We did a short trip to Reno on thanksgiving. It was good to see everyone, eat yummy food, have more victims for Parker's insatiable desire to do magic tricks and catch up with Dave and Betsy. We saw new baby Indiana, new mom Amber and got to know Jazmin and Nick a little more. After a good breakfast Friday and some more hanging out, we drove home. Easy and fun for all.
Michael and I watched an old Julia Child cooking show yesterday for a 30 minute chicken dinner. So we made it tonight. It was good but I'm sure that the nearly one stick of butter was the secret not our technique.
Parker's class had a writing celebration today. He wrote this story about a trip to six flags. There were many illustrations of roller coasters.
Parker got interested in Palindromes again. It's happened three or four times over his life and I'm sure it will come up again. He started designing a palindrome book on the computer but he was using palindromes that didn't make sense like CATATAC for Cat Attack. So today when he asked if he could go work on it again I told him he should try to make up ones that made sense, like "A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL, PANAMA." He sort of looked at me funny and asked me to say it again. I did and he sort of chuckled. Then he repeated it to ensure he got it and ran off. I never explained it to him and he didn't ask what it meant.
At dinner an hour or so later, I was telling Michael that Parker had worked on it more and I told him about A MAN A PLAN A CANAL PANAMA. Parker chuckled once again. So I said, "Do you even know what that means, Parker?" with a somewhat snotty tone in my voice. So Parker says, "Yes. It's a canal that was built to make sure that boats that wanted to go to New York from California didn't have to go all the way around."
Holy Shit. I said, "How do you know that????" He said, "We learned about it at school this year."
Point: Parker.
Parker had another sports heavy weekend.
Yesterday, he played in two soccer games. They won one and lost one. It was their only loss all season so they had a hard time with it. The other team was good. Really good. The kids played hard and fought the good fight, but couldn't turn it around.
This morning, he had the last soccer game of the season (they won and Parker scored a beautiful goal). Then immediately following, there was a swim meet. Parker swam three events (50 back, 50 fly and 100 IM). His goggles came off on the 50 fly and he took in some water and starting freakout and crying at the turnaround. But somehow he pulled it together, put his goggles on and swam back, passing all but one kid. Then he won his heat in the 100 IM.
He's got one more swim meet as an 8 year old and then he'll take a break from them for a bit. Basketball starts in January and Baseball in March. He's also got a couple chess tournaments coming up.
His birthday party is coming up in a month. He's having a "Magic, Survivor, Video Game Sleepover". We'll first do some Survivor challenges that he created and will prepare. Then we are having a magic show/workshop by some super cheesy magician. And then the boys will play video games (Michael is going to set up a Mine craft server-Amy/Eran...expect a call to Oliver about that) until they all fall asleep. All of Parker's favorites things on his favorite day.
I took the kids down to San Jose on Thursday afternoon for a Star Wars exhibit. It was at the Tech Museum. The exhibit was just Ok, but the whole experience and the regular part of the museum was fun.
Parker did a swim meet today and did excellent! He got "A" times in three events...100 free, 50 breast and 25 back. He already had an A time for the 25 free but did well on that one too. He got three ribbons and three medals. He was super happy.
A devil, a disco dancer and the 6-fingered man. (He killed his father so must prepare to die)
