Cold here.

Moose's outside water dish has been frozen for the last several days. Mali's soccer practice was cancelled last night, to her great joy. It wasn't the soccer she objected to, but the cold. Below freezing here is not really normal. You can tell it's cold when you see Andrew in a hat. It was probably 25 degrees when he left for school this morning at 7:00.


Last night we watched Once. A cute and quirky story with lots of music. Susy and I liked it, but Mali was pretty bored with it. Andrew did his homework while watching.

Friday Night Video

It was Andrew's turn for a swimming pool birthday party - for a girl named Alex at the apartment pool across from our Safeway. He took his goggles, and couldn't find them this morning for the swim-a-thon the swim team is doing to raise money. This made him grumpy. He has extra goggles, but they don't fit as well.
With Andrew gone, the three of us were going to go out to a movie, but over dinner we decided instead to go to the video store and we rented three. We watched Waitress, which was cute. We also rented Once and Hairspray, but we haven't watched them yet. Tonight, I predict, will be filled with Veronica Mars.

Friday Movie Night for Andrew

Andrew's social studies teacher put up a list of movies in class last week. I'm not sure what the motivation for this was, the only movie Andrew remembered from the list was Remember the Titans, so I thought maybe it was supposed to be recent socially relevant movies or something. Andrew hadn't seen any of them (we're not big on social relevance here) to the amazement of his classmates. They decided to educate Andrew, and so scheduled a movie night last night.
Hailey picked him up at 5:30, and they met up with Alex at Kat's house. Andrew contributed a movie-sized package of red licorice to the festivities, and they had pizza for dinner. The movie they chose: A Walk To Remember. Andrew said that he mostly talked with his friends throughout the movie, but he seemed to have picked up the gist of it.
He called at 10:00, but was in no hurry to have me pick him up. I picked him up at 10:30, and now he's up at 6:00 here this morning so Rian can take him to time trails for swimming. Susy and I are both going for the start at 8:00.
The rest of us spent Friday hanging out. Mali and I met Susy at Marshall's to do some Christmas shopping. Moose came along and sat in the van and discovered a giant macaroon and a peanut butter cookie. (I fed him his dogfood at home before we left.) We were sure he was going to get sick, but there have been no apparent ill effects. The only difference was he seemed awfully energetic when we got home last night, and this morning there is no "I'm starving, feed me now" performance.

Monday Night Festivities

Last night I grilled hamburgers for dinner, then we watched 10 Things I Hate About You. It's a movie about a high school romance based on The Taming of the Shrew. It was surprisingly good. It helped that we had just watched a movie of the play. Now we need to find a copy for Andrew to read. He has to write a paper comparing it to Romeo and Juliet to get honors in his literature class.

Mali got injured playing football in PE - she had to get a big strawberry bandaged up on her hip after sliding. She was very excited to have scored a touchdown, and has decided she loves football.

Long Weekend

Last night we all went to Paul&Nancy's to put a collar on Moose so someone else doesn't accidentally take him home. We are taking delivery on Wednesday.
Other news:
Saturday, Mali and I picked out a new bicycle for her - an early 11th birthday present. She's been riding her old one a lot, but it is ridiculously too small. We were spurred to shop by Andrew's excursion to Pizzicato with some 8th grade friends. Mali didn't understand why she couldn't tag along with him.
Movies: Mali, Andrew, and I went to see Bridge to Tarabithia Saturday. A very good movie, but nothing at all like I thought it would be. I thought it was some crazy fantasy movie, but it was waayyy too reality-based for my taste. I certainly wasn't comfortable with the 3rd act tragedy. Andrew had read the book, and hinted at it to Mali, so they weren't hit in the head with a sledgehammer like I was.
Yesterday I dropped Mali and Lilly off to see Norbit, and Andrew and I met Susy (she had to work) for lunch at GoGo's Mongolian Grill. Andrew spent the rest of the day over at Maddie's house.

First Track Meet of 2006

Saturday was sunny but windy for Andrew's track meet at nearby Sherwood High School. It was a long meet, partly because it was the first one, so they explained how to start to every athlete for every race. Here's a photo of Andrew receiving instruction. Click it to see the actual race start.



Susy met us there to watch the 400m (1:11.66). He also ran the 100m (14.xx?) We all got a little sun on our faces - everything else was covered because of the wind.
Andrew and I were gone from 9:00 to 3:00. I came home and took a nap, and Andrew embedded himself into the couch with his book. I slept until 4:00, then worked in the yard a bit with Mali. She found Pablo and Matias walking next to the house, so we talked across the fence until I invited myself over to their house for Mate'. The rest of my family followed me over. Rocio is painting, so I helped a little, drank some mate', and looked at some photos from their trip to Italy. Then they had a dinner date with some friends (which we made them late for), so we came home and finished watching The Fellowship of the Ring. Two more movies to go. The two I haven't seen yet, so that is exciting. Mali is less then thrilled by them (they're scary) but she's watching - ensconced firmly between Susy and me.