Ready to go to Concord for our match tonight. Met with Tim at the elevator in b24 and walked over to find Ana with the kids already waiting. We dropped them off at home got a fresh pair of shorts for me and were on our way feeding off some rice sticks to pump us up for the match. Gisele and Markus wanted to come so I took them with me to Concord along route 2.
We arrived pretty easily, helped by the GPS in my phone. The games were already on when we arrived. Jan and Craig got beat and soon it was me against Wendy and Tim against …. who was it again. I started well firing away and winning 11:8. Afterwards I was still up by 7:5 or so and a bed ref decision in my humble opinion did not go 8:5 but rather 7:6 and I lost it. The last 2 sets I just could not pull it together and lost 1:3. It was a good match and we played two more games afterwards which I won clearly but too late. You have to win them when it is important.
It’s Has been Cold last Week
Minus fourteen Celsius, looking up our driveway.
You can have cold weeks in Boston in particular during January and February. Last week while I was in Seattle it has been particularly cold and quite consistently throughout the week. Ana reported me a -23 C read off from the thermometer in our car in the early morning (was it Wednesday) and I immediately felt toasty warm in Seattle at 5 C in the morning hours. Unfortunately we do not have a photographic record of minus twenty three Celsius. On the other hand we have a photo showing a whopping -14 C in our car while I am steering the car down our driveway without properly wearing my seatbelt. Arlington can be cold in the Winter, of course Minnesota is much worse 😉
Blake Update
Very fitting portrait of Blake. You gotta love that kid!
I just found this excellent picture of Blake and had to post it here. Blake is making great progress in growing up: he has started to pee regularly in the bathroom, not always of course, and he does not do yet do his big business there either.
He always says he does not want to go to school, he will go ‘manja’ – that means manjana = tomorrow – but once he is there is really makes no trouble and will happily run to sit on the carpet with the other kids. They and the personnel like him there. And he is very good kid as you can see from his picture 😉
Outing with the Boy Scouts in Belmont
Today 3-5pm we are having an outting with the scouts. In Belmont there is a habitat of Auban which is a sanctuary for wildlife mostly birds. We had a interesting set
of games with the kids learning about endangered species and how food finding, hunting and general changes of the habitat influences the survival.
The kids are having a great time even in the cold. It is maybe -5 C and the toes started to hurt a little from the cold during the games outside until we went in and learned about owls 
and turtles. They had a stuffed owl and a life turtle. The kids really liked the explanation and were reasonably quiet.
Soccer with Markus and Ivan
Today is Sunday and at noon our two oldest have their indoor soccer practice. At 11:30 I informesd our two rascals that they should start to get ready. About ten minutes later they were of course still watching/playing and I had to turn into the enforcer.
Markus gave me the usual I want to quit routine while Ivan got ready pretty calmly. Markus today was not very motivated probably based on his I did not make a goal feeling.
Here is Ivan and one of the kids from Belmont. His father plays actually on my squash team at MIT.
The practice takes 1.5 hours….. lots of time for me to grab a coffee at the vending machine, write a blog post, take some pictures and have a good conversation with my squash team mate.
Hockey Morning with Ivan
Ivan has hockey Saturday morning at 7am or 8am…. always a little discussion about who goes with him because that event is not a family event like most other sports events we have on the weekend. It is just too painful to get us and the crew moving and sometimes a longer sleep into the morning hours is quite wonderful.
Today, when I got up to tell Ivan it was time to get ready the kids were of course all up already. Blake for the first time on his own decided to sleep with Gisele and the were already awake and had moved to his bed watching a movie on their little DVD player. Blake explained things to Gisele. They are a great couple these days. Ivan interrupted his reading and started to put on his gear while I added 15 minutes of dosing on the bed….. when I came down it was nicely quiet in the house everybody still happily minding their business, Ivan back to his book completely dressed. I just had to top it up by brushing the long and scruffy hair of our ‘ranger’ (his hockey team).
Driving up to the rink is a snap and after entering, there are the busy hockey parents and players lots of people we know: fun encounters, tying skates, chatting, helping with helmet and gloves, coffee and off onto the ice for the rangers and quiet watching for the parents.
New sink
New sink…. almost as good as having a new bathroom.
Preparing for Christmas
Tree
Weihnachten
Deutsche Fabrikation aus dem Erzgebirge.