Author: Doris

Oh! Vince and Kappa played the Toy Symphony together today.  It was so beautiful.  Kelly did a great job putting together students into chamber groups.  Lots of moms accompanied their children.  Lots of siblings played together.  It made the recital really sweet and the music more interesting.  Vince worked hard on his piece and the pair did sound really wonderful together.  It makes me almost a bit weepy.

Edda came to the 6:30 – 8:30 pm recital.  Sometimes we get lucky and she falls asleep, but not tonight.  She decided that she did not want to be there about 5 minutes before Vince and Kappa went on to perform.  Jeremy ran out with Edda when the piece began and then I ran out after the first movement to insist that Jeremy go inside to listen to the 2nd which then resulted in Jeremy shocked that I was causing more of a commotion by running in and out of the room.  Sigh.  One does what one can.

These are the Hungs.  Le Pei was mom’s roommate in college.  And many years ago, they housed Donald in their shed for a few months.  Donald ran an extension cord from the shed to their garage for power.  They were lucky enough to buy into one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the Silicon Valley decades and decades ago when it was just sort of expensive and not insanely crazy expensive – so we made fun of Donald who would tell people that he lived in Los Altos Hills and when his pals gasped, he’d have to explain that he lived in a shed (and not a shed-like house, but an acutal shed with a lawnmower).

It’s Donald’s birthday today.  He’s turning 38.  We are so old.   I always like to think about the mothers on a person’s birthday because it was a big day for them too.  So mom!  Happy birthday of Donald to you too.  Did I go to the hospital with your mom and dad to wait for the arrival of Donald?  I vaguely remember that – but I could be making it all up…  Thanks for giving me the best brother ever, even though he’s a bit stubborn.

Trying to introduce Tanner to Ruby.  Tanner lives next door.  We are hoping that they become friends and not frenemies.  I count the play date as a success.  Not much growling, no hurt feelings and no pee spots on the carpet…

Owen and his mom hung out with us today.  We were planning on taking the boys on a photoshoot outdoors, but it was SNOWING!  Snowing!  It’s suppose to be spring!  Instead we geeked out on Photoshop and took some indoor shots.

On one of the evenings when Vince was off camping, Dara (Nat’s boyfriend) came over for dinner. He’s a civil engineer, working on building road and bridges in the DC area. Jeremy and Dara talked a lot about traffic.

Also, during that dinner, Jeremy said that there were no pictures of me on the blog, so he grabbed the camera and took these photos.  My own family is so well documented except for me, they will just have to image me taking all the photos when they look through the photos on the blog.

These are Jeremy’s new workout shoes.  He tries to keep his exercise routine each day to under 15 minutes.

Vince is spending the next two nights camping out with his 6th grade class. MCPS used to have outdoor ed last a full week.   I remember going on this trip myself 30 years ago. It was a lot of fun when I went, but those poor teachers who had to spend a week managing hundreds of pre-teens. Thirty years ago, I’m sure it wasn’t SNOWING when we went.  What a crazy winter.  Every 5 minutes, it’s snowing.  I’m hoping this is the LAST snowstorm of 2014!  It’s almost April…

Today is Edda’s actual birthday. If you’d like to make a contribution on behalf of Edda, here’s the Rett organization that we like: Rett Syndrome Research Trust. They send 97 cents of every dollar raised to a science lab somewhere in the world full of pipettes, mice, electrophoresis gels and DNA polymerase.  I used to really hope for a cure for Rett Syndrome, but lately I’ve been happy just thinking I’m raising money to fund a poor gradute student’s stipend to further research about the brain. I used to be a poor science graduate student! I loved that I had a stipend so I could spend it on burritos at Baja Fresh! Not that I wouldn’t send a box of chocolates every day for the rest of my life to the graduate student who figured out how to fix Edda’s brain.

 Here are some behind-the-scenes photos of the pancake breakfast: