Thanksgiving and Rosemary's birthday

Working backwards a little here, we had an amazing Thanksgiving trip to Big Bend with the Silvergleids, where I have many fond memories of Kumar family trips. I was a little worried it may pale in comparison to the awesome Chilean desert-scapes, especially since we were just there, but it did not disappoint. It did seem lush in comparison to Atacama! One of the highlights was a trip across the border at the newly opened entry-point, Boquillas, Mexico. The town is quite primitive and not very touristy (yet) so it was a neat way of seeing the way living would have been/is in this region. We crossed the international border by rowboat:

 

And horse/burro:

 

Can you see the tiny girl in a Mexican dress about to cross the desert?

We did a little rafting in the state park -- James and kids skipping stones to Mexico:

And building a shelter for Annabelle, the tooth fairy:

Spectacular hiking in the canyons:

We stayed at an absolutely awesome house in the ghost town of Terlingua. This is just outside the (only) general store in town, where there was a motley assortment of folks hanging out and a communal guitar for whomever the mood struck (offered to me by a fellow in a pirate outfit):

One day after a long hike we treated ourselves to a dip in the hot springs. One of the amazing things about Big Bend is how unvisited it is for a national park and how relatively little infrastructure there is -- so just finding this place was quite an adventure!

 

We finished our sojourn with a few nights in the supposedly big-time art town of Marfa for Thanksgiving dinner and some sightseeing. Frankly, Marfa felt like a bit of an imposter where rich, hip folks from Austin and New York have vacation homes rather than a real place, but maybe it was also just a let down after Big Bend. Regardless, we had a nice Thanksgiving which ended with a lot of guitar playing with Tom and fiddle playing with Jordan and a kid "talent show," so I was happy. Oh and a near-miss accident with a sword (fencing) fight that cut Caleb's eye and James leading the kids in whittling, bow-making. Fortunately it was all good...

 

Last day we did an trip to the McDonald observatory where Tom arranged a private tour for our group and we got to go inside three enormous telescopes. I'm not really into space that much but I must say I literally got the chills when we saw another galaxy through the telescope that night!

Moving backwards in time a little was Rosemary's real birthday, which we celebrated with Nani and Nana, Aunt Julie ear piercing!, and roller skating:

 

And her joint birthday party with Esme. The girls are 2 weeks apart, both wanted sleepovers, and basically to invite the same girls so... BRILLIANT... Alicia and I decided to do a joint party. The idea was to have dinner at our house and sleepover at Alicia's (haha) but the sleepover part got canceled due to... lice (Rosemary) and scabies (Esme). How crazy.

 

An age appropriate feast of smoked salmon and fancy prosciutto. We knew we did something wrong when we went shopping at Central Market and were tasting aged prosciutto for a 7 year old birthday party. But helas, they loved it.

We had a do-your-own nail station:

And candlelight feast:

 

And all walked down to Esme's house for petit fours and milk in wine glasses:

And gave the girls matching pajamas as party favors. They got to wear them and then... best part... GO HOME!

In the neighborhood the next morning...

 

The fall has brought many jam sessions with Aaron Barker, whom I must say has gotten pretty good over the past few months -- dare I say he's been feeling the competition :)?

And Lego-building by Miles and Louis:

Our first holiday decoration up, on Dec 1, courtesy of Bradley:

Barton Hills carnival:

And I mentioned this last post, but another FANTASTIC camping trip to Enchanted Rock with Worrel-Chambers and Barkers -- the Landels  and their friends joined us to hike the rock the next day: