Day 12.324: Anniversary

Today was the main reason for our visit the celebration of this event:

that occurred 60 years ago. The celebration was full of family from far and near and friends from many different phases of my parents’ married life.

Day 12.323: UK day 1

We are on a short-notice short-duration trip to the U.K. Sadly we will not have chance to do many of the things we would normally do - including catching up with friends and family.

Today was however a largely unscheduled day involving recovering from our very busy travel day and including a short walk wit h my parents in their village in the English countryside.

Day 12.322: From our Thanksgiving table to yours...

Our Thanksgiving table today...

Yes it's empty because we have spent the day traveling to the UK for a very brief visit for a significant celebration. We left the house just after 3 am and arrived at my parents’ house just after 10 pm - a long day even allowing for the 5 hours that we lost to the curvature of the Earth.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Day 12.321: Sea foam

Since I had the day off work and the kids were out of school for the Thanksgiving break, three of us managed a walk on the beach this afternoon. It was much needed (at least by the adults in the family who felt that they had hardly been outside for a couple of weeks).

The beach was alive with large lumps of sea foam blowing across the sand.

And now to bed as we have a very early start tomorrow.

Day 12.320: Just dessert

Life hasn't been very photogenic over the last couple of weeks - in fact I had to go back two and a half to find this:

A very delicious sticky toffee pudding that Exile #2 made - we try to only have dessert at the weekends, but this was definitely not even an every-weekend dessert!

Day 12.319: Worse for wear

We spotted this slightly worse-for-wear display when we were in school for E5N1's play:

A T is the P ? R of the D. it can L R any TI  !

We had a few attempts but we were still not sure we had correctly added the missing letters to make sense of it - can you?

Day 12.318: Exile #2's Sunday Column #275

Exile #2 writes...

E5N1 arrived back home first thing.this morning after a birthday sleep over at a friends’s house. He looked relatively well-rested but he has spent the day fighting off the urge to nap (and not always succeeding). We then headed off to church with plenty of sandwich supplies for a meeting afterwards.

We have learned a few things about sandwiches after this many years in the US. Number one: a large number of Americans think buttering bread for sandwiches is weird. Obviously, mayonnaise is the only way to go. Number two: all sandwiches require cheese. Number three: dill pickles are an essential accompaniment. So, with mayo, cheese and an industrial-sized jar of pickles (plus some marg for us odd Brits) it was sandwiches all round. Then home again through cold, torrential rain.

Day 12.317: Then and now

Flicking through Google Photos auto-generated remixes of my photos, I noticed that all three of the kids had recent "Then and Now" collages. I think that they are all pretty funny in their different ways.

Day 12.316: Blueprints

The other part of E5N1's band project was a poster that he wanted to include blueprints. He did some hand-drawn art on downloaded graph paper and a bit of image manipulation led to these:

Day 12.315: Still sorting

This exercise in color-sorting was from a round of I Love Hue from several weeks ago. I am still puzzling away. In the early days, I beat the average number of moves for almost every puzzle. These days, it's much more variable.

Today, I finished one I had been working on for several days. The average number of moves was 256. My number of moves? 2141. Yes - two thousand one hundred and forty-one - more than eight times the average value!

Day 12.314: Dark beach

Thanks to a work visitor from out of town, I swung around through Old Orchard Beach after dinner tonight. It was dark.

Day 12.313: E5N1's band project

Since they do band all year, the number of other subjects that E5N1 and his fellow musicians can do is somewhat limited. In particular he isn't able to do art or STEM or coding this year. Partly because of this, the band teacher has set them a creative project associated with one of their pieces for the winter concert and E5N1 has made a model of a robot and a poster. Tonight he painted his model and it's looking rather good!

Day 12.312: Last year's viral sensation

I remembered the fun of Google Arts & Culture app so I gave it's Art Selfie feature another whirl.

Day 12.311: Exile #2's Sunday Column #274

Exile #2 writes...

Exile #4 had her chance to see the school play today. A few of her friends were in the cast and apparently they did a great job at being spooky, as their parts required.

E5N1 finally got to go to his first youth group meeting too.. They played games and it turns out he is good at balancing coins on his chin. Not sure if that will come in handy on any other occasions but he obviously enjoyed giving it a go this afternoon.

Day 12.310: Fall into Art

Exile #3 was dancing and Exile #2 and I were singing at this lovely event packed with music and dance and visual art. It was a lovely evening - and ended with a dancer braving the cold and the fire to do a fire-dancing performance:

Day 12.309: More theater darling

Tonight, E5N1 and I and, somewhat separately, Exile #3 went to see the play at the High School. Exile #4 is going to the matinee on Sunday with her friends.

It was an ambitious show and remarkably successful - even after the director lamented the loss of so many theater kids who were seniors last year as he was introducing this performance by a young and inexperienced cast and crew.

Day 12.308: It's not winter yet...

...but you would have struggled to detect the difference today. When we were getting up the temperature was about 11°F (-12°C) and it barely made it above freezing (if at all) in the "heat" of the day. The pond near my work that normally marks the beginning and end of the cold weather by freezing solid and then - eventually - melting was already frozen today - much earlier than usual (although it will probably melt before winter really sets in).

This is the ice from the small frozen puddle that E5N1 broke up when he got home from school.

Day 12.307: More mushrooms

E5N1 wanted to make sure I saw how many mushrooms had sprung up in our back yard on Sunday. Why should you miss out?

Day 12.306: Wintry

The work day started with ice on the deck:

Two of my colleagues slipped outside their doors leaving for work this morning. It ended with a dusting of snow on my car:

Winter is coming - and soon!

Day 12.305: Parade

It was distinctly chilly as we set off for the parade this morning. By the time the parade started it was also raining - not heavily but steadily.

We caught perfect timing for a rendition of E5N1's band piece as they passed us.

The most surprising feature of the parade was this enormously tall horse:

and I thought Friesians were cows.

E5N1 needed a warm shower before he could contemplate lunch. I didn't blame him at all,

Day 12.304: Exile #2's Sunday Column #273

Exile #2 writes...

This being Maine, most school events are scheduled for one day, with a backup date in reserve in case of adverse weather. Calendars fill up with concert dates and ‘ghost dates’ that probably won’t be necessary but are kept free just in case. It had all seemed very unnecessary until the last few days. Suddenly, temperatures dived below freezing and we even had a few flurries on Friday.

More snow showers are forecast for the week ahead, so coats and gloves have been hastily scrambled and we are ready for the freeze to begin. Hopefully, it won’t be too cold tomorrow as E5N1 is marching in the Veterans’ Day parade and I’m not sure how well his trumpet playing fingers will cope if it’s chilly!

Day 12.303: Tie-dye extravaganza

To go with the cast costumes of tie-dye shirts and socks, Exile #2 made tie-dye cupcakes to send with E5N1 to the cast party after the second and final show this afternoon:

Day 12.302: Chronicles of Jane

Tonight was the first performance of the Middle School play - the wonderfully titled, "The Chronicles of Jane, Book VII". E5N1 took second billing as Norman, who acts out Jane's part in the story while she reads from the eponymous chronicles. He gets to wear her dress and everything!

The only bad thing about him wearing the dress (in my opinion at least) is that we don't get much of a view of how excellently his tie-dye shirt came out!