Cousin Night

This weekend we held our ninth(!) annual Cousin Night, when we have all of the Sperger and King first cousins over to our house for a sleepover. We started doing this when we first moved up from Florida in 2000, and Nick was three years old. Time flies!

This year we had a Rock Band tournament. We formed up three teams of three players each, playing a three-song main event. Teams had to rotate their players through instruments, so everybody did a different instrument on each song. Here's Maria on the drums:



And on a later song, my cousin John. Note that regardless of the player or their skill level, the drums demand intense concentration:



Nick and Brendan (John's younger brother) consult the score sheet between rounds:



Meanwhile, cousin Dan looks every bit the recording industry executive:



One of the bands, the Ladybuds, decided to get dressed in costume for their set. Remarkably, this was also the band that included three pre-teen girls:



Anna was the band manager for the Ladybuds and helped out on drums here and there. She is excellent with the foot pedal. I should also note that Anna made devil's food cupcakes for the group, and even did fancy icing on the cupcakes using her new baking set.

Cousin Night came about all those years ago through an observation from my dad that he and his cousins all grew up knowing each other well, and that he really treasured those relationships. Family unity!

Family hike along Wissahickon Creek

We finally got all five of us out for a hike this afternoon. We went over to the Flourtown side of Fort Washington State Park - only a quick drive away from our house. In nicer weather we could ride it.

I got some hiking poles for Christmas (Thanks, Kate - just I wanted!) and Anna helped me test them:



It was nice to have Maria join us - she hasn't been able to make it out for a walk in a while because of her performance and rehearsal schedule:





We found an area of low ground that had ice cover on it, which the kids found just perfect for stomping:





Chels and I even posed for a rare picture:



We also came across some neat old stone stairs:







We managed to get out for about an hour, which was impressive considering our schedule these days. The weather was great for a wintertime walk - about 45F and overcast. Tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer, with high temps maybe going up to 65F. If it gets that warm, we'll have to get out for a bike ride. (Anna and I went out very briefly yesterday on our bikes, just long enough to fill up our tires and come back home.)

Photo note: As is often the case, we have more photos on Flickr than I've ended up using here, so make sure to have a look at our photostream.

Christmas!

I took only a few pictures with my camera over the course of the holiday... Chelsea took the lion's share, and I have not yet had a chance to grab the pictures off her camera.

Also, for security reasons I can't really show very much of our Christmas Eve setup procedure, but this is a teaser for you:



(Oh, okay: We have an Amazon.com-style warehouse picking system for gifts. It's all set up in the attic. Chelsea did it two summers ago while the kids were over at my parents' for a weekend. We bought the next ten years' worth of gifts, wrapped them all, and organized them with barcodes. It was hard to set up - especially the part where we had to anticipate fashion trends that are still years away - but it's making each Christmas a pretty stress-free experience.)

Right, Christmas. Maria had a Nutcracker performance at noon on Christmas Eve, so we picked her up after the show and then went for a late lunch. After that we swung by the Comcast Center for their holiday show on the big video wall - very cool! Next we went to Christmas Eve Mass at my uncle Herb's parish, St. Thomas Aquinas in South Philly. The Spergers and Kings were well represented, and after Mass we all had dinner together in the rectory.

When we got home we finally got around to decorating our tree, since it has been standing naked in the living room for three weeks. Then we packed the kids off to bed and set up presents. Nick had the girls come and sleep in his loft bed for the night, so they were all together. It was incredibly sweet.

Setup for us was pretty easy, because my mom and dad had kept the kids overnight on the 23rd. It was a spur of the moment thing, and it worked beautifully. Chelsea and I plowed through wrapping and organizing gifts late into the night, and we had no kids underfoot. Beautiful.

Anyway, we got everything set up and crashed for the night at a decent hour - maybe midnight or so. We told the kids we would not start opening presents until 9:30 in the morning. They woke up around 7:00 and woke me around 8:00. Chelsea slept until 9:30, good as her word.

When we got started, Nick looked like somebody had left him plugged into a wall charger overnight:



Meanwhile, Anna was rocking the footie pajamas - probably the last time that anybody in our house will:



We got Maria a mountain bike for Christmas, so that she can more easily keep up with the rest of the tribe when we go riding. (She rode her single-speed 20" bike all over the place with us this summer. Maria is a gamer.) Anyway, here's girl and bike meeting for the first time:



We started with stockings. Anna was well pleased with hers:



Nick, on the other hand, was a little puzzled by some of our choices:



Maria has been getting some gifts that are variations on the theme of sweets for the sweet:



And finally, here's Anna, in her shyness, showing off a teddy bear that was on her list:



More later. Merry Christmas to all!

