear, whipped together a webbing harness for Owen, and we headed out to the rocks.  The weather was perfect for climbing, and Owen did a great job climbing up three different routes.  It was probably the last decent climbing day of the season, but no doubt we'll be back out there for more in the Spring!

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(click here for all the pictures)

Sleep Over


Aunt Katherine has been lamenting that now that she doesn't live in Cleveland (conveniently about 45% of the way to Iowa) we never spend the night at her place anymore. Meanwhile, former sk8ter boy, Brad Brown, has been coveting the relatively unobstructed hill Katherine lives by. So, with a three day weekend and perfect weather in the forecast, we decided to make them both very happy by inviting ourselves over for the night and the Browns over for the afternoon.

The grownups got the lay of the land before inviting the kids to try out the lane on their scooters. We then had a few rounds of ladder ball and corn hole (plus some frolicking in the leaves and some bamboo jousting) before the Browns had to head home.

Shortly thereafter, Mom Mom and Grandpa Don came over and after some more corn hole, ladder ball a state quarter sorting frenzy and some Sponge Bob Squarepants (with commercials!), we headed out for some food and a couple of pitchers of margaritas before Mom Mom and Don called it a night. Back at Katherine's, the kids cheered Grandpa Fawcett on to a darts victory before we finally tucked them in for the night, and then the rest of us settled in for a game of Phase 10 (or "Phase 11" in Katherine's version). We eventually made it to bed some time after midnight, which could have been terrible, since the kids woke up sometime around 7 am, but fortunately, since we were at Aunt Katherine's, we just sent them up to see her...

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(To see all the pictures from our day/night at Aunt Katherine's, click here.)

Wednesday, November 06, 2013

Field Trip

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I had the pleasure of chaperoning Nora's class field trip to the National Gallery of Art West Wing this week.  The kids all played Art Detectives, and tried out different ways of thinking about the artworks, exploring the use of color, posing as different subjects, and even imagining the sounds that a painting evokes.  The kids were all great, and it really is wonderful that we have such amazing cultural resources right in our backyard.  Hopefully we'll be back soon!

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(Click here for all the pictures)

Sunday, November 03, 2013

Japan

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For quite a while it was clear that I was going to be traveling internationally at the end of October, but I wasn't quite sure where I'd end up going.  There was a meeting in Bariloche, Argentina at the base of the Andes in Patagonia that I was really hoping to go to, but in the end I was more needed at a meeting in Tsukuba, Japan.  I'd been to Japan before, back in 2006 shortly after Owen was born.  On that trip I had a day in Tokyo, and I didn't remember too much of interest in Tsukuba, so I wasn't anticipating anything too exciting from a travel perspective, and I was a bit bummed about missing out on Argentina.  It turned out though that I had Friday afternoon open, and a couple of us took a bus to Mt. Tsukuba for a really interesting hike.  We took a gondola up to the top of the mountain, hiked up to the summit temple, then hiked along the ridge line over to another summit temple, and hiked down to an amazing temple complex at the base of the second mountain.  The views from the summits were beautiful, the hike down through the different types of trees at various elevations was gorgeous, and the temple at the base was the perfect end to a Japanese mountain hike.  It all made me feel a little bit better about missing out on Patagonia.

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(click here for all the pictures)