It’s time for that annual post-Halloween tradition, The Trading of the Candy.
Jan buys a book about drawing manga (comics) for the girls, since Anya and Liya had seemed interested in the topic when they covered in their art classes. Anya immediately deploys her new manga skills to create a sign for her door indicating her room is “OFF LIMITS” to her sisters.
For posterity’s sake, we wanted to capture a picture of our Wheel of the Wheel of Chores.
A long time ago, the girls fought over whose turn it was to do which rotating after-dinner chore. We instituted an actual paper wheel on the wall we could turn to reflect we were in the chore rotation. We called this The Wheel of Chores. (Or, more precisely, “The Wheel! Of! Chores!”) The girls then began to fight over whose turn it was to turn The Wheel of Chores.
Our solution was to create yet another paper wheel. The small wheel on the right in the photo is The Wheel of the Wheel of Chores. This keeps track of whose turn it is to turn the larger The Wheel of Chores on the left.
Somewhat surprisingly, this system has worked very well for many months. At least, so far no girl has agitated for the creation of a Wheel of the Wheel of the Wheel of Chores…
Anya spends the night at the home of our friends the Ericksens, thanks to a weird bet Angela made with Angel Ericksen years ago. When Anya was younger (six?), Angel predicted that Anya’s feet would be as big as Angela’s by the time Anya was in sixth grade. Angela didn’t think so, and for some reason they made a bet. As it turns out, Anya’s in sixth grade now, and her feet are as big as Angela’s. So Angel won the bet.
For winning the bet, Angel and Leah got to take Anya out for an evening on the town — paid for by Angela. They took Anya first to dinner at Boom Noodle, followed by a visit to Paint the Town, a pottery-painting studio. The three of them chose to paint cute little ceramic penguins. They then went back to Angel and Leah’s home, where Angel and Anya stayed up late working on a huge jigsaw puzzle, before finally falling asleep at midnight.
Jan and the girls assemble a cool three-dimensional geometric shape entirely from materials you can get at any Starbucks. They take wooden coffee stirring sticks and soak them in water so they bend. They then cut up green straws to use as connecting pieces. By bending the sticks so they stick in the straws, they’re able to create a pretty interesting shape. The process is based on a small sculpture Jan saw online, although this one’s a bit more involved. (The complexity of the shape matches that of its lengthy mathematical name: a rhombicuboctahedron.)
Jan’s mom, Lyn, turns 70! Jan takes her out to dinner at the SkyCity restaurant atop the Space Needle. When the two get to their table, Lyn does a double-take: waiting at the table is Jan’s brother, Chris. Chris has secretly flown up from San Francisco to help celebrate Lyn’s birthday. It took a bit of planning to pull everything off, but the surprise is a great present. The three of them have a nice meal while watching the city lights go by on a perfect, clear evening.
Rite of passage: First school dance. Anya’s 6th grade class gets to attend the first middle school dance of the year. Anya joins a bunch of girls at a dinner beforehand, but isn’t sure she wants to actually go to the dance that follows. Most (all?) of her friends are going, so she finally decides to go — but only for 20 minutes.
Rite of passage: First independent shopping mall expedition. Anya and her friend Kaila are dropped off at University Village to spend several hours entirely on their own. They spend time at the Paint the Town pottery studio (Anya produces another ceramic penguin), then have lunch and dessert.
These kiwis won’t pick themselves! Early frosts encourage us to pick a week earlier than usual. Anya’s friend, Jane, helps us pick as well. But it’s a very small harvest: only three dozen kiwis, our smallest in a long while. On the plus side, we won’t have to wrack our brains thinking of ways to use them up.
The girls’ school holds their annual Engineering Event. Each year, the 4–8 grades make a set of contraptions, most of which roll a short distance when powered by rubber bands. This year, inspired by the birth of baby Prince George, the science teachers decide the students should build “princely prams”. These are basically rolling, rubber-band-powered contraptions that have a spot for a little passenger.
