Whittling at KVI

E likes to whittle at the beach. He looks for driftwood sticks and turns them into driftwood spears. He is responsible for probably all the driftwood spears to be found scattered about at KVI. We like to throw rocks into the water, of course. And compete for the biggest splash. And dig rivers into which we transplant crabs. But nothing really compares to whittling.

Big

Day one of health class called for a current photo of D. Which, when I actually looked at it, blew me away. I know it wasn't overnight, but somehow looking at this particular picture startled me. D is big. He's big and yes there's kid in that picture and every picture shows a different person, but something about this one just looked so like the future, who he will be for the next little while.

blueish

licorice ice cream smeared all over the mouth is extremely cool. Apparently. Not to mention standing under the Señor Frog's sign. I don't know.

Pirate Party

Here's a bunch of Pirates bouncing safely on a friend's trampoline at a fun football party we attended recently. E is the kid in the bandanna jumping highest. D is off in the corner in orange trying to mess up little kids' bounces. The girls on the ground are steaming because the boys are hogging the whole thing.

13

On D's birthday, he and D battled for the title of "I can Beat You One on One" champion, a title still held, if lightly, by the father. Note height advantage.
More importantly, see those red markings on the garage, and see the way the garage door buckles and is missing chunks of paint? The latter come from years of basketball against flimsy wall. The red is duct tape, cleverly employed to hide the holes bashed through the wood by speeding lacrosse balls. Yeesh.

Another year, another movie party

Yeah, standing on the roof at the movie theater while you're waiting for all your friends to show up at the movie party is a decent way to celebrate your 11th birthday. Invited guests included the football team and then, of course, the posse. Like that. You can get up and change seats whenever you want, and go to the bathroom. All your friends can sing happy birthday to you at the end of the movie.

Break broke

First offensive play of the season, ping, E's pinky snaps just above the growth plate caught in a helmet or a jersey or who knows what. It blows up like a balloon by mid afternoon, so we're thinking it's not just a bruise. The doctor xrays it and tapes it up, splints it, wraps it, and so. It hurts. And it's blue.

Boy Love

These boys. They just adore each other. They act really crazy with each other and scrap around and call each other names and fight and laugh and tell me it's ok they're ok with it. This day D and P sit on E a lot, and E likes it.

Finally the hammock

After waiting for bloody ever for me to pull it off, E finally has his hammock hanging from here to there in his room, perfect for reading, playing video games, napping.

Can I Try?

Quiet moment with guitar. And P. Who wants a turn.

Star

It's a football thing. At this moment, he didn't know that his number would be, once again, 55. So he went with the star. Which, he was pretty horrified to see, was completely carved out rather than nice little lines (so much more subtle). Grew in mercifully fast.

U11 team

Meanwhile, summer league ball, first tournament in … Enumclaw. E at bat. Slam. But the really cool thing was that before and after the game, E would convene the team by hollering out in his husky, sandy, grinning tenor "Vashonites Assemble!" and they would all gather into a huddle and jump up and down with their hands together and chant "hoo! hoo! hoo! hoo! Vashon!" in a manner most heroic.

Feed Me

I am starving. I am so hungry. There's nothing to eat. What is there to eat? Can I eat that? I am so hungry.

Birthdays

P arrived with GN and GH in early August. His birthday comes first in the triple birthday month for the cousins. C made it to Vashon just in time for the festivities. P was pretty pleased with his haul, and really got into the challenges, little games D comes up with for the kids play between opening presents. Cousin K made it out for the day, bonded with the boys, and headed off into the sunset (always sunset). There was so much sugar the boys really couldn't keep up. But worked it. It's blackberry season, so there's great cobbler that tastes sweet and sour and smells lovely, and goes with piles of whipped cream. Just days away from entering his teen years, peer deprived on this family day and between protein and sporty activity fixes, D's enthusiasm wanes as the party rolls along.

Summertimes 2007

The big Strawberry Festival parade looks different when you're in it. This year, D and his baseball team marched along on the hot pavement, holding out hats for their league. D has the touch, and raked in a couple of hundred dollars on his own. That's what they tell me. I wouldn't know for sure, since Eand I were on the Vashon Pirate Youth Football (get used to that name, it's going to pop up everywhere: VPYF) float, a totally pimped out truck and flatbed with a pretty impressive field on the flatbed, and bleachers for the fans (me, other moms, Y rode with me, some cheering girls) were perched about 8' up on a heaping, shifting pile of gravel. Yes, the VPYF float was sponsored by the evil and most despised corporation to rumble its way onto Vashon, Glacier Northwest http://www.glaciernw.com/ which threatens to transform Maury Island into a gravel pit and oh lord it's just too irritating and depressing to go into here but you can read all about it in the paper. Anyway, so there we all were, sitting on gravel, representing the loved-or-loathed football program (on Vashon, football is a pretty controversial sport) and people lining the parade route were downright hostile at times. But the kids were having a great time and oblivious to the political twist. The truck, which I didn't really get a good look at before climbing aboard, was described by many as a menacing thing, a rolling Darth Vadar. Lah di dah. Lah di dah. I waved to my friends. E and his friends ran plays at the stops. Y sat mesmerized, enjoying the big girls and their cheering.

