Winter Continues

Zach - Of Note

• Zach was sick this month and stayed home with us for two days. He got a rash that never seemed to bother him, but it lingered, so we took him to the doctor. He then referred to his rash as "diaper rash" and talked quite a bit about going to the doctor. He's 33 pounds!

• Snow day! Our neighbor, Rene, let us borrow a sled, and we all made runs. Neighbors Rachel, Teddy, and Eric joined us. 

• Zach has taken his scooting to the next level. He has to wear his helmet now. He's trying to do tricks, swerving at high speeds, and going backwards. Ran into neighbors, Wally and Nancy, again. They were amazed by his scooting! 
• Zach has been getting up a little earlier on some days lately, so he's come downstairs with me while I exercised. He wanted me to "give him his space" on my stretching mat.
• Zach had a bad night of sleep and ended up sleeping with us. I slipped out of bed early, and he came to find me. I gave him a hug, and he held out his hand and led me back to bed. 

  

  Early morning selfie
• He continues to pout and mock pout. Working on his listening constantly! He is 2 after all, but he's EXTREMELY good-natured. 

Zach's Words

• We still love to play off of each other. I say, "almost all done," and Zach says, "all done." This works for other things like: "almost home" and "home."
• I've been asking Zach to be quiet in the morning when scooting near our neighbor's house. He says, “ok, no talking, neighbors sleeping,” and keeps says it over and over again! So much for not talking. 
• On a similar note, now, when he doesn't want me and Frank to talk he says, “Baby sleeping. No talking.” He also said to a dog on one of our walks, "No barking!”
• He's fond of talking about Fireman Sam characters, particularly Fire Captain Steele, Penny, and Norman
• Zach loved the bread and Not Your Average Joe’s olive oil/red pepper flake/cheese dip. He said, “It spicy. I like it.” 
• Lately he likes to say, “People ride in there,” when we read Little Blue Truck and in talking about all vehicles, really.

Susan & Frank

West Virginia ski weekend! We took Zach to Gamma and Bob's. We went to Whitegrass and climbed up, up, up again to Springer Orchard; took an exciting and narrow trail down from the top; and ended up coming down Three-Mile Trail. The guy working at Whitegrass described Three-Mile that day as mellow. I would not have called it mellow at all! A little icy and thin; it was bumpier than I remember! We went to the Hell Bender for dinner and had a nice second ski on Sunday morning before heading back to pick up Zach! Thank you, Gamma and Bob! 

Good Food

• A couple of visits to Tacos and More!
• Pumpkin bread and chili on our final snow day

Visits with

• Dinner with Aliana and Emily at Cooper’s Hawk
• Thanks, Jessica, for listening
• Frank and I met Kathleen at Twinpanzee Brewery and had dinner at Enyate for a friend date night
• Family brunch out with Mom and Dad and Emily and Jeff 
• Nice dinner at Our Mom Eugenia with Auntie Emily
• Met Auntie Em improptu at Lake Anne. Beautiful, fun walk (and scoot for Zach), and we all had drinks and snacks by the lake! 
• Kate and Tristan
• Easter. Michael and Leah, Bennie, and SiSi hosted and Ralph and Chuckie came up from Charlottesville! Jeff and Tim, Meaghan, and Nolan were there too. 

Fun Stuff (Personal & Professional)

• Raubia's engagement and remembering Mansoor. Quite a fighter.
• Connecting with colleagues. Candice and Jessica. Jessica's ultimate positivity and professionalism!
• Travel to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting in King of Prussia with Jessica; observed the Cook Ross Training again. It went well.
• It came up that Andrew, my colleague, often has to spell his name to others and says, it’s “with a ‘b’.” Not "Deamon." This really made me laugh. 
• Good professional calls: StrengthsFinder, Boomer programs, LeaderAmp, Sofia
• Some really good stuff is coming out of my DRIVE group. Good posts in LinkedIn and a chronicle of learning thanks to Jess A. Clarity on priorities and recommendations. Good and different thinking from the team.
• Priorities: Boomer programs, StrengthsFinder, communication skills, a peer group???

Love this light and these trees

Trying These Out:

1. Think positively. Believe the best in others.
2. Be generous.
3. It’s not personal. Don’t take anything personally.

New Hampshire March 2018

On March 3, we trekked up to the Mount Washington Valley of New Hampshire for a great skiing vacation! See all pictures and videos.  

