Post #200! Halloween wayback special

It's a landmark for the blog - our 200th post! In honor of the occasion, and the Halloween celebration this weekend, we're hopping into the Wayback Machine to look back at Halloween 2004.

Here are Nick and Maria carving pumpkins:



Anna looked on with delight:



Finished products:



And a portrait of the young family:



Next week we'll have some pictures from this Halloween. Enjoy!

Advertisement: Chelsea's updated photo page

A quick note to let you know that Chelsea has updated the site for her photography work, including a set of great new photos that she has taken in recent months. You can visit at:

sperger.com/chelsea

Unrelated: Looks like we're going to have some beautifully warm weather for Halloween on Saturday. Earlier in the week it looked like it would be colder and rainy. Hopefully the new forecast holds!

Pigeon Forge conclusion: Family unity!

One last note on our Pigeon Forge adventure: We got some great opportunities to spend time all together as a family - not just the time we spent with cousins and friends, but among the five of us who ride in the minivan together. I wanted to show you some of my favorite pictures of our gang from moments throughout the trip:







I also owe you one more picture of my Dale Jr. hat... and a funny story. At the end of our day at Dollywood, we were heading out to the parking lot shuttle. We were among the last folks to catch a shuttle, for whatever reason, so there was no one else around when we got to the queue area.

Chels, the kids, and I got there ahead of our cousins, and so we had to wait a few minutes for them. In the meantime, a shuttle bus was sitting there and was just about ready to go. The driver called to us, "Hey! Dale Junior! You gettin' on?" When we motioned that we weren't going to board and he pulled away, we could hear him saying to the passengers, "I can't believe Dale Junior would refuse to ride my bus."

This is the hat that set it all in motion:



Incidentally, I don't think I have worn it since we crossed back over the Mason-Dixon line. The Yankees around here wouldn't understand.

Pigeon Forge part 3: Go-karts

Nick and I are committed go-kart drivers. Do you remember that GEICO commercial with the go-kart kid? That's us: "He comes near me, I'll put him in the wall."

And unbeknownst to us, Pigeon Forge is the go-kart racing capital of the world. Oh, the tracks these people build! They look like fortresses - swooping curves, multiple levels, hills that are made to fly over at the top. This picture from the track we raced gives you a little bit of a sense for the sheer mass of the track:



You're looking at an upward spiral that led to a small rise, which crested and then led into a steep descent and another spiral on the far side. It was awesome.

Maria and I rode together... fortunately, she let me drive:



Nick went solo in the #2 car:





Our cousins were also on the course, but they were in the fastest car of all of us, and I don't think we managed to get any pictures of them.

It was a slow night at this particular track, so they were pretty generous with the length of the race. I think we did about ten laps.

It's hard going back to the go-kart tracks at the Jersey shore after having this transcendent racing experience. It would be like a major league baseball player getting busted back down to his high school junior varsity team. We have been among the greats, and we will return.

Pigeon Forge part 2: Dollywood rides

One of the neat things when we get out of the usual Disney/Jersey Shore loop is that we get to see some really different kinds of amusement park rides. You go a couple places most of the time and get a set idea of what's possible, and then you go somewhere else and get a completely new perspective.

Dollywood had some neat things to offer. In addition to the obligatory wooden roller coaster and looping steel coaster, they had some brilliantly simple rides that offered small-t thrills. Here we are on the Lumberjack Lifts. Concept: You and a friend pull up on a shared rope (the ride does most of the lifting) and you hoist yourself up to the top of a 25-foot tower, which is slowly spinning to afford you a 360-degree view of the park.





Another ride is something like the Buzz Lightyear shoot-'em-up game at the Magic Kingdom, only it's outside, and with water:



They also had a kids' play area that was generously shaded with trees and big canvas panels. It was a great place for us to take refuge in the heat of the afternoon:





Other rides took concepts we'd seen before, and, well, took them to the max. In the second picture, my older two kids are one of those specks way up in the sky... sorry, Grandma, but they did come home safe:





Compared with that flight, I can't imagine this one half as impressive:





Maria soon went back to more ambitious rides... this one spun in a large circle while swooping back and forth in the air on a half-moon steel track. The pictures don't even begin to do it justice, but what you can see is that Maria looks completely serene. In fact, she rode twice.