The chocolate

In San Francisco in June I thought I would bring back some of this lovely, delicious chocolate in varieties unavailable in Seattle as gifts for colleagues. My friend Nora and I were together, and I collected a stack of bars. She mentioned how Scharffen Berger had just been bought by Nestle. Which factoid I did not know. And which just bummed me out far more than it should have. I put the bars back on the shelf. No way.
But, like, good for them. Isn't that the sort of goal for all entrepeneurial ventures? The big company comes along, likes what it sees, and buys you out so you're relieved of the tedium of producing the thing anymore. That's a good thing. Right?
But isn't Nestle the company we're all supposed to ban for life since they carried out some cruddy plot having to do with selling nutritionally deficient baby formula in third world nations to poor women who would serve it to their babies and watch their babies starve? Ach. So sad.
So now what do I do? Have you ever tasted Scharffen Berger milk chocolate? It's, like, insanely delicious. You would love it. You would desire it. Even if you were a dark chocolate only type person, you would find yourself wanting it when you wanted chocolate. I suppose it's been a long time since Nestle stopped selling bad formula, and the company has probably repented and even implemented great social action programs. It's really more that the chocolate isn't a good souvenir anymore.
But why not? It's not like the little good luck turtles I settled on, purchased from one of the mainline shops in Chinatown, were made right there in the back room of the shop in Chinatown. It's not like you can't find little good luck turtles in every giftique in every Chinatown in every big city. I don't know. There was just something nice about thinking of this successful SF boutique chocolate shop. Nice to imagine proud owners watching their baby grow.

San Francisco

A couple of year's ago D, E, and I took a great trip to San Francisco with N, H, & Ph. We stayed at the Nikko, a terrific, swanky hotel with a gigantic indoor atrium swimming pool where the kids played keep-away with whatever other kids happened to be in the pool for hours every evening.

By day, we touristed quite a bit. Here are E, Ph, and D in front of a tasty dim sum restaurant, one of the many we visited. This one, sadly, did not feature carts. Plates were just served up from a menu. Very weird.














At this point in time, as the eldest of the 3, D has the burden and delight of being group leader and most easily disgusted by overwhelmingly wild behavior he doesn't instigate. This was probably the first time D seemed seriously older than E & Ph. D had different interests, a different pace, would grow very tired of what he viewed as embarrassing and silly behavior. That said, it was not embarrassing or silly to sit in the passion chair at the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum to see how, like, much of a hot ticket you are. Ditto posing in front of wax fugures at the Wax Museum (Hey! These are good museums!). I'll track down some of those pictures. They're really nice. We ended up at these crazy places on a really rainy day when we had planned to go to Alcatraz but the boat wasn't running and there we were at Fisherman's Terminal in the rain. And Ghirardelli Square is a mall and obviously of no interest, all weird polished rock and driftwood shops, and faux galleries.

At the Muir Woods, we play in trees. It's one of the first time the boys are wowed by nature. Or maybe it's the gift shop that gets to them. But they are willing to walk about for hours looking at trees and clovers and whatever we happen to see.

What are they doing?

Featured here, E, A, D, and H all, I dunno, praying?

Great Signs I have Seen

Not Available for New Customer is posted on the door of a barber shop in the International District.


Patty Pullen Mind Your Own Business!!! is posted on the window of an upholstery shop in Waterville.

LAX

Here you see them, R, B, and D. Behind D, A. And I know the people over to the left as well, but we'll leave them be for now. We are all watching a great Lacrosse match on a blustery, shivery afternoon. You see A & D cleverly remembered that even though the day is overcast, sunglasses protect the eyes. As well, you see A remembered her coffee, which we all must do to make it through long, chilly afternoons.
Last week's game was in Tacoma, in my favorite treelined yuppified Tacoma neighborhood, Proctor. During the game, the heavens opened up and dumped an entire ocean on us, left us gasping for oxygen and wet to the bone. The day was not warm. The water did not stop falling. Umbrellas were purely decorative.
For me, D is why I brave the weather. He loves this game. He loves really all games played with balls that permit you to use your hands. He loves to absorb statistics about professional and top amateur players, and talk like a player.
So, for the moment, Lacrosse Über alles. And baseball. And then, when the seasons shift, basketball. And so on.
Noteworthy - in Lacrosse, gear matters. Not that your baseball glove or bat doesn't, but this is a whole other thing. D (& E in preparation for adding the sport to his roster next season) spend a lot of time tinkering with the heads, drilling holes in the sticks, taping the sticks, making the gear personal.
And, it turns out, drilling is permitted in the living room. Who knew?