Saturday & Sunday: 

• Drove to Lebanon, NH, and stayed at the Element, a super-eco-friendly hotel. Zach fell asleep well in the car, but he did not transition well to the hotel room. He wanted to wander the halls. He wanted to sleep in our bed. He woke up before 6am, and since he and I were both wide awake, we started our day!
• At 6am, Zach and I checked out the breakfast spread and then visited the pool. It was a salt water pool, and Zach had fun jumping in. He kept insisting that he could swim and wanted to do everything himself. Luckily, the pool at Seasons had a float so that he could swim by himself!
• We hit the road headed further north. We made a quick stop for lunch pastries and got settled in to our condo for much needed afternoon naps. After nap time, Zach tried out his skis. He didn't understand that he had to use them on snow and really wanted to use them like his scooter!
  
• In the evening, we got groceries. (The grocery store is a new favorite place for Zach.) For dinner, we stopped at Moat Mountain Brewing Company for dinner. Zach met Zane, and we enjoyed chatting with his family. 

Monday: 

• We made our way to Attitash, and Zach met Janet, who took care of him Monday - Tuesday. He also met three-year-old Sadie from New Brunswick, and she made quite an impression. He talked about her for the rest of the week! Janet was very complimentary of Zach. She said she he seemed verbally advanced as she had no trouble understanding him. Some highlights with her: 
• He told her he had a brother and sister, and he told her, "I go pool." 
• On Thursday - Friday, Zach bonded with Mariah, Camilla, and Fernanda. No other kids stood out to him like Sadie, however!
• The trip to the Seasons pool was a big hit! There were more families from Canada, and Zach enjoyed watching the other four kids. After Monday, though, we basically had the pool to ourselves. Just a few folks again on Friday night. Zach also enjoyed the Arcade at Seasons and spent two nights playing air hockey before we lost the puck. :/
  
• And, of course Frank and I had a great time cross country skiing. There were lots of chatty folks on all of our trails, and we learned some good stuff. Our Tuesday chat made us aware of Great Glen and their well-groomed trails. (We went there on Friday.)

Cross Country Skiing

Monday: Jackson Cross Country's Prospect Farm Area. Quite the uphill made for some really exciting and pure fun downhills. Beautiful views even if the clouds did not allow us a stunning view of Mt. Washington. 

Tuesday: Bear Notch Cross Country Ski Area. Nicely groomed with good up and downhill and excellent river views and sunshine!

Thursday: Jackson Cross Country's Ellis River Trail. After 18" of new snow, the grooming had not kept up. Frank had super-icy skis even after applying wax. Finally, right at the end he and both re-applied wax and got some great glide. 

Friday: Great Glen. As recommended by our ski friend on Tuesday, we tried out Great Glen. Terrific grooming and beautiful snowy mountain vistas. 

Family Days
Wednesday: 

• We took Zach out to the Mount Washington Valley Children's Museum. It was more like an indoor playground than a museum, and Zach had fun. 
• I stopped over at the Local Grocer and picked up some muffins and local beer and cider. 
• We went to the American Flatbread Company and had Moat Mountain’s Smoke House Porter, and Slick Nick Long Winter Ale from Sebago Brewing Company and pretty bad pizza and a truly terrible salad. Zach learned to tear off pieces of his pizza slices and was eventually persuaded to have pineapple off the pizza.

Saturday: Bretton Woods & Snow Tubing! We all had a great time! Check out a couple videos. 

Trip Highlights & Superlatives

• Connecting with Megan! Since we were only 2.5 hours away from her and family in Maine, Frank texted her, and we learned her latest. We'd hoped that she could come over and meet us, but she works for a CPA and could not take time off during tax season. :(
• Frank and I watched the original Bourne trilogy. A ski trip tradition!
• Best meal: Bear Notch’s broccoli cheddar soup and fresh bread hot out of the oven at 12:30pm
• Best muffins: Madeline’s coffee cake muffins (bought those 2 days in a row!)
• Best Cider/Beer: Citizen Cider's The Dirty Mayor

Rainy Days & Snow (Finally)

Zach - Of Note

Zach's move

• Follow up from last month. This is pretty much Zach's "move." If you ask him to show you his "move," he'll gladly comply!
• Zach enjoyed Gamma's spaghetti and helped her by stirring the sauce. 
• Zach rode a choo choo train (went on the Metro with Emmy) and had a fun time playing at the Tyson's Corner indoor playground. He didn't want to leave!
  
