Today was a big day. We went this morning to get our tree at the usual place up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. On the way back, we stopped by here and saw some glass blowing. Then we went to see the Los Gatos Christmas parade. Then tonight, we trimmed our tree. This year it was Sam’s turn to put the star on the top of the tree.
Elizabeth got Sam (and Margaret) to sing a few songs they are excited about. If you listen closely, at the end, you can hear the other one’s comment about how it all sounds if you were sent to you bed early. Here are a few pictures.
I got this in the mail today. Normally, it wouldn’t be that exciting. I thought that this year it was kind of interesting.
Here it is late November and we have been incredibly lucky with the weather. ALL the windows are finally in. They are scurrying to get the siding up and everything done to get the scaffolding down before the big snows arrive. The other roadblocks are the gutters on the front and the heat system for the roof. The garage door should go up soon. The plumber was busy running gas pipes and getting the vents and all finished.
Elizabeth is up in Tahoe tonight to meet with people tomorrow and check on things. She has sent me a few pictures. Looks like some rain tomorrow and snow tomorrow night. We may get the rest of our windows on Thursday, but we’ll see. I am excited because I got one of these for the guys to use this winter.
Update: I was a bit disappointed that the house doesn’t look that different – the siding is about the same color as the plywood, and the roof is the same color as the felt. I was expecting a more dramatic change. The decking material is down, though, and it looks really good for fake wood. It matches the house very, very well. The scratch coat for the stucco is up, and it is gray so it looks like concrete right now and is not overly attractive. It will improve next summer when the brown-colored final coat goes on. The snow blower, however, is red and shiny and lovely. – Elizabeth
Update2: A few more pictures now that Elizabeth is back.
Check out the mug shots. We got passports for the kids today. It took absolutely forever because we had to do it at the post office, not a bastion of efficiency.
On Halloween, Margaret rode the ferris wheel that someone had built up the street. She got her hair tangled in it and it took a while to stop it and extricate her. In the mean time, an extremely large amount of hair was ripped from her head. After that, she continued on and trick-or-treated a bit more. When she got home, she was hurting and pretty much went to bed. We didn’t really know how bad it was until the next day. Elizabeth gingerly combed it out and ended up with a huge pile of hair. Luckily, because she has so much hair, the missing patch – even though it is rather large – is not really noticeable. Margaret is one tough little kid.
Warning, the click-through is somewhat gruesome. I feel so sorry for Margaret, but she is doing just fine. I think that she is more embarrassed by the whole thing than anything.
Of course today was Halloween. Katy was a 50’s girl with poodle skirt made by Elizabeth. Margaret was a butterfly. Sam was Steve from blues clues. Every day that his “Steve shirt” is not dirty, he is Steve, so there wasn’t much departure from normal here. The kids had their parade at school, we had the block party on the street, we had some friends over to go trick-or-treating on the blocked off street, and we gave out about 900 glow bracelets.
Katy’s class went to The Tech today.
The kids took part in a Bouyancy lab, where they worked in small groups to make underwater exploration devices. Then they ate lunch. saw an IMAX movie, and explored the museum. “Rockets” propelled by water and Alka Seltzer were a big hit.
We finally took the kids to Alcatraz today. Katy has been wanted to go for a while. We rode a Blue & Gold ferry from Pier 41. The island was interesting. We all (except Andy) took the audio tour (even Sam). It was pretty good and it seemed like Katy and Margaret actually got someting out of it. After the visit to the island, we went to a park and played then went to Ghirardelli Square to get some free chocolate. On the way home, we went by Mark’s new place near SBC Park and then to the grandparent’s house in Palo Alto.
