Santa Longboarders

To start off the Christmas festivities, Ben and some friends joined a group online and went longboarding in Times Square, wearing Santa suits. Ben and friends went from our neighborhood, through Columbus Circle, through Times Square, down to the East Village, then came back up via Central Park. About twelve miles of longboarding, in a Santa suit. Needless to say, it was a highlight of our New York City experience for Ben.


Columbus Circle

That's Cameron on the left, Ben in the front center, and Jonathan on the back right in front of Radio City Music Hall

Times Square

The whole group gathered in Central Park. Some of them must have missed the memo re Santa suits.

Ben got back into his costume (with a plastic bag for a beard) to entertain the kids the next morning and tell them about it. Aaron was, for once, happy to sit on Santa's lap.

Elliot just wanted to rip his 'beard' off


Aaron wanted a demonstration and test drive

Some more old pictures

"Look how bored I am, mom."

Aaron and Elliot partying/watching a movie with Grandpa. Notice Elliot's hand on Grandpa's lap.

Elliot loves to "write." Especially when Aaron is working on a project, Elliot will sit down and write letters. He writes in binary-- either straight lines or small circles. He's actually getting pretty good at writing his name, since all of the letters consist of either straight lines or a circle. His name looks something like this when he writes it: | | | | O|

Home-made bow aand arrow (made out of train tracks and a rubber band).

Random Old Pictures

September 5th, Kami's birthday-- we gathered at Kami's new apartment to celebrate. (Aaron is hiding behind the couch.)

Snuggling brothers

Cousins little Tony and Elliot playing in Tony's crib

Muddy Puddle Incident

Fake Thanksgiving

My parents came out the first week in November, so we decided to have "Fake Thanksgiving" at our place for the east coasters. As a bonus, Karalee flew out from New Mexico to join us. Our battery died so we didn't get many pictures of the whole crew, but we did get some pictures of the turkey dance. Ever since I can remember, my dad dances the turkey on the table the morning of Thanksgiving. He has a repertoire of songs that he does every year, each time with a variation on the lyrics since he can never quite remember them. When we were kids we used to kiss the turkey for good luck but salmonella fears ended that tradition years ago.

Aaron had never seen the turkey dance (since we go to Los Angeles every year for Thanksgiving) so he was fascinated. Elliot was amused but mostly confused.

I'm hoping to post a video soon, but that requires editing it down a little bit so I doubt I'll get it done within these next two weeks.

November 4, 2008

This was by far the most exciting and memorable political day in my life. All day we felt this general buzz of excitement from the prospect that maybe, if all goes according to plan, Obama would be elected. It was one of those things, though, where we didn't want to get too excited (no matter what the polls said) because the let down would be too much if he lost. So we just sort of sat on the edge of our seats and did what little we could to help out. In the evening, though, we decided to go up to the intersection of Martin Luther King Blvd. and Adam Clayton Powell in Harlem to be with the masses as poll results came in. Aaron put on Elliot's "Barack the Vote" shirt for the occasion (by his own doing). From the moment we arrived, we were overwhelmed with the spirit of the moment. We stayed for a couple of hours, until just after Pennsylvania and a few other important states were announced. When he won PA, people went crazy. Everyone was hugging each other, yelling, chanting, or making any manner of excited noises. Yes, there was definitely a lot of group-think phenomena happening, but it was still fun to be part of the crowd. There were a lot of people there, likely all or almost all of them supported Obama, but doubtless for a variety of reasons. But we were all there, hoping for victory.

In the interest of getting Aaron in bed, we went home early but watched the results come in online. We fell asleep with smiles on our faces and have felt warm and tingly since every time we think about Obama's victory. Part of me can't believe he actually did it, and the other part thinks of course he did.

I normally stay away from highly political or religious references on the blog for the sake of being neutralish, but our record keeping wouldn't be complete without this moment.


The bulk of the crowd was Harlem residents and students.

Halloween

Aaron decided (several months before Halloween) that he would be "a hunter, with a curved sword." Elliot agreed that he would be the same. So we found some camoflauge outfits and we were good to go. Ben and I were going to be animals to hunt but we couldn't find anything good for Ben so he ended up being himself and I was a rabbit.


At a church party
One of these people is enjoying the moment more than the others...



Carefully camoflauging themselves

Ready to hunt

Sword fighting.

(Note: Most people thought that they were soliders, which is understandable. I looked for some orange jackets but Aaron wanted to be camoflauge because the kind of hunter he wants to be is a sneaky hunter.)

Elliot's 2nd Birthday!

On October 21st, Elliot turned two! We have been saying that he is "almost two" for so long that it seems natural for him to finally be two now.


Elliot wanted a lion on his cake, and Aaron suggested a binky since he seems to love them so much.

Chowing down

Aaron and our friend Ava eating b-day cake

Elliot playing with a few bday presents: animals from mom and dad and a Halloween glow thing from Grandma Marsha.