Christmas Tree 2025
the boy
The Girl Returns
After three months away from home, the Girl returned tonight for the first time. Such a novel experience: for eighteen years, she was a daily joy in our lives, and then suddenly, she was gone. And now she's back. "At last, I get to take a shower in my bathroom." Well, the Boy has taken over most of the bathroom now, but never mind that. We had a drink in celebration of her return, talked about school, future plans, current classes, and random trivialities, and simply enjoyed having L back home.
At one point, she noticed E's math homework on the table. She glanced at it and sighed: "Oh, I'd love to have work this easy." She pulled out her iPad and showed us some of her work in Calculus III.
"See? There's not even numbers anymore!!"
She showed us some of her physics problems (not shown above -- more calc), some diagrams from Chem II ("Just wait until next semester when you take organic chemistry -- it's all diagrams," I laughed.) and reveled in the tastiness of the water.
The Boy, for his part, after making us all laugh by annotating his algebra homework to look a little more like L's calc homework, brought down his ever-growing collection of trombone mouthpieces. Earlier, when L and I were in the basement, she noticed two of his three guitars down there.
"Does he play at all anymore?" she asked.
"Not so much. He's focusing on trombone. But wait until you hear him play," I replied.
A quiet, laughter-filled, joyful return. What more could we ask for?
Champions
The boys pulled it off: a perfect season, without a single loss. They outscored their opponents 37-6 culminating in a sweep at the season-ending tournament.
Saturday Soccer
Soccer Saturday
The Boy's team finished the regular season undefeated this evening. It's the best soccer season he's ever experienced, and K and I are relieved he is finally having a great season like L did in volleyball and track.
Costumes
Fall Soccer
Final Spooky Concert
First Concert
Soccer Saturday
The Boy's team has had quite the season this year: up to today's game, they had allowed only a single goal. They beat most of their opponents handily. Today was different. They were up 3-0 by the first half, so the coach put in a new goalie. Someone who'd never played goalie before. I suppose the reasoning was that if the other team started scoring, he could make adjustments and put back one of the two boys who usually play in the goal. That seemed unnecessary, though: the boys added three more to the score, invoking the mercy rule, which means they were no longer allowed to score. In the final minutes, though, the goalie made a mistake that left too much room and allowed a shot into a virtually open goal. The boys still won 6-1, but E was a little disappointed: "I wanted to finish the season with only one goal scored against us."