More Nutcracker pics!

You wanted more, and we heard you:

Quick visit to the city

Anna and I were kicking around yesterday afternoon while everybody else was busy, so we decided to take the train into the city and do some sightseeing. (Anna really wanted to take the train the other day when Nick and I had ridden the train into town.)



Our first stop was the Betsy Ross House, which Anna had said she really wanted to see. We took the train to Market East and then took the El to 2nd Street, which meant we got a train ride and a subway ride. This pleased Anna greatly.



There is a nifty fountain in the courtyard with some life-size statues of cats playing with the water... we were unsure of the connection to our nation's first flagmaker, but hey, neat picture:



The house itself has a strict photography ban, which Anna made sure to enforce with me. ("Daddy, it says no pictures. Don't take my picture.") She did let me take a picture through a window:



From the Betsy Ross House we went to the Liberty Bell, which is much more welcoming to photographers:



Turned out to be a good day to go - we walked right into the building, through a much more perfunctory security check, and were standing in front of the bell in less than five minutes. (The security guys made each of us take a sip from our water bottles, which confused Anna greatly.)



One more ride on the El took us back to Market East, and we capped off our city tour with another visit to Reading Terminal Market. Look closely at Anna and you'll see conclusive evidence of chocolate ice cream eating:



The drink in front of our girl is fresh hand-squeezed "lemulade", which Anna enjoyed very much. She had wanted to buy a bottle of pink lemonade from some shop, and I said, "No, no. There's better lemonade to be had here." And the Amish delivered.

Nutcracker pictures!

At long last... note that in the show Maria is actually a soldier first and an angel second - just like they'll teach her in the Marines some day - but the angel pictures have some extra wow factor, so I've put them first:

Christmas letter now online

We're having a bit of a hectic Christmas this year, and so I decided that even though I wrote the Christmas letter, trying to get it out with cards was going to hold up the show. So I've posted the letter online - see the link in the sidebar on the right. It's a PDF document, and not a very big file, so it should download pretty quick.

Out for a swim

This evening Maria had a performance of The Nutcracker, and Chelsea was chaperoning, so I took Nick and Anna to the pool. We haven't gone swimming since the end of the outdoor season, and so Anna thought we were going to our summer swim club. "Is it going to be cold outside?" she kept asking me. It was 34F outside when we left the house... maybe if we were going to a hot spring that would work!

We went to the Hatboro Y for family swim and basically had the place to ourselves. They had plenty of toys for us to mess around with - kickboards, noodles, and life jackets. Anna donned a life jacket and swam all over the place with confidence, though by the end of the evening I was gently easing her out of it to swim once more on her own. (She made huge progress this summer, and we're hoping to get her in the water enough over the winter to prevent backsliding.) I fashioned a lounge for myself out of a couple of noodles and a kickboard. I nearly fell asleep floating in the water.

Now, all they need at the Y is some steel drum music and poolside drink service, and I'll be there every night for the rest of the winter.

Basket Ball

I just had my first game for school basketball. We played GA, the best team we will play this season. We lost, about 54-17. We did okay, I guess.

8 days till christmas

Picture with Santa

When we were out getting our tree the other weekend, the tree farm had pictures with Santa Claus. It was a great deal - they took several shots, didn't mind us taking our own, and gave us a CD with high-resolution versions of every picture they took. The best thing about the encounter was that none of our kids could tell Santa what they wanted - he'd ask and each of them would say, "Um, I don't know." Santa was a little puzzled by that.



It's worth noting that our kids have always had an uneasy relationship with the jolly man. Last year Anna became positively terrified of the possibility that she would find this heavyset stranger somewhere in the house when she least expected - Santa as cat burglar. We had to explain to her in great detail that Santa was not real, and still we had to escort her around the house for weeks.

Anna's violin lessons

We've suspected for a while that Anna had some musical gifts, and now we're starting to find out a bit more about them. Last month she started taking violin lessons, using a half-size violin:



Her teacher reported that she ran through 3-4 lessons' worth of material on the first day. Super cool! Watch for Anna to make her professional debut by age 10... just in time for me to retire.

Sperger sighting: CHS Class of 1968

Cheltenham High School's Class of 1968 started up a weblog to coincide with their 40th reunion. If you scroll down the page to the posting "Who was your favorite teacher?", in the middle of the third row of pictures you will find Herb Sperger, math teacher extraordinaire.

