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| William Tell meets bunny ears. |
I think weekends give a good indication of activity in a month. October's weekends were so packed that we didn't get a chance to go apple picking. Instead, we went down to the NYC area (to the sounds of "Inuyasha") twice for Nikita's fencing and chess tournaments. The results were mixed: Nikita got slaughtered in the Y10 (10 and under) foil category, but did moderately well (6 out of 14) in Y8 foil; in chess, he won three out of his 4 matches, but failed to win a trophy due to tie-breaking points. We also attended two birthday parties (soccer and bowling) and two Oktoberfests. The one at the boys' school unsurprisingly had fantastic sausages, but the one at Harvard Square had better bulbogi and a quirky HONK! parade. And although we didn't go to an apple orchard as a family, we did get our pumpkins at a farm (above - more photos
here).
Back at the house, Nikita played with his new Elenco Electronics Snap Circuits kit, while Ivan occupied himself with Perler beads and writing as I spelled out the words - a far cry from Ivan singing A-B-C-D-F-I-G a couple of months ago (learning piano scales helped!). Ivan also practiced flamenco dancing to the "Puss in Boots" movie, and waltzing to Nikita's piano practice. Meanwhile, I baked my first biko (I should check out this
blog for future inspiration) and a lot of
banana bread, but one set of leftover lunches (bulgogi, couscous, pancit, and kharcho) demonstrates that I didn't just make desserts.
The last week of October was a tad more stressful than usual. We got back from Nikita's NYC chess tournament on the eve of Hurricane Sandy. So, I worried not only about work, but preparing the house as well. Thankfully, we never lost utilities and the trees (unlike last year) retained their big branches. Plus the school closings (including MIT) allowed us all to catch up with work and carve pumpkins in time for Halloween (below).
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| Obi Wan's Ghost and the Goblin King preside over their pumpkins. |
