November fun

The other week, Rosemary went to William's house for a playdate. His mom called to let me know that he wanted to walk over by himself to pick her up, and wondered if it was OK if Rosemary could walk with him back home. I said OK, of course since it was just across the street. I have to say, my heart leapt a little when I saw him walking up to our door by himself, so grown-up and confident, and the two of them walking away. It was like watching a first date.

Anyway, when she came home, she brought this list of rules she had written (presumably for William's benefit). His mom told me that the prison game had been set up, but that she quickly jumped in and started the list of rules, and the whole time he kept asking her what he could and couldn't do. Louis added to the list (see if you can pick out his rules :-):

• If you break into a house you go to prison
• If you get someone's newspaper you go to prison
• If you get someone's paintbrush you go to prison
• If you do not go to work you go to prison
• If  rob a bank you go to prison
• If you go to someone's house uninvited you to prison

Second image -- we went at Trio at the Four Seasons for our annual tradition (more pictures to come) -- they have free Christmas cookies and champagne, theyunveil their gingerbread village, and the kids roll down the hill. In addition to crayons, they had these cool wax sticks to build with while the kids waited for food. All the other kids are busy coloring or goofing off, but Louis gets to work on the wax sticks for 5-10 minutes quite intently. All of a sudden he stands up and says "I spelled my name!" We all basically go back to what we're doing and ignore him but then I happen to look over and gosh darn, he did (the U and the O are transposed). This is all the more remarkable because we had no idea he knew even any letters of his name -- about 2 weeks ago when he was writing his name it was "L12PZ"

Below is a cute Halloween picture of Rosemary's based on Ed Emberly's thumbprint book. I really like the witch on the broom stick.

Louis is a drawing machine these days -- these attempts at representational drawing coming out of no where. He's started writing lots of books that usually involve volcanoes (that was Becky's influence) and dinosaurs. Below is someone driving a bus:

And a drawing of a spider driving a bus with a sailboat on the bus:

Now this one is a classic. This was , as far as I know, was his second attempt at representational art (I guess not exactly, he'd drawn a lot of hot lava at that point). Look closely. He told me he was drawing his family, and then proceeded to identify each one of us. Hetold me that I was the one in the middle and that my mouth is open because I am screaming. And he is looking sad on the left side. And James is so tall he doesn't quite fit on the page.

 

About two months later, apparently I redeemed myself -- I'm the superhero in the turquoise cape and Louis is the other superhero. Rosemary is the yellow baby floating in the sky -- not sure if we're rescuing her? James is scowling on the ground.

Going to go out of order a little here, but we had Thanksgiving (and Hanukkah) in Lafayette, Louisiana this year with the Silvergleids. This is quite a great tradition we have going on, escaping a little before the mad holiday rush. Turns out Lafayette is wonderful, very laid back and cool, the food was some of the best in the world, and a great time was had by all. We did some walks in the swamp, listened to some zydeco, went canoeing, saw an alligator. I would replicate that trip in a second (stay at Buchanen Lofts, eat at Jolie and French Press and Judice Inn). We even got a sitter one night and went out on the town to a spectacular dinner and one of the best live bands I've seen (which happened to be from Austin, it turns out -- and plays every Thursday night at the Broken Spoke :-)

A pull-ferry across the river at Vermillionville, a historic Arcadian village:

Guess the trip was influential because, in school, Louis said he was thankful for alligators (nice drawing of an alligator!)

We also spent a very, very fun weekend with James's old college roommate Jeff, his wife Liz, and their 3 1/2 year old daughter Tess and 10 week old (!) daughter Samantha. Louis and Tess were really taken with each other, and the kids were very cute and all slept in the same room every night (Louis and Rosemary on the floor, Tess in the bottom bunk).

Happy Hikers action. For some reason Alicia and I took 9 kids down by ourselves (as various moms had asked us to keep their kids for the afternoon), which was a little nerve-wracking but we survived.