My grandfather taught at Thomas Williams Middle School and then Cedarbrook Junior High until he retired in the early 1980s. Throughout my childhood I would encounter adults who would hear my last name, squint for a moment, and say, "Are you related to...?" Yes, I am! They would invariably then say, "He was tough but fair, and I really learned math that year."

Wissahickon Creek walk

Maria had her first two Nutcracker performances this afternoon. (She's telling me that you say "Merde!" to a ballerina the way you would say "Break a leg!" to an actor. Hmm.) While she was dancing her way to fame and glory - and apparently giving autographs between shows - Nick and Anna went for a hike with me along the Wissahickon Creek in Chestnut Hill.

Anna looks positively Yoda-like with her walking stick:



After starting out on a gravel road, we followed a path that rainwater had cut down the side of a hill when it rained cats and dogs earlier this week. That led us to one of the tributaries of the Wissahickon, and there we got ambitious, clambering over fallen trees and hopping across the creek on slippery rocks. Nick led the way, as usual:



Eventually we made it down to the covered bridge at Forbidden Drive, and Anna was kind enough to take a picture of us:



Here's the covered bridge itself, with some kids blocking the view:



After the hike, we took Nick to a friend's house. Anna and I then went to the library and read maybe fourteen Arthur books:

Quick visit with Tom

Chelsea's Dad came up from Atlanta for a quick visit - just about 48 hours in total - to see Maria in The Nutcracker. Chels took him and Anna to dress rehearsal yesterday afternoon, and then we all met up at the Reading Terminal Market. Nick and I took the train into the city.

When we got to the market, most of the vendors were closing up shop, dashing our dinner plans. Bassett's Ice Cream was still open, though, so we made a snap decision to eat dessert first:



Notice she has a little sample spoon in her left hand, just in case the cone starts getting away from her. Maria is a well-prepared child.

Tom and I were searching in vain for ribs, but it was Anna who finally found a pig, though not in edible form:



Here are father and daughter:



We enjoyed Tom's company very much!

Flooded Basement

We have a flooded basement. We just cleaned it up. It was boring.

12 days till christmas

Dinner in Philly

We just had dinner at Joan's with grandpa tom marnell, who got in yesterday afternoon. The food was good. I saw the ribs of the chicken i ate, which i have never seen before and i got creeped out. before that we had gone to the Redding Terminal Market and got ice cream from Basset's (notice we got dessert before dinner).

13 days till christmas

Soccer

I just had indoor soccer. I play indoor with my friend will's team The team is Springfield. We won 3-2. 14 days till christmas.

FLL Team meets with Josh Shapiro

Our FIRST Lego League team went to meet with our state representative, Josh Shapiro, last Wednesday. We were there to talk about stormwater flooding in Abington Township and how the government spends money to fix flooding problems. Here's a group photo:



Josh was gracious, funny, and generous with his time. Both the boys and the parents in attendance really enjoyed the visit.

It's nearly Nutcracker time

This season's production of The Nutcracker at the Pennsylvania Ballet opens this weekend, and with the first curtain call we begin our long sprint toward New Year's Eve. Maria will be in roughly 15 shows this year, and in every one of them our girl will be making a very fast costume change between the battle scene at the end of Act I and the opening of Act II.

Shame on us for not having some photos on here - I'll check with the boss and see if we have anything.

Incidentally, if you ever get a chance, there's an excellent biography of Balanchine called All in the Dances. The book was written by Terry Teachout, who blogs regularly at a site called About Last Night. All in the Dances is a wonderfully accessible introduction both to modern American ballet and to the life of its brightest star.

Balanchine left behind relatively few assets when he died - he liked to spend his money while he had it, and so his estate mostly consisted of his apartment in New York and his ballets themselves. (Not the costumes or the sets - just the musical arrangements, the choreography, and the instructions on staging.) He willed his various ballets to several different people, who had the presence of mind to pool them in the Balanchine Trust, which administers the use of Balanchine's ballets by companies around the world.

When a ballet company produces a Balanchine ballet, the company must contract with a Trust-authorized repetiteur to oversee the production, making sure it remains true to Balanchine's vision and specifications. It's a remarkable way to preserve the integrity of Balanchine's work.

At Maria's dress rehearsals this week, the Balanchine repetiteur will be on hand to make sure everything is in order. And in that small way, our little girl is connected to an incredible artistic heritage.

So yeah, I'll work on some pictures.

