Hey look, it's March already! Let's just make this the mondo post that catches up on everything at once.
I posted
video previously of the new bunk beds. The girls really like them. We take turns reading bedtime stories on the top or bottom bunk. The other day Audrey hung some blankets from the upper bunk rail to make a fort for Charlotte. They are still there.
We have a great store nearby called the
Lakeshore Learning Store. I could buy everything in it if I had the money. Lots of great learn-to-read materials, science kits, cool blocks and other building toys, craft stuff, etc. They had an open house in mid-January with hands-on projects, etc. We spent a long time there that day.
I've been volunteering as a mentor for the Melrose High School iRaiders robotics team. They are participating in the
FIRST Robotics Competition. Each year, a new game structure is announced in early January. Teams then have six weeks to design and build a robot to play that year's game. At the end of March the competition begins. I'm pleased with
the robot our team built. I worked on the lift system that will lift the 120lb robot 20" off the floor at the end of the game for bonus points. I'm looking forward to the competition. I'll have Carol bring the girls for an hour or two so they can see what Dad's been up to with "the robot kids".
On February 2 Audrey turned 6. Wow. Carol and I can't believe we have a 6-year-old. We had a family celebration on Audrey's actual birthday and then a party with a bunch of her classmates on the weekend. Carol did her usual superb job of organizing fun activities for the kids, including a treasure hunt with photo clues and mummy-wrapping each other with toilet paper. Everyone had a blast.
The highlight of February was our vacation in Tucson and Palm Desert visiting both Carol's and my parents. The trip had an inauspicious beginning when we landed in Dallas for our plane change and discovered that due to a record snowstorm were we stuck in Dallas for at least 36 hours (Thursday evening until Saturday morning).
I was trying to use the web on my phone to find a hotel but the cell service in the airport was poor. I called my friend Scott in Seattle to ask him to be my web surfing proxy. I was envisioning a Holiday Inn or something, but Scott has family in Dallas and mentioned that there was a Great Wolf Lodge near the airport. We had stayed in one
a couple of years ago near Seattle and the girls loved it. Scott made a reservation for us online, we hopped in a taxi and we had a fun way to kill the time we were stuck. To the kids it was a vacation bonus.
Saturday morning we managed to escape Dallas and made it to Tucson. Oh, except I left my coat on the plane. Good thing we were visiting warm climes.
We had a day with Carol's parents and then we borrowed their car and drove to Palm Desert, CA to visit my parents. The main goal was for the girls to get time with grandparents and Aunt Besty, so on Monday Carol and I made our traditional trek to Las Vegas. There are back roads through the Mojave Desert that are desolate and lonely and which we absolutely love. We've done this drive four times now I think. It takes about 5 hours and there is a stretch in the middle with no real towns for more than 100 miles.
In Las Vegas we started by going shopping. It was President's Day and there were great sales everywhere. We both bought some much-needed new clothes. Then we had a really pleasant evening grazing on appetizers at a couple of bars. We played a little craps - our favorite game - but our luck was very cold this time so we gave that up quickly and just walked around and people-watched. The original plan was to stay one night, but we extended for another night.
On Wednesday we re-traversed the Mojave to Palm Desert and spent the afternoon with my parents. Then we had a nice dinner out together and Carol and I and the girls departed to drive back to Tucson. These days when we travel I load up our phones with movies (I can get about a dozen movies on each phone), so long car and plane trips are much easier and more peaceful.
Back in Tucson I had arranged to rent a bike for a couple of days. I had hoped to ride all winter in Boston but that didn't work out. 15 degrees in the morning is colder than even my large bike clothing collection can handle. Not to mention potential ice on the roads. So it had been a couple of months since I had ridden. It felt great, and the cycling in Tucson is so beautiful.
On Friday night we did something I've wanted to do for years: Carol's father had made reservations for the Kitt Peak National Observatory
Nightly Observing Program. It lasted about 5 hours and was really fantastic. We had very knowledgeable guides. We started by observing sunset and learning a bunch about changes in the sky at twilight and how to estimate sky angles (your fist at arm's length is about 10 degrees). Then after dark we moved to a 20" telescope and viewed the moon, mars and a handful of galaxies, clusters and nebulae. That's the biggest telescope I've ever looked through and it was fascinating. Even more amazing was that people were looking through much more primitive instruments 400 years ago and elucidating features that I could still barely see with this very high-quality device. We finished the evening with some binocular viewing of larger objects like
the Pleiades. Thank you, Dennis, that was a highlight of the trip.
Sunday we headed back to Boston. Of course our plane was late leaving Phoenix and thus we were expected to miss our connection and spend the night in Milwaukee. Alas, the Milwaukee-Boston flight was late, too, and we got on it after all.
The girls were still on west coast or mountain time, so for the first few days I had to wake them up for school for the first time ever.
Those 70 and 80 degree temperatures were awfully nice, but we had to return to frozen New England and grunt out the last month of Winter. We've had a bunch of flurries since we got back but nothing big. The last five days have been in the 50s and sunny and very nice. We'll probably still get a blast or two of winter but at least there's light at the end of the tunnel.
A week after vacation we had tickets to The Lion King at the
Boston Opera House. Audrey and Charlotte loved it. After the introductory musical number they asked, "Is the movie over?"
Carol started coming down with a cold on our last couple of days in Tucson. She had to spend the travel day feeling awful, and then she was hammered by it for the next 10 days with intermittent high fevers for a week of that time. She's finally feeling normal the last couple of days but she still has a bad cough. Yesterday Audrey came down with it too. Hopefully Charlotte and I will escape.