20% off

I tried for weeks to get psyched to use my BBB coupons. I have a stack of them. And today was going to be the day. I need a medium sized saute pan since the last one i had started flaking off and became generally nasty. Yesterday, I stopped in at Vashon's own True Value, a classic hardware store with a little of everything hand selected for functionality and Consumer Reports ratings. I was about to buy a pan when I had a pang of reverse guilt. Usually, it's at a big box that the pangs swell up, shame on you for supporting big industry just to save a couple of bucks and for the vast and candylike selection. This time, I felt paralyzed by the thought that I was being antifrugal, spending so much on a pan when the very same one probably costs less to start with at BBB and plus I have the coupon sitting there on a shelf waiting for me to use it and my office is steps away from BBB. I put down the nothing-special saute pan and left True Value empty handed. So today I packed off to BBB with a coupon in hand, walked through the front door and felt instantly woozy. There was so much on the shelves. Product stacked 16 feet high as far as the eye could see and all but tumbling into the narrow aisles. I couldn't really make out what it was I wanted or needed, began wandering without purpose. The heady mix of scented candles, cleaning supplies and something like rubber made breathing a chore. I started to sneeze. The space grew oppressively warm and humid. I left the coupon for some lucky shopper to find on a stack of plastic salad dressing shakers and ran away. The end.

COLO - excuse me I am going to be sick - RADO

Perhaps now enough time has passed for me to begin to recall our trip to Colorado to visit M & Ph, and to hit the slopes at Copper Mountain. Winter break. D & E are eager to learn to ski, and even more so to see where cousin Ph lives and hang with him and cool aunt M. So right away, night one, things turn ghastly. D gets a stomach flu that sets the tone for the whole trip. Here's D sleeping it off and talking to dad describing his condition, which improves enough by mid afternoon for us to check out of the hotel at Denver airport and head to Boulder. Where we check in to our new hotel and the flu continues.
We hang out with Ph and M in our room. Ph wants to eat donuts from Tastefully Toasted Donuts, mainly, which becomes a little routine, Ph blissfully gobbling chocolate dipped donuts while D, E, & I sit queasily in the background, exhaling.
When D was well enough to move, we went off to Copper. I highly recommend Copper for an easy, fun ski trip. We stayed in a great condo at the base of the mountain, really a short walk to all the action. Plus, shuttles take you around if you don't want to walk. You park your car and never need it again. There's lots of good food, and you can do all your own cooking.
So, our first activity was tubing, which was great and easy - a gentle introduction to the mountain for novices. But my ears were ringing and the altitude was kicking me in the head.

All was well in the morning, and skiing was really wonderful and came easily to both boys. Our instructor taught with enthusiasm, confidence, and patience and within 45 minutes of preliminaries we were on our first lift. We skiid all morning and into the afternoon. On our last run, E was struck by the flu that had knocked the wind out of D So that, sadly, was that for us and skiing. A brief but reasonably successful introduction, chased by a nasty virus.

I basically forced the boys to stand for a minute in front of the Colorado sign just for the sake of one little picture saying we'd been there. But they were both a wreck. We tried to find Buffalo Bill's grave, which was right on our way back to Boulder, but gave up when everyone was moaning and crampy.

Lord. So, last but not least, back in Boulder I checked us into a really gorgeous hotel -- the St. Julien -- since I figured we would be doing time there for the rest of our trip, boys sick as they were. There was a deep, deep tub for soaking, which I did quite a bit while hanging about in the room. And now Ph convinces me, even though he's been sick all day, that he's well enough to stay over with us and in fact his appetite is back and he's hungry as a bear and M gets him this stunningly gigantic sundae for dessert at dinner. And that night, it's Ph's turn to be sick and so ends our trip.

Birthday Party

A little while ago we celebrated A's birthday. We tried to put some restraints on the general hooplah, A being a modest woman with little desire for center stage. Nonetheless, there was cake. E and I spent the afternoon baking and filling his favorite cake pan, which is an elaborate as-seen-on-TV product that creates a domed shell of cake and a separate base, and then you fill the dome with some luscious creamy filling. E followed the recipe and directions expertly, and we kept the kitchen pretty tidy as we worked. As always, baking together with E was a great success. For D, we can talk forever if we're playing catch or shooting baskets. For E, it's kitchen time that draws out conversation. We had time to reminisce about successful past birthdays, like the one last summer when he turned 10 and took over the movie theater with friends, a tradition for us by now and always a crowd pleaser. The best present ever was at that birthday, he recalled -- a knight's helmet, an utterly wearable, displayable replica, heavy as anything made from thick, shiny metal.
But getting back to the A birthday, one notable highlight, aside from all the presents and laughs, was the kick-off of spring cocktail season, featuring festive pink daiquiris with bright blue cherries.

Sugar Pucker

mmm.

candy.

D Fact: Cadbury Cream Eggs are the most delicious food in the world.

E Fact: The juice in wax bottles seems carbonated.