Christmas tree

We just put up our christmas tree. It is sitting in the living room. Like always. 16 days till christmas.

Wayback machine: US Open

The weather outside has been frightful these past couple days, and so it's nice to take a break and reminisce about summer. We spent a day at the US Open tennis tournament in New York this past August. Chels, Mary, Nick, and I were there. We saw some great tennis, including a hard-fought night match in Arthur Ashe between James Blake and Donald Young that lasted until 12:30 in the morning.



This year the timing worked out really nicely for us - our day at the Open was at the tail end of our 10-day beach vacation. So my smile in particular may be even more blissful than usual.

Lego Social

We had a lego social on sunday and all of the boys' parents came over and we showed them what we were working on and what we need to do. We then had pizza and dessert and had fun. 17 days till christmas.

Toys for CHOP

Maria got to spend a fun-filled week at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) last year. She remembers the week fondly; her parents, less so. Anyway, for her birthday this year she decided to ask her kid party guests if they would bring a toy donation in lieu of a gift for her. This weekend we finally had an opportunity to make the delivery:



Thanks again to everyone who took part!

FIRST Lego League

This fall Nick and I have brought together a team of boys to compete in FIRST Lego League, a robot competition for kids aged 10-14. There are two parts to the competition, both sharing a common theme. The Lego robot competition has us building an autonomous Mindstorms NXT robot to complete "missions" on the competition field. This is our robot, Taskbot, completing two missions at once:



(If anyone who is an FLL competitor should see this: Yeah, our alignment arrows are not in position, and our walls need to be black. Haven't dealt with those things yet. I also think we still need to adjust our seawall design according to the updated instructions.)

The second part of the competition is a research project. The theme for this year is Climate Connections, so we've been researching a climate-related problem in our area. We picked storm-related flooding as our focus, and we've learned a ton about it over the past several weeks. It happened that when we were out at Lorimer Park last week, we saw high-water marks from a couple of big floods that have happened there in recent years. Nick took a picture for scale with one of them:



It's actually a little hard to tell from this picture, but the wall on which Nick is standing is about 4-5 feet above the waterline right now. So that was some serious flooding. Anyway, we're learning about flooding in our township and how it can be addressed, either during events (with better alert and evacuation techniques) or in advance (with stormwater management and land use policy). It's been an education for me as much as for the boys.

Our friend Tracy has come on board as a coach for the research project, in order to help get the guys to the finish line successfully. We compete on January 10th, and we have lots of work to get done before then.

Tree Picking

We just went tree picking and it was super cold. We went to Carousel Village and only got one tree. It was too cold for staying out there and getting another so we went over to the shop and got some hot chocolate and I got a Phillies World Series Champions ornament. The hot chocolate was hot and I had to wait until we got outside to cool the hot chocolate down. 18 days till Christmas.

Welcome Nick!

You'll see on here that Nick has joined me as a blogger. He worked late into the night last evening on his first post:

St. Nicholas Day

Yesterday was St. Nicholas Day and even though Maria, Anna and I forgot to put out a shoe in front of the fireplace, we got things in our shoes that appeared in front of the fireplace. Hm. I got two pieces of gum and two jawbreakers and a Oball. Maria got two pieces of gum, a lollipop, two things of lip gloss and a pair of earrings. Anna got two pieces of gum, a lollipop, a snowman pin and a christmas pony-tail-holder. There are 19 days till christmas and we are not really keeping up with the advent calendar.

Out hiking on Black Friday

The best Black Friday we've ever had was in Louisville, when we went to Churchill Downs for the final racing weekend of the season. The kids loved seeing the horses, and the adults enjoyed betting on them. I'm still proud of the $4.20 I earned on a $2 bet.

This year we were home in Philadelphia, and not feeling too ambitious anyway because we'd all been sick during the week. We had planned to host Thanksgiving for the Spergers and decided the day before that maybe my Mom and Dad should do it instead. So we spent our Thanksgiving in quarantine, and the next day we were ready to get out of the house, though not really ready to stage an assault on the mall.

Lorimer Park is about twenty minutes away from our house. It's a county park with some pavilions along a very pretty creek. On the far side of the creek is a big rock formation that is great fun for the kids to climb around. Here are the three amigos taking a break from skipping stones on the creek:



Chelsea got sick again the next day, and I followed her back into the infirmary that night. Sometimes it goes like that.

Hello world

Sperger.com was looking a little barren after we changed servers. We're going to try something new - a family weblog. More to come.