• Zach is getting good at colors. One day he told me my shirt was pink, and then said, “high five.”
• He tried out Monkey Joe's for the first time this month, and he loved it and became obsessed with playing basketball. Briefly at least. 
  
• Okay, don't judge, but we took our Christmas tree down in February, and Zach came running upstairs to tell me! On Sunday, I pointed out where it lay from the upstairs window. Since then, Zach had been checking on it regularly. On Monday morning, he was upset that birds and chipmunks were playing in it. He said, “My Christmas tree.”
• Zach's a good sharer. On our New Hampshire ski trip he shared his beloved French fries with Mommy and Daddy. 

An example of his
sharing

• In NH, we also enjoyed knocking on the walls to each other from the two bathrooms. 
• Monsieur Independent has started melting down when he can't have a whole muffin. He now doesn’t want things cut, or put on the wrong plate…. 
• Again, in NH, he loved: 
• Little Baby Bums’ million versions of “The Wheels on the Bus” 
• having iPad children's program marathons on the trips to/from NH! One day on the trip Zach said “I don’t like fire.” This comes from watching the program, Fireman Sam, where there is fire or calamity every day. 
• This has been a good month for Zach. Good overnight sleeping and napping. The March 2 wind storm really scared him, though. He ended up sleeping in our bed that night, and over the next few days things were pretty disrupted. He's disturbed by high winds and noises that he can't identify. On our ski trip, he was very distressed that he could hear our neighbors walking in the condo above us. Janet, at his daycare, said the ski boots' clomping noise really scared him as well. He's also begun asking us to rub his back before he'll go to sleep. Hmmm...very cute, but.... 

Zach's Words

• He says “I don't know” and shrugs his shoulders. 
• I was coughing, and so I told him "I'm okay," like he likes to say. He then fake coughed and said, "I'm ok," and waited for me to acknowledge what he'd said. So funny! 
• One day when I picked him up, he told me insistently “not to step in poop!” I guess there was goose poop on the sidewalk, and the teachers had told them to watch out for it, so he was very careful to avoid it!
• At home, he's very insistent that we not step in the mud on the sidewalk. 
• Zach said one morning (about an outlet), “No, no touch, it's dangerous!” 
• Zach is quite the singer and knows most words to most of his songs. I like to hear him sing “baby and me” in the patty cake song.
• Zach also says, “What happened?" and “I want to go playground right here" or “I want to go playground right there.”

Susan & Frank

• Big, big, big! We went skiing at Osceola Tug Hill and Lapland Lake! We drove over to Mom and Dad's, and Zach had a weekend with the grandparents! He had a blast and so did they. Mom had all kinds of activities for him, and they enjoyed watching Winter Olympics figure skating. Mom re-introduced Zach to blueberries and he is now a huge fan!
• Osceola's Kamikaze run was awesome for our first skiing in 2018!
• Skiing planning. Wow. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out where to go. The week of my virtual conference, our destination changed almost daily! Since we'd been telling Zach he would go on a plane, he started saying, "Mommy and Daddy and Zach go on airplane, Woosh!" So cute!

Good Food

• Made the lentil, kale, mushroom pockets. Yum! Yum!
• Emily's yummy cheesecake, which was Jeff's birthday cake
• Two lasagnas in short succession to end out winter
• A Green Grocer box, and we made the fish dish with roasted garlic lemon dressing and roasted potatoes. Tasty!
• In New Hampshire, he loved my turkey vegetable soup and kept referring to it as "Mommy's yummy soup."

Visits with

• It's been fun running into Auntie Em and Uncle Jeff at the gym. 
• Visit to Emily and Andrew’s. Zach enjoyed the kitties and sang a song about Toffee and Bob on the way home.
• We visited Gamma and Bob briefly, and Zach stayed the weekend!
• Grandad came over, and we took a nice walk and all went to dinner at Dogfish. I took Zach to the grocery while we waited for our table, and that was a hit. He got his own little cart and filled it up with our goodies. 

Fun Stuff (Personal & Professional)

• Started reading A Thread of Sky, and it's really good!
• Good networking calls continue!
• Traveled to the Southwest Regional Meeting in Dallas, TX, and it was great to see so may SCORE friends and Sally again! Kudos on my presentation. Avi is a hugger. 
• Made Beth's DEI video for the virtual conference! A funny experience. 
• Listened to S-Town on the way back from Lapland Lake. Addictive and fantastic. Don't tell Frank, I finished it on the way back from New Hampshire!
• SCORE's Second Annual Volunteer Virtual Conference on March 1, 2018. 

