A fine Sunday afternoon

Today was a most delightful Sunday afternoon in the finest of old southern traditions of visiting relatives as we were indeed visited by relatives.  My grandchildren and daughter visiting (for an extended visit) were with Patt and I visited by three of my four brothers and their wives,  and a niece.   Much fun was had by all.  We spent time in the basement prior to adjourning to the upstairs for snacks and some football on the TV.

Mark's Chinese has improved little since his last serious set of lessons from Julianna and Lydia but I am fearful that he is somewhat beyond hope.

The kids were well entertained as well as being entertained by the Uncles and Aunts.  Isaac found people to talk to and people who would talk to him.  ( he will carry on a conversation so be warned)

Conversation in the kitchen was full and lively and the younger set enjoyed listening in too.

Dramatic readings are a skill I was unaware the brother Eric possessed.

 And Kelly is much admired by John Paul, who though like all of his brothers and sisters gets along well with strangers and my brothers are a bit strange sometimes.

Lydia redecorated the tree which we reset this afternoon after its mishap earlier this week, and Luke is taking a close look at how the Panthers were doing.  He does enjoy bhootbhall (I think that is the pronunciation)

A visit to the Health Department

Yesterday, oh how long ago that seems, Laura and I took the five to the Health Department for vaccinations.  Regular pediatricians apparently are booked until sometime in mid next century but the health department was available for back to back appointments, so off we went.

Though I did not meet the nurse, who apparently was quite kind, she was obviously according to Laura was  not working on production, and did have quite the load of paper work to properly document, certify, legitify, duplicate, replicate, multiplcate, and so on with paper.  In fact at some point during the morning, the long morning — we were there from nine till almost noon— that is nearly three hours folks— count em— Laura went back to help with the paper work to coordinate existing records from abroad with needed vaccinations per child.  

and that left me with Ta - Da — Five kids, a waiting room and a hall way.

 Well, we did foot races in the hall way — timed of course by Julianna and me.  Fortunately no one bumped into one another and subsequently cried, ( I was worried about this potentiality)  I did not photograph the races.  I did photo the kids interacting with other board kids in the women's health waiting room.  At this point we are ranging far and wide.

Back in our native land, the vaccination central, do not be deceived by the apparent calm as presented by young John Paul, who by the way is avoiding the needle this day as he is awaiting a visit to UNC Children's Hospital for tubes to be put into his ears scheduled for Friday.  He was reading publications of avoiding AIDS, or checking on bus schedules.  He did unload both racks of folders several times.

I was somewhat loose with what passed for acceptable behavior (sorry about that Laura) as it was a very long morning and the trip to the snack bar - oh yeah juice bottles for us all and Oreo's (praise be) only lasted so long

Little was unexplored in the office, a door stopper, was actually removed — undocumented though

and my favorite photo — gosh I love this photo — it shows, not one but two types of Arab women, a Burmese man sleeping (later I enjoyed talking with him) some kids jointly playing with an iPad, one watching Sesame, or something like that on a TV with extremely low volume and poor reception, and the back of the mother of the littlest girl and her older sister who were from the Middle east (Iraq or Syria?)

As far as I could tell we were the only west Europeans in the building.  A regular United Nations was meeting on that floor.  Isaac told me he heard people speaking Chinese, a Vietnamese family was there when we arrived, and after we had been there a while a Karen Hill Tribe Family from the mountains of Thailand came in.  The grandmother was dressed like she had just come down the mountain too.  Looked very much like the many of the refugees from the Vietnam War the fled the mountains of Laos that Patt and I worked with after we left the Peace Corps back in 1976.  

Like I said we were there a long time.  We did - or rather the kids did get the shots though and thrown in with the wait was a little comforting time — or enjoying basking of a little boasting time whatever the case may be depending on how the time "in the back "there" went.  The number of stickers in possession was a clue too.

