Snow White and the Ghoul

Evelyn and Kenneth got dressed up (of course!) for Halloween. We started the evening at a family friend's house for a pre-walk party, complete with Chick-Fil-A nuggets, veggies, and homemade sandwiches that were baked in the oven. Fabulous! I went home to answer the door for trick or treaters and Rod went walking with the kids and the rest of the party group. They are still out and have dropped by twice now to dump their baskets of candy so they have room for more.

Have a Happy and Safe Halloween!

Do Fish Eat Breakfast Cereal?

Tonight we went to the elementary school Fall Festival. For 25 cents a ticket, kids could play games at various booths. I worked the Moon Bounce from 6:30 - 8. My job included manning a stopwatch for 3 minute jump segments, trying to allot the correct number and size kids in at the same time. I am proud to say that only a bitten tongue occurred on my watch!

While I ran the booth, Rod walked around with the kids to spend their tickets. I don't know whose bright idea it was to have fish as one of the prizes, but when I caught up with them after my stint as Moon Bounce Coordinator, Kenneth had a bag of fish. Great. We put them in a bowl with some marbles (Evelyn's idea) and fed them grape nuts flakes, which is about the only thing I could think to feed fish at 9:30 PM.

Exhausted

I promise to post some family info soon. I am exhausted from a busy 2 weeks of travel to Taiwan and then to San Francisco. The weekend was as relaxing as it could be, but I'm not completely back in gear yet, although work and family demands remain ever present!

Back from Taiwan

The week went very quickly in Taiwan. I would get to the Dell Taiwan offices around 8:30 AM and by the end of the day, would be at one of our manufacturers working through product development tradeoffs till 9 or 10. Long days and a short trip. The only night I didn't work late was the first night there. On that night, a colleague and I (she happens to speak Mandarin) went to get a massage at a massage school for the blind. It was really one of the odder massages that I've had. You are given full-length pajamas made of a really light-weight material and the massages involved a lot of stretching. We also visited a Taiwan night market which was completely overwhelming with the number and proximity of vendors.

On one of the nights there, an earthquake happened while I was sleeping; someone said that it was a 5.9 score. The hotel was shaking in a wave-like fashion and there was a lot of clanging. Apparently this type of earthquake is somewhat normal and happens about 10-15 times a year.

One the flight back home on the Los Angeles to Austin leg, Sandra Bullock sat in the first class seat next to me! she was reading a script and making notes in it and we exchanged very basic pleasantries, but I left her alone. I'm still impressed.

I met Rod and the kids (and Nana and Pops) at Freebirds straight from the airport. It was great to see them and I got really great hugs from Kenenth and Evelyn.

To Taiwan Again

I head out tomorrow morning for Taiwan for a quick work trip. Tomorrow the kids will hang out with Nana because they have off for Columbus Day. After that, Rod has full charge till Saturday, when I return.

We made progress on Kenneth's landform, adding blue clay for water, and green and brown clay for vegetation. Evelyn kept busy alternating her time between giving us small pieces of clay and coloring her Hello Kitty's Neighborhood coloring book.

Making a Landform

Kenneth has been assigned the highly educational task of making a landform as part of a larger learning-about-landform-characteristics initiative. I don't have anything against the second phase of the project, but the first phase of actually making a landform is (1) a pain in the rear, (2) time-consuming, (3) expensive to some extent, and (4) of questionable educational value-add. I'm not bitter, but I remember projects like this when I was in school and I never understood the value of making models. Maybe it's just me. Brief sidenote: I remember re-using a model of an English castle that I had to create for SAGE in the 3rd grade again in the 6th grade for a Boston Tea Party project. The fact that the Boston Tea Party had nothing to do with castles was beside the point in my mind. I just didn't want to make a new model. Mr. Wichlep mocked my choice of model with some Lipton tea bags glued to the moat area. I can still remember the disdain in his voice. LOL

Back to Kenneth's project: Like a dutiful Mom, I made the "Landform Dough" which you can then mold into your selected landform shape, which has to dry for 48 hours. The kids were out of school on Friday, so I took the day off with them and most of it was spent locating items that can be added to the landform once it is dry. I have to admit, Kenneth did a great job molding out Florida (we chose Florida, the peninsula, as our landform). We rolled out a map of the U.S., I gave him the lump of landform dough, and told him to make Florida. He even molded out the Florida keys and some internal lakes. Since I am heading out of town on Monday morning, Rod will have to supervise the rest of it (it's due on Friday).

In case you're interested in making your own landform dough (which has the consistency of Playdoh): combine 4 cups flour, 1 cup salt, and 1.5 cups water. Knead together for 8 - 10 minutes.