• A huge success! Quotes/Notes: 
• I was very impressed! I've never attended a virtual conference and I thought it was extremely well done.
• Great job on the materials to help us navigate.  Good overall live tech support.
• All of the downloadable resources that were made available. Since I was able to attend only 1 presentation these were of great value to me.
• Connections with people at national
• You folks did an amazing job! 
• Sessions were well rated. Themes of empathy, listening, etc. Business model canvas was a popular concept to learn more about, video mentoring resonated, and all the resources were a hit. 
• My thoughts: 
• We had issues on almost every recording leading up to live day. 
• We had two clean sessions of eleven on live day. :(
• The registration numbers were at 1500, but live day attendance was only about 50 more than last year. 
• Lots of promotion to come as 2018 continues!

Winter Fun

Zach - Of Note

• Indoor playgrounds galore

• Three visits to Clemyjontry. Two with just me and Zach in the later afternoon were good fun.

• Zach's arabesque move on his scooter!
• An excursion to Dogfish for dinner. Zach made friends with Katherine, 18 months, and the woman in the booth behind us blew him a kiss. 
• Zach is obsessed with opening and closing the sliding glass door.
• He had fun playing with grandad's beard. 

Zach mesmerized
by the tree work

• Talking, talking, talking
• Zach is asking how are you and saying he had a good day. He carries on quite the phone conversation!
• I asked if I could have some privacy, and he said, "yes," and closed the bathroom door. 
• Books: 
• He's wild about so many of his new ones. He's been loving Corduroy, and we got to ride escalators for the first time at the Dulles Town Center! We also spent some time snuggling like Lisa and Corduroy do at the end of the book.
• He also has a new found love for the vintage book, Trucks, The Busy Squirrel, and Vroom Zoom. He loves finding "Peter's mommy" in The Snowy Day. 
• He loves his pony book, The Noisy Book, and wants to go camping after reading "Just Me and My Dad" with Frank.

Zach's Words

• "I'm okay," when he coughs.
• We had Trader Joe's croissants that are older than he is, and he had a lot of trouble saying “croissant,” but we had fun trying!
• Zach loves to say, "dashing," at just the right time in Corduroy. The nightwatchman "comes dashing" down the escalator!
• Singing: ABC’s, No More Monkeys, Wheels on the Bus, and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star with hand motions! 
• Zach and his, “No, no, no,” when he doesn’t want you sing with him. He wants to solo!

Frank & Zach by the Potomac

Susan & Frank

• Date night! Favorite Crooked Run beer: rush light, a collaboration with Charm City Mead Works. The Star Wars movie was good!
• Frank's foot is healed. Skiing in our future? We hope!
• Dinner out at Fire Works and Robbie's musical, Lightyears! It's autobiographical, so we learned a lot!

at El Segundo Beach

Good Food

• Soups: chili, pumpkin tomato bisque
• Williams and Sonoma Coq au Vin with roasted cauliflower and potatoes. Thank you, Charlotte! Had leftovers over bread. Yum, yum!
• Terry’s lamb dish with curry spice, cherries, mushrooms, onions, and yogurt. We added roasted sweet potatoes and kale. 
• Made croutons out of my bread
• Banana bread

Visits with

• Leah, Bennie, and SiSi. They had us over for a playdate on MLK Day
• Restaurant Week dinner at Passion Fish with Emily
• Dinner dates with Aliana and Emily
• Mom, Dad, and Emily all came over, and we enjoyed a feast from Lake Anne Market & Deli
• Calls with Sofia and Mary Kay
• Sam came for the Super Bowl
• Jeff came for dinner after his two weeks in Mexico

Fun Stuff (Personal & Professional)

