October: apples and pumpkins

October found us still adjusting to our new schedules. It was especially hard to get Ivan to practice two instruments regularly. Nikita hit a new low in chess, actually withdrawing from a tournament because he was tired. To improve his performance, Nikita started participating in a weekly evening game in a local chess club. To decrease Igor's stress level, I brought Nikita to a chess tournament; I was pleasantly surprised when Nikita, seeing me comment on student assignments, asked how I got "such a good job."

Fun, random things this month included archery,

Taking aim.

apple picking on Columbus Day,

One of 30 lbs. picked.

and kayaking and Israeli falafel on German Unity Day. The boys also loved carving their pumpkins and getting an obscene amount of candy on Halloween. An hour after trick-or-treating, however, we discovered that Nikita was actually a vector for a stomach virus. Here are the boys before they got sick:

Incubating a bug.

Came down with same bug a few days later.

As for me, I found Leite's Culinaria super helpful for dealing with our surplus of apples and bananas, but I could never get a rainbow rose to work. "This American Life" (now available 24/7!) helped passed the time as I cooked, while Duke Ellington's Retrospection: the Piano Sessions was great for working. When I wasn't cooking or working, I was watching "Sleepy Hollow", reading The Round House and All the Pretty Horses, and enjoying a number of literary sites (an article on reading and empathy, A Tell Tale Vlog, and my favorite - Thug Notes). But for laugh-out-loud humor, you can't beat PhD Barbie, Jimmy Fallon's epic lip-synch battle, or Jon Stewart's take on the government shutdown.