Another fabulous Fall weekend

Well, it's happened again, readers.  We've had another awesome New England/Lowell fall weekend.

On Friday after school, Lucy went to a ukelele lesson with a new teacher.  It went very well and we're all quite pleased.  hooray!

We went to Our City Saturday at the Lowell National Historic Park, which this week was featuring a Halloween-themed craft.  Lucy made a really awesome mask, which she's wearing here:

We got to see our very favorite rangers, too.  Don't they look excited there?

Then, we got dressed up to Trick-or-Treat through downtown.  Here goes our little ghost:

After visiting local downtown businesses and filling a bag o' candy (for the second time this week!), we went to the Scarecrow Festival at the gardens of Mill City Grows, some of our favorite urban farmers.

Check out some of the awesome scarecrows featured there:

 Lucy made that little cardboard-and-stick one herself before we went, because she didn't want to show up at a Scarecrow Festival without her own scarecrow.  That would just be embarrassing.

By the way, those two scarecrows are by two of our artist friends, Steve & Ellen Anstey!

Then, Jake took Lucy for her first ice skating lesson!  It was terrifying.  And tremendous!  We'll try to get a link to the video up here soon, but try to imagine, say, 60 small children in hockey helmets, wearing skates and attempting to skate (though they do not yet know how to).  And just let that play in your mind for 40 minutes on repeat.  But she loved it, and she's going back.  Hooray!

Today, Jake raced in his first Cyclocross of the season: Orchard Cross at Applecrest Farm.  It was awesome. Here are some action shots of Jake:

That's him on the far left, number 182.  I know, impressive! Here he is in the great dust bowl:

And one more, jumping back on:

Then we got to check out the apples.  As you can see below, Jake got a bit excited about all the apples and jumped right in:

(no apples or Jakes were harmed in the making of the photo above).

It was a lovely weekend.

Only a few more days of October left.  We're gonna make 'em count.  Apparently there is some large and important sporting event going on involving "our" team, but, despite what you may think based on Jake's Beard, we are not exactly raging fans.  In fact, we went out to a lovely & quiet dinner & a movie during what apparently is now the most famous game of the World Series ever.  Or something like that. Going to movies and non-sports-themed restaurants during such a time is really quite pleasant -- no one else is around!  Instead of worrying about the Sox and their errors and chances and such, we've been spending our free time listening to two recent discoveries:

Welcome to Night Vale: This is an awesome podcast that apparently became very popular a while back, so we're late to the fun, but nonetheless, we're giving it our ringing endorsement.  I listened non-stop to the first eleven episodes on my drive to New York on Friday (more on that later) and now am waiting for Jake to catch up.  It's a great show, with a sort of set-up as a community radio station program broadcasting to the otherworldly desert community of Night Vale.  You should listen.

Our other, quite new, quite local pleasure is The Hadron Gospel Hour, a brand-new series from our friend Rich & company.  They're live-streaming on Sunday nights (right now) and then putting them up afterwards as podcasts.  You can check out the previous one at their site.  So much fun!

Cheers!

Our Little New England Kid

There's an interesting book that I want to read called Far from the Tree that looks at parents how are raising children who are very different from themselves.  In many ways, Lucy is a mini-me, or perhaps a mini-half-and-half of Jake and me.  I identify (sometimes with much worry) with certain traits and preferences she has, some of which make me crazy.  Oops.  But then there are moments when we realize (and I suppose every parent realizes) that she is her own person. 

Lucy is a New England girl.  A Lowell girl. After all, she was born in a hospital with a Dunkin' Donuts in it.  Seriously.  Today, she came home from school and said "The Red Sox won last night! Can I watch the Red Sox tonight?" and we realized that we might need to start paying more attention to some of these kinds of things.  Or not -- maybe she'll keep us up to speed.  We then took her to "Safe Trick or Treat," which means trick-or-treating in the dorms on campus.  We've done this for a few years, and Lucy loves it, but for me, I feel like it might be called "Unsafe trick or treat" because there is a high likelihood that I am going to have multiple awkward interactions with current and former students.  It's not really a bad thing, but it does feel weird to be in their space (and see their dorm rooms and their costumes).  But Lucy loves it.  And there's the candy.

Post-trick-or-treat, we did another very New England thing: we took Lucy to get her ice hockey gear.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Lucy's going to start a learn-to-ice-skate program.  The way to do this is to sign up through the local hockey league.  So for the next 20 Saturdays or so, Lucy's going to be on the ice, in full gear.  She has a helmet, knee/shin/elbow/neck pads, gloves, and of course, skates.  We are *very* excited.  Go Lucy Go!  Get your New England on!