Fortunately for Chels, Nick, and Anna, the teacups are a near-universal offering at theme parks, so they could do some slightly less intense spinning:



Chels likes to ride big thrill rides, and I can't usually get pictures of her while I'm cowering in fear under a bench. But I was able to snap one late in the day:



It was a full day! In fact, notice how zonked Anna looks on the carousel:



No surprise, then, that the day ended for our girl like this:



Tomorrow: Go-karts!

Pigeon Forge part 1: Shopping and swimming

During our NC swing in August we spent two days in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, home of the Dollywood amusement park and many other diversions. We drove up Sunday mid-day and came back late Monday night.

The drive to Pigeon Forge from North Carolina looks deceptively short on a map. It actually involves driving up and then down a pretty high mountain in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. At the top, which forms the NC/TN state line, you can hike up a path to Clingmans Dome, which is the highest point in Tennessee and is also the highest point along the length of the Appalachian Trail. We were caravaning with a couple of other families, and had many small kids in our tribe, so we skipped the hiking and went straight for the commerce on the other side.

Pigeon Forge is a sight to behold - a multi-lane highway with traffic lights runs through town, and there are motels, restaurants, outlet malls, and goofy tourist attractions as far as the eye can see. The only thing I've seen before that even comes close is US-192 in Kissimmee, on the southern border of the Disney World empire.

An important part of the timing of our trip was that Tennessee was having a sales tax holiday over the weekend. We don't pay sales tax on clothing or shoes here in Pennsylvania, but most other states do, and so the lure of tax-free outlet shopping was too much for our gang to resist.

Enough with the narrative already! Here are some pictures of us swimming and splashing at our hotel:







Nick in particular took a shine to getting water dumped on his head... have I mentioned it was really hot that weekend? This was the one stretch during the whole trip where we saw some real Southern heat and humidity:







Next week: Rides, smiles, tears, and go-karts.

Dollywood! How could I forget?

Gentle readers, you have been wronged. I've been sitting here with a treasure trove of pictures from our visit to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and I completely forgot to write up that part of our summer adventure. I'm short on time today but you will get a full report tomorrow. Meantime, yes, that's me in a Dale Earnhardt Jr. baseball cap. When in Rome....

She shoots, she scores

I mentioned earlier in the soccer season that Anna had a game where she scored two goals, and since she had her face painted, we concluded that she needed the face paint in order to secure her luck. The following week she had no face paint and scored no goals. The week after that, a dab of marker over her right eyebrow seemed to be all she needed - two more goals scored.

Regrettably, her game got postponed this past weekend, because they had face painting at the book fair at school:



Anna has really been wanting to paint a soccer ball on her face like this for a game, because we believe it will confuse her opponents - wait, which ball is the one we're supposed to chase?

Human chess

The kids had a book fair at school over the weekend, and part of the festivities was a game of human chess. 32 brave volunteers donned swords, shields, and funny hats to stand on the field of battle. Naturally, all three of our grandmasters were on the scene.

Would you be surprised if I told you that Maria managed to get herself designated as a king? You would not:



Anna served as the white pawn directly in front of Maria:



And Nick was a black knight:



This is how the board looked mid-match:



And here are the guys who are actually deciding the moves:



Black ended up taking the win. Along the way, Maria gained a new appreciation for the fact that the kings stay on the board all the way to the end:



Nick and Anna got to be on the board for a gratifyingly long time, and they also saw some direct action - I believe Nick was the one who took out Anna's pawn, and Nick also put Maria in check a couple times.