I love this river-baptism picture:

 

I had to travel in November  to New York and to Shreveport, LA (spending a lot of time in LA lately for someone who hadn't been there since I was 2! Love it!0 to close out my commitments with the Center for What Works, which was tough but it worked out well in the sense that I got to see Julie in New York and meet her new boyfriend Zach. This is from a pretty special pony party that I missed, but James took the kids:

 

My second trip was to Shreveport, and I actually had to leave on Rosemary's actual sixth birthday, 11/13. It was a bit hard and I kind of freaked out, but I talked myself out of it. We had a special birthday breakfast, and I left all kinds of presents and treats, and a cake for James and Rosemary and Maureen (who moved in the weekend after Halloween -- which has been/was really, really fun and nice). When Alicia heard she instantly insisted that Rosemary come over after school, and Bennett and Bradley, and Kyle, and threw here a little birthday bash complete with tattoos, songs, and crafts:

And Carlisle took her to Happy Hikers the next day:

 

I must say, as hard as it was to leave that day, it made me feel a thousand percent better to realize I have such nice, thoughtful friends who love Rosemary. And I don't think she missed me too much.

And then, the grand finale: Rosemary's birthday party.

 

This year, to make it "easier" we invited all the girls in the class (I kind of freaked out about the fact that we wanted a small party, but didn't want to leave anyone out but, at the same time, she has 19 kids in her class, so I found an objective criteria -- all girls) + all her old childhood friends. We decided to do a scavenger hunt and then BBQ with s'mores, expecting it to be cold, though it turned out to be 90 degrees! The kids STILL did s'mores.

Three Kumar women worked on this cake together:

 

The winning team from the scavenger hunt:

 

Kids by the fire -- in the 90 degree heat

 

And the scavenger hunt! This was the challenge. Each team (pre-assigned -- I wanted to mix it up so kids went with adults other than their parents but people in general didn't seem too comfortable with that so I at least put 2 different families together) had 90 minutes to go about town and:

Take a picture….

1.    Whole group on  a slide (15pts) 

2.    At least 2 members in the deli section (25pts) 

3.    At least 2 members in a picture with someone (not in your group) wearing a UT shirt or hat (25 points) 

4.    At least 2 members with a turkey (25 points) 

5.    Whole group in front of  Peter Pan (25 pts) 

6.    Whole group at a firehouse (25pts) 

7. Whole group recreate Abby Road  picture (25pts) 

8.    Whole group on the rock with the philosophers’ (50pts) 

9.    Whole group YMCA in front of the YMCA (50pts) 

10.  Whole group in a pool (at least your feet) (75pts) 

11.  Whole group on the 50 yard line in a human pyramid (75pts) 

12.  At least 2 members on a paddle board (100pts)

Things for the group to collect

• A sprig of Rosemary (5pts)
• A map (5 pts)
• A paperclip (5pts)
• A drink umbrella (5pts)
• A moss ball (10 pts)
• Something with a mermaid on it (10 pts)
• A balloon (10 pts)
• A library book (10 pts)
• A Slurpee (10pts)
• A sand dollar (15 pts)
•  A Twinkie (15pts)
• A dream catcher (25 pts)
• A dinosaur made of Play-dough (25 pts)
• Whole team matching manicure or pedicure (75 pts)

Bonus points were revealed during the game -- I would send each team leader a random text: for a picture of someone on the team doing a handstand, a picture of a rude bumper sticker, and a video of the team in front of Barton Hills elementary singing the school song.

Here were the awesome scavenger hunt pictures:

Apparently our friend John got yelled at by a cop for letting his kids walk into the street in the taking of this picture:

 

And finally, since Thanksgiving was so late in the year this year, we returned to it being December 1st and the annual Zilker Tree lighting. To boot, Alicia had this ambitious Christmas cookie concept that she and Maureen and I executed -- they were DELICIOUS and BEAUTIFUL (and took 2 days!):

 

The saddest thing about early December was saying goodby to Aunt Mo. The kids were really upset about it, and me too. Rosemary sobbed for an hour after she left. But we're excited for her new adventure and to visit next summer.