Iraq story
The Sacramento Bee had an excellent article this morning (link here) by a female reporter about her family's experience in Baghdad. They have recently had to flee their home. It is really interesting, well written, sad and worth a read.
The Sacramento Bee had an excellent article this morning (link here) by a female reporter about her family's experience in Baghdad. They have recently had to flee their home. It is really interesting, well written, sad and worth a read.
Our front door was pretty beat up anyway, and with the stucco job, we had to wet down the stucco twice a day for a couple of weeks and the door got warped, so now we can barely close it. The bottom became too large for the frame.
We were playing a geography game this morning at breakfast - we were telling Owen cities and he was finding them on the map. I suggested El Paso and he said, "Look! Here's Douglas!" (Arizona.) He was very tickled to find a city named Douglas and pointed it out to Douglas, complete with spelling it out. Then he said "And here's Nouglas!" - um, no, that would be Nogales. I could see why he thought that, though.
We had a nice Thanksgiving in Berkeley. We ate the usual stuff - turkey, mashed potatoes, broccoli, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. Then on Friday morning we went to Berkeley's Aquatic Park with Alisa and family. Here are some pictures.
Owen has the whole week off school, thanks to California's way of funding schools, which is by "ADA" - average daily attendance. If students miss a day, the school loses their funding for that day. As a result, the schools don't bother to open at all this week because they would lose out on too much money from the students whose parents pulled them out to go on vacation. So, he is home with a babysitter yesterday and today while I work, and I'll take tomorrow off. Douglas's preschool was open yesterday and today, so no problem there.
If the weather clears up, I'll take some pictures and upload them. Right now it's pretty gray and foggy. The stucco color turned out to be lighter than we anticipated; it's more of a sandy color than a brown, but we can live with it. They finished putting it on yesterday around lunchtime. Douglas subsequently stuck his fingers into the wet stucco, and I tried to clean up where his fingerprints were, but it doesn't look quite the same there (next to the door).
The stuccoites will be coming tomorrow to finish our house and clean up the big mess they have left in the yard. We can't wait!
They had "interest groups" for the past several weeks at Owen's school. He was in the "animals" interest group. Today they had a pet show after school. Patrick brought in his rats, another child brought in her parrot, and someone brought a fish. Owen didn't want to bring Violet, though, because "She can't do any tricks." I tried to explain that neither could any of the other pets, but to no avail.
Our friend Adam was in this weekend's Guardian Sunday Magazine in an article about the company he works for that predicts which songs are going to be hits.
The big 3-6! Hope you have a great one back in the old stomping grounds.
We are looking forward to the election results tonight! Dan and I both voted absentee, which is kind of anticlimactic.
It is pouring right now. Soccer practice is cancelled. The new trees can probably use it (and the rest of the plants, which I had been neglecting).
The kids had lots of fun trick or treating up and down the block. Now we have too much candy. We also went to a little party at Douglas's preschool, which was fun.