Philadelphia weekends

We were in Philadelphia two weekends in a row - once for my 20th high school reunion and then again for my mom's birthday.  Both weekends were a lot of fun.  The first weekend was dominated by GA/PC day which included a full day of sports events between the rival high schools.  Charlie in particular loved it.  After four hours of watching and playing I decided it was time to go home, but Charlie called my dad every 5 minutes for updates to the game.  Luckily GA won overall.

GA Patriot helping Sofia from a fall...she wasn't happy about him...

We were back in Philly the next weekend for my mom's birthday and the cousins played SO hard ALL weekend.  My favorite was the fort they built under grandma's bed.  They dragged pillows, blankets, books and even a reading light under her bed and put snakes, dolls and other 'scary' things under her blanket to frighten her.  They posted signs all over the house announcing the fort and then were determined to sleep there.  Diego was the first to jump ship and head to his own bed, but Charlie, Wallis and Eli curled up under the bed for awhile.  Only when Eli decided the floor was too uncomfortable did the crew give up and go to bed. Of course no trip to Grandma's house would be complete without digging in the dirt!  Despite the cold, they diligently worked on mud pies which then froze into mud popsicles.

mud popsicles

watching rocko from the backdoor

They also loved playing at the field house at GA.  The huge indoor (and empty!) space allowed us to play football, baseball, rock climbing, pitt jumping, do races and whatever else we could think of to burn calories.  No one wanted to leave when Sunday night arrived.

As for my highschool reunion, a lot of people looked exactly the same, but others I couldn't recognize at all.  Despite only being there for 2 years and the fact that most people I actually liked were in the class above me, it was still fun to connect with people after 20 years.  Many of them were "lifers" having attended from kindergarten through 12th grade so for at least half of my junior year I remember feeling like a major outsider.  If it weren't for sports and Ron Gonen I don't think anyone would have even talked to me.  I was particularly excited to see Chad Peacock who has been chronicling his survival of brain cancer.  http://thebrainchancery.com/

Halloween

I found some one who loves Halloween more than me!  Charlie's friend had the whole neighborhood over for a Halloween party which featured a pumpkin vomiting spinach dip, graveyard bean dip, intestine shaped bread, brain shaped jello and syringe-filled jello shots.  Charlie was the Hulk and couldn't have been more pleased with himself.  Diego went with Thor, but refused to wear the wig or helmet I got him.  Sofia was meant to be a mummy, but didn't like being wrapped up in ace bandages and I was a zombie (aka mother of my 3 monsters).  Charlie couldn't get enough of trick-or-treating and insisted on hitting East Capitol once our neighborhood was tapped out.  Diego opted to come home and hand out candy.  We don't get a lot of kids so we had to catcall people off the streets to come by.  Nevertheless, they both seemed happy.  They have been oddly civilized about their candy stash.  We converted their closet into an office/reading nook. I did it because my closet was my office growing up and I loved it.  They keep their buckets of candy in their office and sort through it every now and then, but haven't been very focused on eating it.

 We had parent teacher conferences and both teachers were really impressive with how much detail and thought they put into evaluating Charlie and Diego's progress.  Ms Sadowsky and her co-teacher adore Diego, but she had a very astute observation about Diego having a hard time recovering from disagreements; he doesn't forgive easily.  Carlos and I both laughed because she could have been describing Carlos.  I'm not sure if it is a personality trait or if it has to do with being the younger brother, but Diego certainly does seem to take any disagreement extremely personally.  He'll whimper and sulk off to be by himself.  Charlie gets vocally upset, but then it quickly dissipates - much more like me!  Charlie will get upset, go up to his room for 2-3 minutes and then come back, give us a hug and move on.  Diego won't.  Diego also has a strange need to ask to play with others.  If Charlie has a friend over, Diego wants me to ask if he can play with them instead of just jumping in.  It is the same with kickball games - he'll want me to ask if he can play.
I went with Diego's class to the top of the Washington Monument - very cool! I can't believe we hadn't gone before!  The mom of another student in the class was in charge of repairing the monument after the earthquake so she came along and showed the class pictures and where we could spot the cracks.

Despite our concerns about the class composition, Ms Isaacson tried to assure us that Charlie (or Carlos as they call him in call now) is doing well.  She commented that Charlie  likes things to be perfect so he'll erase whole sections of his work and revise and revise it. AH! sounds like Carlos again! Did I put anything into this gene pool?!  She says that he is super well behaved in class, but we've been observing some poor behavior recently.  It just feels like all boy, all the time.  He likes to put on sunglasses and rock out to music that is on the edge of what I can stand.