We travelled back to Mississippi for turkey day again this year. It was great seeing my family. My cousin and uncle showed up. The kids had a great time playing with their cousins (we don’t get to do this enough). Caught up with old friends and all in all had a great time. I even was able to get the whole family groped by the TSA. Lots of the pictures are of my first cousin once removed, I let his mom borrow my camera and she got a lot of good shots.
Margaret finished 5th grade. They had a ceremony to commemorate the event. Next year she will be at the middle school. Margaret was one of about 5 students that read their essays during the ceremony. Margaret is excited about going to middle school. She has qualified out of math 6A and into math 7A, so she will have one class with 7th graders. Next year we will have a child in 3 different schools.
Sam had the ceremony that promoted him from a Wolf to a Bear. He has now earned his Wolf badges and will be a Bear next year. The ceremony was fun. Each older set of boys helped the next younger set change their scarf and hat to be ready for the start of next year.
We finally had the party we decided to have when Elizabeth was originally diagnosed with a brain tumor. Luckily, we were able to have the “Pokie’s Not Dead Party” instead of the other one. We had about 200 people over to the house. They made T-shirts that Elizabeth designed, bounced in the bouncy house, drank Karl’s now infamous 1-2-3 margarita’s, and all in all had a good time. We had good friends come and stay with us and help with the party for the weekend.
There are also a few pictures other people took here.
This year for her birthday Katy decided that she wanted to take her friends roller skating. Everyone tried it (except for me) with varying success. It was a bit dark, so the pictures are what they are.
Sam had his birthday party on his actual birthday this year. He had a bunch of friends go play laser tag. Everyone seemed to enjoy it.
We all went to something that only Elizabeth had done before, a bar mitzvah. It was David Cooper’s 13th birthday. I remember when Viv was in the hospital having him, I was at Cooper’s house painting his bathroom that he didn’t have time to finish. It was a very modern ceremony that was interesting. Afterwards, there was the reception. All of the kids really loved the party. Katy has decided she wants a sweet 16 party now. We wish her luck with that.
Can you believe Margaret is 11? As seems to always be, Margaret’s birthday fell during ski week. We were in Tahoe, so we went ice skating in the afternoon then had a nice dinner with the Walden’s that night. (We also had a dinner with Elizabeth’s family the next Friday). A low key birthday. Now we need to start planning parties with the kids friends.
Sam is just loving cub scouts. I don’t know if it is the uniform, running around with a bunch of wild kids, or what, but he is always excited about it. The latest escapade was building and racing of the Pinewood Derby cars. His buddy Simon came over to build/paint with him. The cars turned out great. The exciting day is race day.
We had New Years again in Tahoe. We had about 20 people at the house. Bruce forgot to bring the fireworks, so we didn’t have pyrotechnics to entertain us, but we did have poppers as well as silly string to make a mess with in the street.
For the first time in years we all watched the ball drop in Time’s Square. We had to watch on CNN because the network feeds are delayed for us on the left coast.