Wow, this seems like a million years ago. Here are Chelsea, Nick, and Maria on our maiden voyage with the pop-up trailer, Mother’s Day weekend last year:

There have been some neat studies about how we perceive time, and what they are finding is that when you feel like time is stretching out, that’s usually because you are having a lot of new experiences and recording a lot of new memories. The times when you are not recording a lot of memories are the ones when it feels like there is little difference between today and a year ago.

I can tell you from my recent experience that we must be making a ton of new memories here, because even things that happened two months ago feel like they are a looooong way back.

We’re in the midst of our contractually negotiated Thanksgiving break here. Best wishes to all of you for a lovely, safe, relaxing holiday weekend. We’ll be back Monday.

My sister rules. She always comes up with great Halloween costume ideas, but this year I think she outdid herself. People of the Internet, I give you… Katie Sperger, Lite Brite. Happy weekend!

Our Anna is a voracious reader. She and I went over to the library the other night to pick up some books. Anna just recently finished reading the seven books in the Harry Potter series, which is a feat that took most of the summer and all of the school year so far to accomplish. The seven books all together probably have about 3,500 pages. Amazing!

Just want to take a moment and congratulate Nick on a great first season as a varsity starter with his high school soccer team. Though the team had a tough season – their final record was 4-14-0 – Nick played well and quickly got comfortable with the demands of varsity level play.

Now he’s starting winter track, and his club soccer team is playing a short season and some tournaments between now and Christmas. I’m so proud of the young man for striving to be both a strong physical contributor and a leader for his teams.

Longtime readers are already well acquainted with Anna’s taste in funny faces. Here she goes again:

Happy weekend, everybody!

Nicholas is a fine young man. No one will dispute this. One of his particular gifts is that he is WONDERFUL with little kids. Here he is with a youngster who will be familiar to many readers of the blog, one of our dearest little friends from our neighborhood:

My dear Maria takes some lovely pictures when she steals my camera, and this one may be her finest yet:

What she did with the light, and the contrast… impressive.

I have reported previously in these pages on Anna’s fixation on mustaches. (The lip rug seems to be having a bit of a cultural moment in general right now, and Anna is hip to the times.) Our Anna decided to give one of her girlfriends a little stuffed cat as a birthday gift, and gave the cat a little somethin’ extra:

I can’t tell you how proud I am of this girl.