• Diversity & Inclusion Work
• A lot of work came to a really good end as the first three trainings in the field have gone very well. 
• SCORE got “kudos from the Hill” for our inclusion work. That's me! Morgan told me the perspective taking cards were "awesome."
• Call with Krystal went well. Looking forward to joining that Diversity/Equity/Inclusion CoP.
• Thanks to Mike for giving me feedback on my "Debunking Diversity Myths" presentation
• Trip to LA for the "Culture of Inclusion" training. I made a save by noticing Sally was using the wrong deck. So glad I was there! 
• I stayed within walking distance of the airport, but got out to a coffee shop in El Segundo Beach and had Maki at a Japanese place with Sally. 
• Great professional calls that are crystalizing my desires, next steps, strengths, elevator pitch, etc. 
• Presented StrengthsFinder to the DRIVE group
• Good reading: The Mighty Queens of Freeville, Behold the Dreamers - thank you, Yvette - and Secret Daughter
• Watched Suite Francaise and Little Miss Sunshine on the way to LA
• Enjoyed The Five on Netflix
• Zumba class and Mi Gente, where I get to really jump
• Tried the Sensazao class. It kicked my butt.

The Holidays & Ringing in 2018!

Burke Lake Park View
from Winter Wonderland Train

Zach - Of Note

• Potty Training Update: Not really going anywhere. He was a HUGE fan of the books, Potty and "P" is for Potty, for a while, but now, six weeks in there is VERY LITTLE interest. I think we can count on one hand the number of times he's used the potty. :( 
• Zach is now loving going to the gym with me. We went again out of necessity after Frank's ankle/foot injury, and Zach has LOVED it, asking repeatedly to go "Zumba gym."
• See us below riding on Burke Lake Park's Winter Wonderland train with a stop for lunch at Dogfish Head.
  
• We're saying: "Pacis are for babies," and Zach says he's not a baby, but the paci is still critical at home. He has given it up at daycare. Colleen will have none of that!
• Zach's scooter! Frank said, "I thought he'd be good at it, but I didn't think he'd be THAT good."
• Our neighbor gave Zach a birthday/Christmas gift (apple sauce, book, and snowman). It took a while for us to realize that the snowman turned on and turned different colors! Super fun. We say, "Night, night, Snowman."
• Receiving Christmas cards was a lot of fun. Zach loved to look at the ones with pictures. He became obsessed with certain families. We asked Lucy to send more pictures of Owen as "more Owen" was the refrain for a number of days.

  

  Zach adores this
  Christmas card!

• Google made a movie of Zach photos from birth to 25 months. Creepy, but a sweet end product. 
• On Christmas Day, we peeked into a manger scene at one house, and the family came home while we were looking inside. Busted. In another neighbor’s manger scene, the wind had blown Mary over, and Zach was very distressed; we told him she was sleeping. 

  

  Zach, the artist

• The week between Christmas and New Year's, despite the cold, Zach insisted that I take him to daycare in the running stroller, so I got some extra exercise!
• We went down on the Mall to the Botanic Gardens, and Zach enjoyed the trains.
  
• His crib is now a zoo! Lots of books and stuffed animals for his birthday and Christmas. There's barely room for him to sleep!
• Crib ball, and, yes, he can climb out of his crib.
• With all the cold, cold weather, we took him to a new indoor playground, Chibis.
  

Zach's Words

• Zach has recently started saying, “okay,” a lot. It’s funny, and he says it in such an interesting, emphatic way.
• Christmas Tree, pronounced more like "Chemistry" (Draw out the "e.")
• "Snowman fell over."
• "Happy Holidays"

  

  Grandad, Dad, Zach, and the goat

• "I want beer" (not appropriate); "I want coffee"; "I want tea"; "I want to go Tacos and More." 

Susan & Frank

• Frank's ankle! He went to the doctor and found he'd broken a bone in his foot. He's had a boot for about six weeks. His doctor's appointment to get it off is next week. During the boot period, I've had to drive everywhere. Never my favorite thing, but Frank's gotten a turn as Zach's back seat companion!
• So productive the week between Christmas and New Year's! Frank went through all the mail, and I cleaned out drawers, cabinets, closets, and the fridge!
• We watched Rogue One and The Force Awakens to prep for going to see the new Star Wars movie, but in the end, we just went to Senor Ramon's and Crooked Run for yummy tacos and the best beers I've had at Crooked Run.

Good Food

• Made some old classics: spinach Brownies, granola, and TV soup with cheeeball
• Cooking afternoon with Auntie Em to prepare for the Christmas Eve Nosh. Emily's peanut butter bars are awesome!
• Family excursion to Tacos and More. We tried everything on their menu, and they brought us churros! They have GREAT chips and salsa and homemade hot sauce!

Visits with

• Out to the Valley, and Mom and Dad really took care of us with Mom's spaghetti and Dad's breakfast casserole!
• Ethiopian with Emily. She got Zach the best squirrel stuffed animal and squirrel book! He loves them. 