When I was a child

When I was a child, my Dad took me to basketball games in William Neal Reynolds Coliseum on the Campus on NC State University ( College at the time).   This past Sunday afternoon was a cold rainy December afternoon and  I took Laura and three grandchildren to Reynolds to see the Lady Wolfpack play a basketball game. 

This was not Laura's first trip to Reynolds.  She had been many other times to see ballgames and concerts and other events at the storied old place.  Stephen and I had been even more often as he became an avid Wolfpack supporter and bled Wolfpack red for many many years.  Well he still does actually, but from afar.

Trips to Reynolds were of course secondary to our trips to Wake to see the Deacons, but as a young family in Raleigh, seeing the Wolfpack and being a fan was fun and easy and we were on campus often at both football and basketball games and other events, and sometimes just to play.  (and I have one degree from State and Patt two, so it sorta makes sense that we would have a little familiarity huh?)

My childhood early memories of Reynolds are of a dark smoky place — back in the day it was not well ventilated and back in the day people smoked, lots of people smoked and the air in the place got thick, very thick and hazy.   At all day tournaments like the Dixie Classic or the ACC tournament, (both of which I attended)  by the time the fourth game was played late in the evening, the air was probably toxic from all the cigarette smoke.

Once at either a Dixie Classic, played after Christmas, or after an ACC tournament game there was rather deep snow storm and leaving the State campus I remember State students pushing Dad's car and others' up the hill to Hillsborough Street on a snowy evening and thinking that was about the coolest thing you could do.

Now back in the day we did not have mascots like now, but having Mrs. Wolf meet the granddaughters  and Laura was pretty neat.  

and getting Tarheel Laura to make this photo was a good one — and she is in red too.  I like the security being provided too.

Game action was followed.  Lots of questions to be answered from Julianna who does not miss much of anything and seems to want to know about everything.  Yes we had good seats too.

Lydia is following the action, you may not think so but she is.  The play on the court is preparation for a free throw — not much action — at the right end of the court — follow Lydia's gaze there is action. The cheerleaders are building up human pyramids, tossing pompoms and conducting other actions to distract the hapless opponent.

It was another good day at Reynolds.

and I have been blessed with many.

looking in on a cooking lesson

The other day the younger of the kids were playing in the kitchen and were having cooking lessons.  Yes cooking lessons.  Lydia was large and in charge.  The younger set, all boys were on the receiving end of instructions, lots of instructions.  They had utensils, bowls, and pieces of plastic and paper which were ingredients  As I came upon this activity late I do not know how they acquired such objects though Patt is suspected.

Close observation of the students will note that at least one of the students is not picking up on the do not taste guidance.

but at least Isaac is very serious  about following the instructions to stir in whatever it was, following carefully the demonstration.

John Paul quite surprisingly was grown up about being grown up and participating in a cooking lesson.

 and Luke never did quite tasting the mixture, working over that spatula the entire time.

Goats as neighbors, good neighbors too

I think I mentioned some time back having goats as neighbors.  Well they are attractive as neighbors if you ask us.  Down the steep hill behind our house and up the one across the way are two goats and a number of chickens.  They make a fair amount of noise and are fun to watch, especially for these our most adventurous grandchildren.

The gap between the existing wire fence and a yet to be complete wooden fence provided nary a challenge to our observers.

Julianna was especially interested in making contacted with them and reminded me of previous visitations she has made with other farm animals in her past.

At times the space did get a bit crowded as the kids tried to move in opposite directions to get a perceived improved view of chickens scratching in the leaf litter.  As rapidly as the chickens were moving (while ignoring observers) any advantage was short lived.

This trip has been made more than once already and probably will be made again.

 [and in case you were wondering — in this case a good neighbor is one that is interesting.]

Yesterday was one of a string of busy Days and Evenings

Well we finally got around to getting the upstairs tree up stairs and up.  It is well lighted and on the way to being well decorated.  The lighting was again a joint effort and we are still not quite the experts —   we did redo the top half of the tree after turning off the lights to check out our handy work.