Saturday mornings with Anna

Anna and I are both early risers. On Saturday mornings, she comes in and wakes me up so we can play together; I've realized that she considers Saturday mornings with me to be a basic right of hers, the Right to Some Attention for the Third Kid.

This past weekend, our Saturday morning involved American Girl and Bitty Baby dolls, many of whom needed some hairstyle help:



Those dolls don't dress themselves, either:





Meanwhile, we've got Nick roaming around the house these days wearing a hat he received as a party favor the other week. Makes it look like he's got a wild mop of hair going in place of his usual buzz cut and mini-mohawk:



Side note: There are lots of people in Philadelphia with superstitions about the Phillies, and I regret to say that my son is among them. It seems that he turned on a Phillies-Pirates game late in the regular season, and found the Phillies with a comfortable lead. After he started watching, though, the Phillies gave up a walk-off home run to the Pirates, losing the game. He now believes - you guessed it - that his watching the Phillies will cause them to lose, so he now refuses to watch or listen to any live broadcast of the game.

I'll say this for him: With crazy logic like that, there can be no doubt he's a Philly boy through and through.

Summer flashback: Blueberry picking

As I write this, we're having a cold and rainy day here in Philadelphia - temps are about 45F/7C and it's a blustery day. More like late November than mid October. Hopefully we'll see some better weather for trick or treating on Halloween.

It's an especially good day for looking back at some more of our summer pictures from our trip to North Carolina. We went out blueberry picking one late afternoon at a self-service blueberry field next to someone's house up on a mountainside. Payment was by the honor system - weigh your bucket when you're done, leave the money in a coffee can. We had a blast, and probably picked more blueberries than we'll actually be able to eat for the next year.

The buckets were little plastic sand castle buckets, and not, as one might have hoped, the little steel buckets that feature in the classic kids' book Blueberries for Sal:



The blueberries themselves looked more than a little like grapes on the vine:



Our nature-loving kids got a big kick out of searching high and low for the best berries:







Even Chelsea and I got in on the action... I'm posing with our cousin-in-law Scott, and Chelsea is with some other character whose name escapes me:





There were belts available so you could strap your blueberry bucket to your waist, freeing up both hands to work. This could be a new fashion statement:





If you come to our house sometime in the next six months and we serve you blueberry muffins, pie, or pancakes, you'll know where those berries came from. We still have them stacked up in the freezer.

This is Maria. Watch her fly.

In another tour through our photos from the summer, I found this excellent series of Maria doing what she does best: Taking flight. We were out on Fontana Lake in North Carolina, hanging out in a cove where our uncle-in-law Terry runs a fishing camp from a nifty collection of pontoon boats and floating docks. Maria was up on the roof of one of the boats and saw fit to jump in the lake:









In fairness to Nick, he had actually jumped off the roof before Maria, but we didn't get a good picture of him in flight. Here are the two of them up on the roof with their cousin, a few minutes before people started flying.



Anna, who told me last night on the way to soccer practice that she has "a fear of heights", decided to stay down closer to sea level:



Tomorrow: Blueberries!

Maria's birthday party

Our girl joined the Double Digit Club this month, and the occasion called for a special celebration. Maria decided that she wanted a Food Network themed birthday, and Chelsea's mom, our resident chef, pulled out all the stops to make it happen.

Turns out Maria's favorite TV chef is Giada:



Mary mounted a set of food-related activities fit for a birthday princess. There were elaborate centerpieces...



...apron painting in the basement...



...napkin folding...



...elaborate make-your-own salads and pizzas, aided by my mom and the Playgroup moms:





...food art...



...and a cake-decorating contest:



Chelsea awarded prizes to the 15 young chefs who turned out for the party:



And if you were wondering about the party favors, those were pretty special too:



The party was phenomenal - Maria was positively giddy afterward, even after the sugar wore off. Hats off to a group of very dedicated women who made it happen, beginning with Mary and Chelsea.

Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man

Nick had a fancy party to attend on Saturday, and this occasion required him to wear a suit and tie. My mom took him out shopping the other weekend, during which she learned that shoe shopping is just about Nick's least favorite activity in the world. After they came back from shopping, it was over to the tailor for alterations. Nick did the same thing there that he did the first time we ever took him for a haircut, when he was a toddler: He stood stock still, scarcely moving to breathe, and stared at me with deep suspicion.

I have to lead off with this picture of him flashing a fake smile, because I know my mom has about a thousand pictures of me doing this in the same situation:



I told Nick when shooting these pictures that I was going to do some of him looking small, and some of him looking big, because that's where he is in life:





He looked good. I told him, you're right on the cusp of the point in your life when you're going to like looking this way.

Weekend project: Carpet removal

Twice a year, our township has a "Cleanout Week" during which they suspend the regular restrictions about trash pickup. You can put any volume of trash to the curb that you like, so long as it will fit in the truck. For years now we've been talking about removing the last of the industrial gray carpet in our house, the stretch covering the foyer, main stairs, and upstairs hallways. Cleanout Week seemed like a fine time to make our move.

Here are some glimpses of the carpet before we commenced our attack:





It could have been worse carpet - green shag comes to mind - but it could have been better, too. About 10 years ago a realtor bought and flipped our house, and we suspect that the carpet arrived during that time. When we bought the house this carpet was everywhere - living room, dining room, all of the bedrooms upstairs. About the only places where it didn't show up were the bathrooms and the kitchen.

There were two problems with all this plush flooring. First was that we like hardwood floors, and this house had some dynamite original floors available in some of the rooms. Second was that the folks who owned the house before us had several cats and dogs, and so there was a massive amount of animal dander trapped in this carpet. Not good for homeowners with allergies.

There is hardwood in this spaces we just uncovered, but in the foyer and hallway it's covered with what must have been a very nice linoleum surface when it was installed. In the upstairs hallway it actually looks pretty decent:





The one in the foyer is a little more battered and will probably get an area rug for its trouble:



Notice in these pictures that the linoleum is inlaid with a deep red stripe around the perimeter of the room. Very fancy!

Anna jumped in to help with removing padding staples once we had the carpet, padding, and tack strips:





The pink boots are strictly for worksite safety.

Anna and I still have a lot of staples to pull. Whoever installed this carpet went crazy with the staple gun. The floors and stairs are going to need a lot more attention beyond staple pulling, too - trim paint, refinishing, and probably a whole new floor surface in the foyer and the hallway. Even with all that work ahead of us, for now it's nice to have warm hardwood under our feet instead of that dull gray carpeting:

All soccer, all the time

Nick is playing a ton of soccer this season - he plays for his club and he also plays for his school team. Two school teams, in fact, since he has volunteered to play for both the A team and the B team. Young man is going to be chiseled by the end of this season; if he plays three games and has seven practices in a week, which would be a typical amount, then he's probably running 20+ miles a week. That would imply he could do a 5K or even a 10K without any additional training.

Over the summer he attended a weeklong sleepaway soccer camp. I don't think I posted these pictures before, so in honor of Nick's hard work on the field, here are some photos of... Nick's hard work on the field.











Nick is a leader on the field, and I imagine he was giving some helpful guidance to one of his teammates here:



It's a joy watching him play, and following his soccer career has given us a good education in the game overall. We're now just as likely to sit down and watch a soccer match on TV as we are to watch a baseball game.

Day of Service at work

Yesterday we had a community service day at work, and it was a really interesting idea. There is an organization called the Foundation for Hospital Art that runs volunteer events called PaintFests. You come to the event, no painting experience necessary, and you do a sort of "paint by numbers" on a pre-drawn canvas. They generally do six small canvases that combine to make one larger painting. The finished paintings are then donated to local hospitals, shelters, and schools.

What I liked about this model is that you can do something useful in a couple hours' time, with no prior training necessary, and they were able to bring everything to our offices rather than having to transport everyone to a different location. I still like doing things like Habitat for Humanity where you go on site, but for an afternoon community service event at work, this was a pretty cool setup.

