Wednesday, December 29
We've been back in Boston since Saturday night but it has taken this long to recover from our vacation. Traveling with 3 small children is tiring to say the least. I'll give the trip a mixed review. The main point of our trip to San Antonio was to get an idea where we'll want to live when we move there in June. Our mission was accomplished.
We also went to have a fun family vacation. The first few days were great. Two of my sisters met us down there and it was great to see them. The weather was sunny and warm and there is plenty to do there. The boys were even able to swim in the outdoor pool. Then the cold snap came and wouldn't you know, it was the coldest weather they had seen since the 1950s. It was just too bad that we had left all of our winter gear back in our car at the airport. We got a good laugh out of the ridiculously large amount of salt our hotel spread on the sidewalk when there wasn't even any precipitation.
Despite the weather we still managed to pack a lot in during our 6 days there. The Riverwalk during the Christmas season was really beautiful and the Mexican food was incredible. Overall it was a nice trip and we have a reasonably favorable impression of San Antonio. Leaving Boston makes me really sad but I think San Antonio will be an alright place to live. Here are some photos from the trip.
Monday, December 27
Friday, December 17
I should have spent the evening packing but instead I was at Children's Hospital. Iris fell and hit her head and needed 3 stitches on her forehead. It took 4 1/2 hours to get three measly stitches. The ER was a madhouse and it took 30 minutes just to get to triage. She screamed practically the whole time. Not because she was in pain; she was just really mad.
The ER visit topped off a fantastic week. Henry had the flu all week and was still running a temperature today. But we are going on our trip tomorrow. He will be better tomorrow.
We're not bringing the laptop so I won't post until after Christmas. So Merry Christmas to all. Here is a picture of Iris (pre-head wound) and a picture of Theo that you can look at while we are gone.
Sunday, December 12
Thank you Sri, whoever you are, for your perfect instructions on how to install Movable Type. I was able to do it without a hitch despite the many warnings out there to not even attempt to do it if you aren't familiar with perl or cgi scripts. (What are those?) I obviously haven't started using MT but I plan to make the switch sometime after Christmas. I want to learn how to use PHP and CSS first and I won't have time until then. I would be very grateful to anyone who could point me in the direction of some good tutorials.
Eric takes National Boards tomorrow and Tuesday. He then has a big Oral Surgery presentation to give on Thursday. After that is over I will have my husband back. I'm really excited because we are taking a family vacation to San Antonio next week. I have never been there before and since we are moving there next summer it would be nice to get the to know the city a little. It's going to be a fun, family-oriented vacation as well as an opportunity to check out neighborhoods where we might want to live. We will need to live a reasonable distance from the Dental School and Lackland AFB.
Friday, December 10
I took some photos of our new white tree. The boys and I made the ornaments yesterday. I am certainly impressed with what you can do with poster paint and glitter! The tree came pre strung with lights and as you can see in the pictures one strand is dead. Eric searched for that one broken bulb but to no avail it could not be found. We'll fix it next year. I also posted the pictures of the boys lighting last night's Chanukah candles. Of course all 3 children are completely fascinated by the flames.
Wednesday, December 8
When you are in an interfaith marriage you get to celebrate a lot of holidays. So Happy Chanukah on this 2nd night of the Festival of Lights. We're going to have latkes with applesauce with dinner tomorrow night. Then after we light our 3 menorahs we are going to put up the Christmas tree. Talk about confusing the kids!
Eric actually bought our tree today at the commissary at Hanscom Air Force Base while he was there taking care of some paperwork for his scholarship. Neither of us had ever visited a commissary before and he just couldn't resist. Anyway, we decided to go ahead and get a fake one instead of cutting down a tree each year. I will miss the smell of pine but I won't miss cleaning up the needles and having to fish toys out of the slimy tree water for the next few weeks. And since we decided to go fake we decided to go really fake and we got a white one. I'm not sure what possessed me to want a white tree but I'm going to have fun with it. I'm having visions of a white tree with hot pink decorations.
I have nearly all of my holiday shopping done. I just need to buy some gift cards for the boys' teachers. I ordered most of my gifts online and while shopping I came across some things that will not be on my list this year:
Earthworm Bracelet
Death to Dust
Gameboy Shoes
The Unfortunate Animal of the Month Club
The Big Greasy Cheeseburger Candle (it's scented!)I'll post some holiday photos, including the new white tree, in a few days. In the meantime here is a picture of the boys playing legos earlier today.
Friday, December 3
Yesterday we went to the Mass Audubon's Boston Nature Center for the monthly Early Explorers class. The cottontail rabbit was the topic of the class. Carolyn, the teacher, did a great job of explaining how a cottontail rabbit protects itself from all of its different predators. After a puppet show and a story we got on our coats to go out for a little hike to see if there were any signs of rabbits on the Nature Center grounds. There was a sign alright! About 6 feet from the door lay a rabbit that had been torn in half with what I think was its liver hanging out. Apparently a hawk or a coyote (yes, there are actually coyotes in Boston) managed to catch a snack.
Poor Iris! It seems she has fifths disease. She's not that ill, but she is also cutting a few molars so she's very cranky. Her Christmas present from her Nini arrived yesterday so I went ahead and gave it to her. She carried her baby around all morning.
Here are some pictures from a family jam session from earlier in the week.
The Exploratorium of San Francisco has a great interactive website. Be sure to check out the Science of Music.