  

  Zach loves Paint!

• Christmas with everyone! In particular, Christmas Eve Day was a nice time. We took Zach to a new park, all got in naps, and then we celebrated at Auntie Em's before coming home for some wrapping time and the annual Love Actually viewing!
  
• Family lunch at Dog Money in Leesburg on 12/26
• I went to Baltimore for brunch at Golden West with Kathleen. Very fun. I also took my favorite Druid Hill Park walk and stopped in a the Wine Source where I got some local mead and beer to try. 

  

  Druid Hill Park view

• Thanks to Penni and Tommy for hosting us at their house on Jan 1.
• Frank, Zach, and I went to Baltimore and spent the night with Kate. We got to see all the Ubers (Anthony by phone) and Mary Kay and family!

Fun or Not So Fun, but Notable Stuff (Personal & Professional)

• Lots of bonding with colleagues. Always a good idea to minimize distance. More firings under bizarre and unsettling circumstances. 
• Connecting with Sofia, Jeanne, and Pam
• Working on my DRIVE group StrengthsFinder presentation
• Focusing on Diversity Equity Inclusion work and connecting with DRIVE colleagues, Angeline, Amy and pulling together a Degreed Learning Pathway....
• Finished Serial Season 2
• Lots of good YA books since Thanksgiving and getting back into the Kate Burkholder series
• With all the cold, cold weather, I've gone to the gym a few times. Nice to get back to the elliptical!
• EFO show with Emily and Jeff. They played a lot of my favorites: Candido; Jerusalem; Independence, Indiana. Robbie's written a musical, Light Years, that opens in February!

  

  Adorable!

2nd Birthday & More

Zach - Of Note

• I love mornings and breakfast with Zach.
  
• He started potty training! Gamma has been in charge of finding fun underwear for him when he's ready. Puffs as incentives, and he has some books coming as well. We'll see. 
• 2nd Birthday!
  
• Visitors, presents, apple cake, and adventures at Keswick: Riding on the Gator, visiting the cows in pasture, and feeding the chickens!
• He loves his construction toys, hot wheels, and truck books. He got an amazing singing card. See video.
• We got a Christmas Tree, and Zach has been pretty responsible about making sure it gets watered. He and I also did some decorating and for the first time, put on some of his ornaments that he's collected over two Christmases
• We're taking him up about 7:15pm now, and we read from his HUGE selection of books. Thanks to all for his birthday books! He also enjoys climbing on my back and over me!
• We explored Lake Anne in the snow! Zach got boots and ski pants for the winter. He's all set. 

Zach's Words & Singing

• “Mommy cooking.”
• “My Mommy” when Tristan (at daycare) got too chummy with me
• "Mommy's coffee" - when I arrived to pick him up one afternoon he was "drinking coffee." Pretty funny. 
• One morning he named all the things in his play room: blocks, box, phone, monkey, tractor, seat, etc. Pretty amazing. 
• Zach is loving looking at pictures of himself. He'll say, "More Zach." He loves photos of Sisi too, and so we asked Leah to text us a new and recent picture since all that we have are kind of old. 
  
• Zach sings: 
• Itsy, Bitsy Spider
• Wheels on the Bus, he says “all through the town” and does hand motions too
• Thank you, thank you, he always comes in on “big and strong” 
• All of the Raindrops, he’s really good at the “Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ahhhh."
• Peanut Butter and Jelly, he sings "jelly" after, "peanut, peanut butter...."
• We are singing The 12 Days of Christmas nightly now. Fun ritual. 

Before we leave daycare,
Zach MUST play in the gym!
Other kids ask awkward
questions about why he
doesn't want to go home...

Susan & Frank

• Basically, Frank and I did not see much of each other on our own. We had visitors and visited galore this month. 
• Then, I finally succumbed to the family cold, which turned into a nasty sinus infection. Frank rolled his ankle. Lots of recovery, rest, and TLC were necessary this month.
• Date night of drinks at Ocelot (though their two dark, malty beers were over the top sweet and frankly bad) and dinner Liberty Tavern was a Lot of fun!

