New York and Thanksgiving

The weekend before Thanksgiving we all went up to New York to celebrate Wallis' 6th birthday.  Despite his aversion to New York, Carlos did okay and the kids had a lot of fun playing with Wallis and Eli.  Everyone braved the cold to go scooting/biking and play soccer.  From there they went to the lego store and then braved the snow to go to Soogy's favorite restaurant - Benihana!  So funny.  The kids did love the chef, but the food was, well....Benihana food...

We got to see some of my highschool and college friends while we were there which made me happy.  Seeing them always reminds me how much I appreciate old friends and how I don't do a good enough job staying in touch.

On Wednesday we headed up to Philadelphia for Thanksgiving at my mom's house.  It was so nice for the kids to be with their cousins and uncles/aunts.  My vision of a family Turkey day trot didn't really materialize, but we did go to the track to run around and play soccer before the big feast.  Charlie tried to keep up with his uncles running around the track, but at 6:30 mile pace, it was a bit tough for him.....Tio Seth ran with him afterwards around the track once at 2:13.  Diego played soccer with me (with sofia attached) and my mom but then told us he wanted "a fast guy to play with him."  Guess I'm going to have to score more goals on him....The day after Thanksgiving we trekked down to the Franklin Institute.  The Pompeii reenactment film made Diego cry, but the cool digger, skybike and actual train made up for it.  

Thanksgiving dinner was an insane amount of good food.  The kids started off with presents on their plates which was a good appetizer!

Sofia slept next to me all weekend and when she is close by she spends the whole night nursing.  I guess she smells the milk and can't resist.  She is so cozy that I don't really mind except that getting back on our normal routine is hard.  She cried like crazy when I put her to bed without me.  It could also be the fact that her first tooth is finally coming in!!  

During the week Charlie's class had a publishing party which was super cute.  They wrote a book and illustrated it.  Charlie's story contemplated why tigers and bees have black stripes. Very deep.  My favorite part was the back cover which read: "if you want to learn more about tigers and bees read this book."  Here he is reading it....

Despite my best efforts as room-parent I seem to get on Charlie's teacher's bad side.  My latest stick-my-foot-in-my-mouth episode was that I told her I thought the report cards were silly.  That didn't go over well. I appreciate that they don't grade just random subjects, but the social studies section feels like they are grading them on being patriotic capitalists!  He got a "B" for basic for the American symbol one - seems our son is not very patriotic....Luckily the teacher seems to like Carlos so we might at least be in neutral territory.

What charlie is graded against