Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Sunday, Sept. 9th, continued

Alec and Jef's street had their annual Labor Day block party complete with water slide


Bean bag toss for a trophy and bragging rights for the year



This year Jef and her partner (assigned by lot) made it to the round of eight. The contest starts in daylight and finishes in the dark.



Alec made his specialty, frito pie. Last year people were almost afraid to try, this year they were asking him days ahead of time if he was going to make it.

I moved into bed #15. Grandma Choy went back to Rhode Island and I moved into her house with Jef's brother Karlton. It is harder, because I really like living alone.

The kids started school.



The aerobics group celebrated my birthday






My house now has new wood floors in the bedroom and kitchen and the windows and sliding doors have been installed.





The window that will run the whole length of the counter.






The first watermelon was delicious.



Life is still good. I am still sane. What more could I ask.

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Sunday, September 9th, beds #13, 14, and 15

The saga continues... I am still scheduled to be back home by Thanksgiving.

Bed 12 was delightful. The kids showed how much they had paid attention during the Olympics. For diving competition they wiped themselves down with the little towel (actually the removable skirt to Branwen's bathing suit.). They tossed it into the hot tub and carefully put it aside for the "dive". Dives were scored by degree of difficulty and size of the splash. (feet first and from the kneeling position were lesser difficulty.). For races, they first splashed water on their chests and then did the arm flap thing.

The last two weeks of August had no organized activities, so we did some field trips of our own. We took the new Expo light rail line to the Science Museum. Since our party had 7 kids and 5 adults, buying tickets got to,be very complicated. The woman who was there to help ended up just giving us cards for day passes. We were told to keep it because we could reload it in the future. After exploring the museum and having lunch, we broke into two groups. Our group decided to really use our pass and go to Chinatown via the Expo line to the Red line and then the Gold line. A good time was had by all.

The next day we went to the zoo. LAIR, the new reptile house was finally finished and Branwen has been wanting to see it. We took a friend of Calder's. Unfortunately, his favorite must see animal was the lion, which took us to the far end of the zoo on a very hot day.



I had a very exciting 70th birthday. We spent 2 days at LEGOLAND! (bed #13) It was such a fun time. We drove down a day early and enjoyed a swim and dunk in the hot tub. We found a good pizza place and then went to bed early all in the same room. There was some gas passing in the other bed which caused giggles and then Branwen, in a very adult tone, announced that it was impossible to sleep with all the laughing going on. That set us all off. Then every time we stopped gasping, she would question in a snotty voice - " Well, are you finished?" which would set us off again.

We went to the water park for the first time. I did everything - the slides, the big raft slide and the lazy river tubing. It is a good thing that the tube in my ear had fallen out or I would have water inside my brain.

On my actual birthday, Branwen decided that I could pick the first 3 rides, and both kids were very careful to take turns riding with me. I wore the Birthday button, so people kept wishing me Happy Birthday all day long.

Here we are as Princess Leia, Yoda and an Ewok.


This was the first time that Branwen was tall enough to ride the biggest roller coaster. She and Calder rode it 3 times in a row, because the wasn't any line. ( It was like the park in Denmark, where you didn't have to wait to get on the rides.)



We are always aware that building memories is tremendously important and I think that this one will stick with both kids.

We went home to my "fall back" bed (#15). This is the first time since May 15 that I have really had to stay there. The next night grandma Choy babysat and Alec, Jef and I went out for a really good birthday dinner. So here are the requisite food pics:




































And dessert


We had one serving of the 13 accompanying wines which we shared. (A good thing or we would have had to crawl home.)

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