Whew! This might be the longest post ever!
Friday: Christopher had his physical....he should have had a chicken pox booster, but, because we were trying to hurry back to school for his Halloween party, we skipped it...we'll do it next year.
Hearing and vision good (20/30)....probably should take both Matthew and Christopher to the optometrist soon in any case.
On to the charts!
The good news here (the really outstanding news!) is that Christopher has continued his trend towards the good parts of the BMI chart. All of that running is making a difference....
Projecting Christopher at Kevin age: 5'8", 160 lbs. Kevin is 5'4" (he's had a growth spurt recently) and about 95 lbs.
At Matthew's physical, which I don't think I ever typed about, he fell right between the 90 and 95 curves. And his toe is still bent. Dr: "Does it affect his running or athletics?" ummm, no.
Halloween!: Very weird to have trick or treating start in daylight because of the switch in daylight savings time dates. But, the boys were ready to get out at 6 pm.
A very Star Wars Halloween. Christopher is a Jedi, Matthew's a clone trooper, and well, Kevin's the Grim Reaper. The boys went through the neighborhood together, and then Kevin, Matthew, and one of Kevin's friends went on to the other neighborhoods to collect as much loot as they could....Christopher was tired of it and returned home with Mom. The couple up the street ended up giving all of their leftover candy to Kevin and the gang when the came by at the end of the festivities at 8 pm.
Basketball: Saturday morning's events begin with something I forgot to mention on Friday. We've signed Christopher up for basketball, and while the season doesn't start until January, they are having clinics over at the middle school every Saturday this month. So, after the requisite "I don't want to do this!" comments from Christopher, Suzanne and I take him over and leave Kevin to watch Matthew and get ready for soccer.
It will come as no surprise that Christopher is the biggest kid in this session of 40+ 2nd graders. Suzanne and I overheard one girl talking to her friend....as they were walking in they must have been talking about their height, and the one girl was pretty tall, but, she told her friend as they walked by Christopher "I'm a pipsqueak compared to him!". They spent most of the session (that I saw, had to leave early to get over to soccer) doing footwork drills, little small foot movements, that, well, aren't going to be Christopher's center of excellence. But, he did surprisingly well at them, much better than some of the other kids.
Christopher did say, at the end, that he did have fun at basketball. Which is why we've learned to ignore the complaints as we start out.....that, and the positive results on the BMI chart!
Indoor Soccer: Well, when you play a team of mostly 1st graders up an age group against a team of 2nd graders, you're going to take your lumps. And that's what happened, we must have lost 10 or 11 to nothing. There's a big learning curve here, and things will get better as the season progresses. Matthew had fun in his first chance to play on the big field; he had his moments, but, he's not going to be able to dribble through 3 kids that are older (and of equal skill) than him. Christopher also played well, had a turn in goal and played great, way better than he ever did in outdoor soccer. Kevin taped most of this game (before leaving early with Mom for the next event), so, there might be some video of this online later this week.
All-State Viola: Kevin and Mom left after the 3rd quarter to get Kevin over to the middle school for the audition.
Mom reports that Kevin got really nervous leading up to his audition.....nauseous, really quiet...his orchestra teacher was there and noticed and told him to relax!
He warmed up and was able to go in and do his audition early. What happens is that all of the auditions are taped, and, I think, next weekend, all of the viola tapes are listened to by one panel of judges, and, that's where the decision is made. Kevin was happy with his performance...he did good, but not great, on the etude (pictured above); he's never done the piece completely perfect and he says he made his usual stumble in the audition (the toughest part for Kevin is the beginning, before the highlights....as soon as he hits the highlights he's perfect.). Did the scales that he had to do next, and then finished with the sight reading that he reports was easy easy easy (which is too bad, Kevin would probably have been better served to have something more challenging that he would look better at and others would look not-so-good at.)
So, we'll find out the results in a week...hopefully.
Kitchen: Spent most of the rest of Saturday and a lot of Sunday working in the kitchen. More than a few interesting developments as we try to finish off the base cabinets and get ready for countertop installation.
Took the time to level out the base cabinets we had only roughed in early. Had to perform some repairs to the cabinet near the stove (with the lazy susan); some of the cam locks weren't completely tightened and we had to drill through the center support for the lazy susan to lift the bottom 'shelf' up so that it wasn't hitting the hinge. Cinched the cabinets together, and secured them to the wall, and, as you can see, put the doors on them.
One of the things that has been on our minds a lot has been the termination on the other side of the dishwasher. We realized late Saturday night that we had bought the wrong size part (cover panel) and it wasn't going to completely cover the cabinet and the dishwasher. Suzanne, this morning, had a brillant idea....why don't we rotate the 12" cabinet that we have at the end so that it faces out towards the front door? That way, we only have to get a normal, in-stock, cover panel and we won't have to do the multiple cuts that we thought we were going to have to do.
So, spent some time Sunday switching that cabinet around and adding the doors on the other set of cabinets on the other side of the counter. Still need to get another 18" door; we somehow are missing one of those. Oh well.
There's an electrical outlet over along the wall that's a problem. We're going to try and move it out towards the sliding door about 2-3" so that it still accessible. We'll see.....
The most trying part of the kitchen activities was the realization that the painstakingly-researched, lovingly-selected, once-delivered-but-now-returned, sink....well, it's not going to fit in our space. Or, better said, it might fit, but, they'll never be any room behind it for the faucet.
This lightbulb-going-on-over-the-head event caused quite the wave of depression to sweep into the house. After much knashing of teeth, talking-off-of-ledges, calls to kitchen-suicide-prevention-hotlines, we realized that a) no, the sink wasn't going to work and b) we were going to have to pick another one, and c) we were going to have the counter guys measure the kitchen with just a template....given that we're a little unsure of how the sink is going to mount and that we might have to modify our sink cabinet to accommodate it, that doesn't seem like a good idea. We need to have the sink in place before we can have the kitchen measured for counter tops.
At least picking out the new sink wasn't hard. And, it was available at Home Depot, and, it's in stock somewhere nearby, so, we should have it mid-week. But, it's going to push the counter measurements back a few days.
Flag Football: Was a crappy weather day for football, cloudy, rainy, but, the kids played anyway and had a good time. The weather, for Halloween, and yesterday, and even most of Sunday morning and early afternoon, has been beautiful and the kids have been outside almost all of the time (a good thing as Mom and Dad were trying to get the kitchen in order). But, it clouded up and got colder for game time.
Matthew had a good game, no TD's, multiple dropped catches(!), and one just completely-awesome-interception that gets better and better the more you look at it.
It's too bad that the rule is you can't advance a fumble, or an interception, Matthew would have quite a few returns for touchdowns by now. When I was converting this movie, I was watching it, and I watched it again, and I watched it again, and I finally noticed that, man, that kid really got up in the air.
And I had to go back frame by frame and see just how high he jumped. Capturing a still image off the video tape is never a recipe for a good quality picture, but, you can see the height of his jump quite clearly.
I uploaded the video while Suzanne was off at the store; when she came home I showed her this picture.....she says that Matthew was saying "Did you see how high I jumped?" when he ran over to the sideline and after the game, but, we were both sitting right there at the game and really didn't notice it at the time.
Wait, there's more?: Only had one more image to post....found it in Kevin's backpack with some other stuff he was supposed to bring home. Haven't had a chance to ask what it is; I don't think it's a school assignment, but, who knows...
The mansion from the Potomac side. 
Mansion from the front. Bowling Green directly in front of the mansion.
Dead President