Here we are getting set up at the beginning:



I thought Anna would like it if I painted a canvas that included a butterfly:



When we had finished, we went outside to take pictures. My canvas is the one at the bottom right:



It was a fun experience, and I hope the finished painting brings some joy wherever it ends up hanging.

A look back at our visit to the NC mountains

We spent two weeks in the mountains of North Carolina west of Asheville back in August. I lost many of my pictures from that trip because our point and shoot camera went in the river after we fell out of our canoe. (I am a smooth operator when it comes to boating.) However, Chelsea's camera never hit the water and came through the trip unscathed. Here are some pictures from our adventure.

We went out for an afternoon on Fontana Lake, and the weather was just about perfect:





We also did some hiking and camping. I love this picture of me and Maria out in the woods:



Chelsea and her cousin Jessica sat for a lovely portrait together:



And last for today, the Falls at Nantahala Gorge... even more fun to see from inside a raft:



More tomorrow!

Vegetables: Slamming Open the Door

Every now and then, I have a post for you which is not about my happy suburban existence. This one in particular is about as far from that happy suburban existence as you can get, even though in a way it's a story from my own backyard.

Leidy Bonanno (pronounced "Lady") grew up a few towns over from me and went to the same high school I attended. She went on to nursing school, received an offer for her first job at a hospital in Reading, about an hour from here, and was just starting to settle into her new life as an adult.

Leidy had been dating a man from the hospital named Joseph Eaddy, and it wasn't going well. She broke up with him after he stole her identity and opened a credit card account in her name. He threatened her, though she never told her parents about it. And when she failed to show up for her first day at work, her parents asked the police to go to her apartment and break in.

They found Leidy Bonanno there, strangled.

Leidy's mother, Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno, teaches English and creative writing at a nearby high school. She has recently published a book of poems about Leidy's murder, titled Slamming Open the Door. It's extraordinary. Here is how it opens:

DEATH BARGED IN
In his Russian greatcoat
slamming open the door
with an unpardonable bang,
and he has been here ever since.

He changes everything,
rearranges the furniture,
his hand hovers
by the phone;
he will answer now, he says;
he will be the answer.

Tonight he sits down to dinner
at the head of the table
as we eat, mute;
later, he climbs into bed
between us.

Even as I sit here,
he stands behind me
clamping two
colossal hands on my shoulders
and bends down
and whispers to my neck,
From now on,
you write about me.

I heard Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno interviewed on Fresh Air over the summer and immediately put in a request at the library for Slamming Open the Door. It came in only yesterday, a slim volume, and I read it straight through last night.

The poems are heartbreaking, and beautiful, and funny, and haunting. Bonanno writes about the surrealness of playing the role you've seen so many times before on television - the mother of the victim, seeker of justice, offering a reward while clutching an 8x10 of your child's graduation photo to your chest. In another poem her husband offers her anything she wants that might console her in their shared grief:

And I say, Okay, I want
to have an affair,
or I want a teacup Chihuahua.

And my husband says,
Yes, alright, maybe the affair,
Because dogs are a lot of work.

Read this book, painful though it is. You'll be glad you did.

The times, they are a-changin'

For the better part of the last 12 years, I've been reading with the kids at bedtime. I realized recently that I've reached the end of an era, in a small way. When I lay down now with Anna, she reads to me:



I'm still singing songs at bedtime, but they're starting to prefer their iPods, which never have pitch problems and always remember the lyrics.

Sometimes it's like trying to run in the ocean

I was back from vacation, back from my other thing, ready to show off my kids once again, and then what happens? Computer crash. I'm pretty well recovered at this point, but that chewed up the last two days.

So here's a consolation prize: A look back at last winter, since it was nice and chilly this morning when we woke up.



We've got an action-packed weekend ahead of us, and with the computers all back up and running, there should be plenty of new things to report next week. Happy weekend!