many hands

may not make light work, exactly, but the holidays give us a chance to let the kids pick up some new skills. Tim started teaching them to tie flies, starting with the basic wooly worm:

and Christmas eve, we tried rolling sushi. I haven't made sushi in ages, since it's vexing to spend hours on them only to have the family consume them within about 15 minutes, but now the kids are at a particularly useful age. Theo put on a pot of rice, we sliced up cucumbers and sushi-grade tuna and salmon from the local Japanese store, and pulled out the bamboo mats. The first ones were horribly malformed, but gradually they started to resemble sushi.

Unusually, this Christmas we have very little baked goods around.  We didn't host the annual Book club Christmas party, and we usually do our baking and candy making in advance of that. But this year, my thesis defense was the day before the last day of school (traditional Book Club party date), so it was hosted by our friend  Nancy instead, and we did no baking. 

Not necessarily a bad thing, since none of us need to stuff ourselves with extra sugar and butter, but it doesn't feel like Christmas to me without butter tarts, so those at least we made. I've been having them for breakfast since, and will do so till they run out - mercifully soon. 

Christmas concert

The best think about middle school for Stasha is the opportunity to play French horn in concert band. For the Christmas concert, 3 grade 6 band classes crammed themselves on stage to form one big mega-6 band.

Grade 6 concert band from sophia verzosa on Vimeo.

Theo ended up playing in about five numbers, as Ms. Stewart brought him in as a ringer for a grade 7 piece, and he had both swing band and grade 8 band as well.  This is my favorite one - all drum kit-swingy.  Drum action picks up at 1:30 or so.

Swing band 2 from sophia verzosa on Vimeo.

   I think both videos are clickable to a larger version on Vimeo, if they're too tiny here.

 

 

 

dog sox day

We haven't had new snow, and it's been fairly warm, for winter anyway. The dogs are always eager to get outside, but in the snow they start getting ice clumps on their paws that makes it hard to walk. Thus, the socks.

which they lose within minutes of getting to the park and chasing other dogs around

necessitating plenty of re-socking stops.

I know I don't take as many pictures of the kids these days. They have reached an age where they are prone to scowling at me when I point a camera at them. Here they are anyway.