Here Liya waits for the start of her grade’s chance to show off their prams. Each student has built at least three prams. One of Liya’s falls over, but the other two do fine, including one that requires a last-minute application of tape to hold it together.
Anya prepares to launch one of her own pram. Like Liya, one of her three contraptions fails to move, but the other two work as expected.
To San Francisco by train! We’re heading down to S.F. for a family Thanksgiving organized by Jan’s brother Chris. For extra fun, we are taking the Amtrak Coast Starlight train from Seattle to Emeryville, CA.
Jan’s mom Lyn joins us at our home, and we make our way to the King Street Station for our 9:30 am departure. When we board the train, we find our little sleeping berths, which Bree and Liya busily explore. (Anya’s not actually feeling too well, and is running a fever, so she camps out in the quietest room and reads.) We also have fun walking around the train, particularly the lounge car with its big observation windows and ample seating. We have a beautiful sunny day for the trip.
Angela’s started taking ukulele lessons recently, and has brought her uke on the train so she can practice. She says it’s fun, but it makes her fingers hurt.
When the train pulls into Salem, Oregon, around 3:30 pm, two new passengers board: Jan’s sister, Skye, and her husband, Jared! This makes our party eight in all. The lounge car is doing a free wine and cheese tasting, so we enjoy that for a while. (Despite appearances, Liya’s drinking water.)
It’s particularly exciting to see Skye because she’s now pretty far along in her first pregnancy. She and Jared are expecting a boy in February.
Jan wishes he’d gotten a better picture of this little sketch from Sabriya. In the lower right, she’s drawn an animal she often sketches these days: a bunny-like animal called a Bun-Bun. Bree explains that, in this drawing, a Bun-Bun (in the lower right) is thinking about another Bun-Bun (upper left). But what makes the drawing awesome is, that other Bun-Bun is thinking about the first Bun-Bun. Whoa.
Bedtime on the train is so. much. fun. Especially when you get the top bunk.
Chris meets us at the station in Emeryville, and then we head into San Francisco. Our day starts with a visit to the offices of humangear, which Angela and the girls have never seen yet. It’s quite a nice office. Chris shows everyone around the various design and shop spaces. One highlight is the office’s lasercutter, which can quickly cut shapes out of paper or wood. Chris quickly uses his computer to drop some bird images into a new document, then prints it in wood. A few minutes later, the girls each have their own bird cut from a flat piece of balsa.
Obligatory cable car ride. We ride to Fisherman’s Wharf, but after lunch, no one really wants to go there, so we head to the famed City Lights Bookstore. It’s closed.
Later, we celebrate Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant called Millennium. We’re happy that Chris’ girlfriend Julie — they’ve been together for just under a year — can join us as well.
Anya and a huge blue morpho butterfly check each other out at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. We spend a good chunk of the day at this huge natural history museum, taking in a planetarium movie, the museum’s aquarium, and a rain forest exhibit. This last ends in a beautiful sunlit atrium full of butterflies. Occasionally a butterfly will alight on one of us. Liya, standing in the sun with a bright yellow shirt, seems to attract the most: a total of three at a time.
Afterwards we play at a nearby playground, where the girls introduce Chris and Julie to the favored game of tag called “head tag”: players have to stay on (or touching) a play structures, and the person who’s “it” has to touch someone else’s head (twice) to make them it.
We finish up the day with a pizza dinner.
A fun morning at the San Francisco Exploratorium. None of us have been to the museum since it moved to the waterfront a few years ago. It’s huge, and after a couple of hours there, we still feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface. Here, in an exhibit about visual processing, Liya tries to write her name while looking in a mirror.
We have a late lunch at a great Chinese restaurant called Fang, then head back to the B&B to pick up our bags and head to SFO for a flight home. It’s been a very quick trip to San Francisco, but it’s been fun.