Here they are with Simon amongst the flood of children hitting our neighborhood. Minivans park in the video store lot next to our house and unload 10 or 20 of them. Every year someone gets caught up in our climbing rose in our front yard. This time it was a giant kid dressed as Michael Myers. (I saw one kid dressed as Urkel this year--I haven't seen that in at least 15 years.)
Dangerous monkey bars (with bars 6 inches apart so kids can get their heads stuck in them) are slowly being replaced with these sorts of things.
Frederick checks out the boat--hasn't changed since the last time he was here, the day before.
Saturday Frederick weighed in at the doctor's office (a check up with his allergenist--we're down to one shot every 4 weeks now! Whoopee!) at a whopping 64 pounds. How long before he can no longer squeeze in through the windows?
Frederick enjoying himself. Is Simon laughing that hard? I'm sure he is. He loves this walk.
Omid, Thomas's percussion side-kick for the past 5 years, is clearly geeked to be there.
But a mere 3 hours later Thomas is hit with a flu that lays him out cold. Symptoms: headache, fever and sore throat. Today, Sunday, he is better (he actually ate something!) but has completely lost his voice--scary, but admittedly not necessarily a bad thing from the parental point of view.
And, meanwhile, what has Simon been up to? Acting not his age but his shoe size and getting into a brawl on the basketball court. Here he is modeling his split lip which the doctor sealed up with super glue--faster than stiches and leaves no scars. (Rumor has it that we can thank the US involvement in Vietnam for that piece of medical progress. If true then perhaps our students are right--everything always works out best in the end.)
On the way to Thomas's school we pass by this rock every morning, and two or three times a week it's been re-painted, presumably by elves. Usually the rock says "Happy Birthday" but usually it's to somebody who died (because their date of death is supplied). Perhaps painting a rock by the side of a busy road. I only have my cell phone with me, so you will have to peer to get something of the true glory of the Rock of Sad Birthdays (this is just a selection):
Thomas enjoys being on the balcony. I suspect he regards it as exclusively his space.
Now the porch, which never looked great, looks especially shabby. We are thinking of getting the screens ripped out, new screen frames built so that we can install and remove each screen frame at will and (gasp!) we are even talking of getting windows built for each space so that we can use the porch in cold weather! It's almost as if we really live here.
And here is the back of the house, horrific as ever. But the balcony is almost done and looking better than I thought possible. Thomas was very disappointed that he was not allowed to play on it after school today. Sheldon, the owner of the company we are working with, nailed the door shut from the outside so no one would come out and fall off. While Sheldon worked this afternoon, Thomas tried to pass him a 10 dollar bill through a rip in the screen hoping to bribe him into opening the door. Sheldon wasn't interested in the money but really like Thomas' turtles. Thomas was more than willing to oblige with all kinds of turtle trivia.
Here is the old balcony which was, we now know, held together with rusty 3" wood screws--it's amazing any of us are alive.