Future years may (or may not) show great improvement and will continue to be adventures especially as the younger set join the lighting.  You will note the absence of Luke and John Paul from lighting photos.  We were not born yesterday.

In fact this view of my hair line indicates it has been a while indeed since I was born.  An additional side note is that we hope to get the boxes out of the front room and the rest of the decorations up sometime this weekend.  (We hope)

We had a stop by one of the big box stores.  The girls are experienced shoppers in big box stores.

 and it appears Lydia has ridden carts before — or at least indicated that she knew how to.

Thursday evening, as is our custom on first Thursdays, Patt and I serve dinner at a homeless shelter in Raleigh.  Julianna and Lydia joined us.  They were willing and diligent laborers, setting up chairs.

 Setting the table, despite the challenge of irregular and quite mismatched silverware.

The shelter is chronically short of forks and spoons, so they had to problem silver and figure out makeshift table ware from serving utensils.

 They helped our good friend and fellow long time volunteer Robin prepare the drinks

and set out some of the condiments pre dinner time.  Mike, Robin's husband, is in the kitchen window handing out a sauce to Lydia and Julianna for delivery to the tables pre meal.  They, like their mom and uncle before them, did extremely well, and stayed very late and ate at those same tables later in the evening with some of the guests.

set up tree one today

Set up the Christmas tree in the basement today.  Wish you could have seen the effort in bringing the tree into the house - major group effort- as was putting on the lights.  (Yes we have lights).  It was a real discussion and joint effort.  All hands on deck, well thankfully John Paul was still napping so technically at this point it was not an all hands on deck - it only seemed that way.  Did I mention discussion.  You have no idea how much discussion this can engender.  I also did not realize how often I have to say I don't know why such and such is that way.

 This next photo is a little blurry and out of focus.  Perhaps that is because things at times were moving very fast despite a Cannon Camera's best efforts it could keep up with all movement as shown below.  We were moving.  In addition to Patt taking photos on occasion she was trying to maintain some semblance of order in the room too ( we will come back to that)

 One of the challenges was untangling the strings of lights.  You will have to take my word for it.  I do not store my lights like this as shown below.  I tie each string of lights up individually nice and neat.  Somehow on the trip out of the box and being brought to me they were noodled up pretty well so we had a fine challenge.  Fortunately the kids sorted it out  and only had one string of duds.

John Paul did awaken from his nap in time to participate in putting a few decorations on the tree.  Helpful could be his middle name.   Lucky for us, he came with his Mom.

a

 And Patt's other task, keeping order in the room pre John Paul consisted mainly of keeping track of Luke who was not interested in hanging lights on the tree.  Banging this toy dish on the coffee table was joy of the moment (not for long though) and he did give Patt some opportunities for being a grandparent.  But look at that smile - they are worth it.  Oh and even without an artificial noise maker, he is loud as his voice carries.

sending off Kate at Kelly and Beth's

Kate, who had spent Thanksgiving and a couple of days most well accepted with us, was bon voyaged with a going away party at Kelly and Beth's.  Kate has been a most popular and well loved part of our family these past several years and occasional visitor and much appreciated laborer.  

 For our visitors from the East, a visit to Kelly and Beth's provided an opportunity to meet Bailey — wish I had gotten a photo of John Paul who was much taken with Bailey and his chair.

Isaac preferred the more tame of the several cats in attendance.  John Paul chased them all, as did Luke.\

and I though I had graduated from the kids table, but was graced with Julianna and John Paul and being near the brownies and grapes, was a frequent stopping point for wandering kids.

Ball games were of course playing in the back ground and the moment of Alabama's ill advised field goal attempt and Auburn's "run Forest run" (as Marie said) moment played over and over, we enjoyed watching.

Mark got in a lesson in Chinese and proved to be a somewhat difficult student despite great efforts.

And of course Kate had opportunity to regale us all with many jokes, stories and funny incidents of her time here in the South.   And we do look forward to seeing her again, and wish her well and much success.