A drawing by Liya
Liya runs at a cross-country meet. This is her second year running for her school.
Chris comes up from San Francisco for some business meetings, and stays over for the weekend. On Saturday, he serves as a test customer for the coffeeaardvark site Liya has been making. He tries out the site, and orders a coffeeaardvark t-shirt and mug.
Bree brings home her first official 3rd grade homework: a worksheet for Spanish.
“Puzzle Flavor” Hi-Chews from Japan are totally fun. We share this package of candy after dinner, and we all try to guess the four mystery flavors in the assortment. After we all announce a guess, Jan reads aloud the answer that’s printed along a fold in the candy wrappers. We are all pretty close on the tangerine flavor (we all say some variant of orange), but the apple flavor is surprisingly elusive.
Jan is in London for a web conference, but over the weekend before the conference starts, he squeezes in some tourist action: the Cabinet War Rooms, the National Gallery, the Tower of London (shown here), and even a show performance (“The Dresser”).
Moxie isn’t really a lap cat… he’s more of a laptop cat.
Anya’s been having fun on a newly-formed cheer squad at her high school. In September, she and some of her friends from her K–8 school (like Kaila, here) felt welcomed by a group of 9th graders who had been at the school for a while. The group didn’t advertise their formation widely so that their appearance could be a surprise at the school’s fall pep rally. The cheer squad does a routine to Prince Royce’s “Back It Up”. They go a great job!
Sabriya sews a purse with an orange “MK” logo on it, in honor of a local neighborhood restaurant, Madison Kitchen. Bree and Jan go there for brunch, and Bree brings the purse to show the restaurant staff. One person, Patricia, is delighted with the purse and takes a picture of Bree and Jan with it to share on the restaurant’s Instagram feed.
A boy classmate of Anya’s comes to our house with his mother in the early evening to pick up Anya and take her to dinner and a school dance. They’re going with two other kids — Anya’s friend Jane, and Jane’s boyfriend. Anya is clear that this is not a date.
Bree’s been designing and sewing a lot of outfits for her Strawberry Shortcake dolls. This evening, she handed out fliers reading: “A Strawberry Shortcake Halloween Fashion Show will be held in Bree’s room at 7:30”. And at the appointed time, the show begins. She’s constructed a stage/catwalk for the show, and arranged some lighting. (Jan pulls up some dance tracks on his phone to complete the experience.) She brings out 8 different dolls showing off a fall/Halloween collection — some dolls have to change outfits between turns. At the end of the show, they all come out — plus the designer, Bree — for a final round of applause.
The cats spent half an hour playing with this box. Mojo spent most of the time inside the box, hiding inside, and then popping out to bat at his brother with his paws.
Jan and Angela take advantage of the sunny weather to go for a walk around our neighborhood. The autumn foliage is at its peak, including this gorgeous maple at the end of our block.
Liya doesn’t want the spreading of cold butter to rip apart her toast, and hits on the idea of warming up the butter under the stove hood lamps. Works like a charm.
For the third grade Wax Museum project, each student needs to pick a historical figure they find interesting, research them, create a poster about them, then dress up as them and sit still as part of living “Wax Museum” exhibition. Bree picks civil rights activist Rosa Parks. For her outfit and post, Bree uses a famous picture of Parks sitting in protest on a Montgomery city bus.
And here’s Bree’s final contribution to the Wax Museum exhibition.
Liya’s 8th grade class joins with their kindergarten buddies for a harvest-time farm visit. Liya and her buddy Vivienne have a great time horsing around, especially getting lost in the huge corn maze.
Liya walks in her school’s annual Halloween Parade for the last time — as an 8th grader accompanying her buddy Vivienne. Liya dresses up as a Starbucks barista again, using the same costume she made last year.
We walk through our village’s merchants’ association Halloween event. Liya has fun stopping by the Starbucks, where she surprises someone behind the counter with her costume. Some adults do double-takes when they see her.
For Halloween this year, Bree announced that she wanted to go “as someone scary”. She’s inspired by Liya’s class study of “Macbeth” to dress as Lady Macbeth. She looks a lot like a queen — with the addition of a “damned spot” of blood on her hands.
Liya’s class performs Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”, with Liya filling a number of smaller roles.
Our family friends the Nakanishis and the Kangs join us for a Halloween potluck dinner.
Afterwards, the dads take the kids trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. Like nearly every year, it rains, maybe a bit heavier than usual. Towa and Linus both dress as Star Wars characters, and eventually all the younger kids are singing the Imperial March theme loudly as they walk up to houses for candy. One resident answers the door, “Well, may the Force be with you!”