Good Food

• Lunch at Enyate after a fun day down on the Mall at the Natural History museum, though he was obsessed with the museum store...
• Chili, pumpkin soup, and the roasted carrot salad
• For Zach's birthday and Thanksgiving: apple cake, chocolate pecan pies, and Brussel sprouts
• Homemade bread again
• Garam masala chicken "chili" - Yum, yum!
• Fritata with roasted broccoli and cauliflower
• Braised chicken with beets and olives, mashed potatoes, and broccoli with the Pet Nat from 868

Visits with and to

• Alison from Seattle
• Cooking day at Emily's before T'giving with Mom and Dad. Just like old times. 
• Sara Lee was a tremendous house for Frank, Zach, Jeff, and I over Thanksgiving. We had her homemade pumpkin muffins and eggs from her chickens. Yummy!

• Sam, Julia, and Zahra at Blenheim Winery!
• Kathleen and Brian at 868 Winery 
• Coopers Hawk with Auntie Em

Fun Stuff (Personal & Professional)

• Walking around DC and meeting LeaderFit folks
• Finished Stranger Things
• Cook Ross RISD session on SCORE's Culture of Inclusion training. Lots of good energy in the morning. It had really waned by end of day. We'll see.
• Participated in the HSN Academy, and it's always good to get out of the office and see SCORE at work in communities!  
• Trip to the zoo!
  
• Thanksgiving was fun - both of them! We had a sing-a-long on Friday with Leah and Bennie playing the piano and Sisi and the rest of us singing! See the "cousins"!

  

  Nolan, Gabriel, Zach

• I love Kate's stretch song Setting the World on Fire, by Kenny Chesney with Pink.

Summer to Winter

Zach - Of Note

Zach on the train
at Burke Lake Park

• We took Zach to Burke Lake Park and  met up with Aliana, Nathan, and Evera with specific plans to ride the train, and he had a blast. We rode the carousel too, which he liked this time around, but he obviously enjoyed the train the most. We rode twice!
• Zach's sleeping has been a little disrupted. He's solidly going to bed at 7:45pm now. Daylight Savings left him going to bed later and getting up later. Go figure!
• He's been doing a little more drawing; we bought him some crayons. 
• On walks home, he always stops and says goodbye to his friends, and we started gazing down at the W&OD trail from above. It became a ritual, and one evening, we counted 19 bikes. 

  

  Walking home

• Zach and Mommy had a great time while Daddy went down to West Virginia with his high school friends!
• On Saturday, we went down to Jammin Java to see Grandsons Junior. Zach enjoyed it for about 45 minutes and then announced that he was "all done."
  
• We visited Katie and Suji on Saturday night, and Katie played guitar for Zach, which he LOVED. Suji said he was mesmerized!
• Great Country Farms was a blast, and we only visited a fraction of their space. Zach loved the wagon ride to the "pumpkin patch," the antique tractors, and the cow train!
  
• Zach saw Frank's new mountain bike and wanted to go out to "ride" on it for several weeks. That required both me and Frank - one of us to hold him up on the seat and the other to walk the bike. 
• Images of buses became the rage this month
• Potty training on the brain this month. We've bought him a potty, and he'll move up to the 2's after Thanksgiving, so it will officially begin. 
• We ran into Mo on his last night as a UPS driver. He's retired!
• Leading up to Halloween, we went for some night strolls, and he enjoyed Halloween lights.
• Halloween was a lot of fun. We dressed him up for the second time (first time at Harvest festival), and visited all the neighbors he's met. Barbara said how much she was hoping we'd stop by!

  

  A monkey!

• With the time change (darker earlier, so less time to spend outside after daycare) and Zach's illness, he's been enjoying more music. Concert DVDs, Youtube videos of Great Big Sea, etc. 
• We picked berries and green beans at Rick's garden plot!
• What a fun time going down on the Mall to the American History Museum with Zach. He loved the transportation exhibit and the Good Humor ice cream truck outside. 
  
• His first cold and a fever that kept him home!

Zach's Words

• Visiting Katie and Suji, Zach quickly picked up on Suji's name. A few weekend's later, he met Lucy, Ralph and Chuckie's dog, again. We went to play outside, and he wanted to go "back up the hill to see Lucy." He parroted me over and over again, and "see Lucy" became "Suji."
• He loves to sing, “Thank you, thank you. Thank you, thank you, for our food. For our food. Helps the body grow. Helps the body grow. Big and strong. Big and strong!” 
• He is talking to Alexa all the time now. 
• One morning we talked about how “independent” he is, and he turned that into “mundo, mundo” and just laughed!

Susan & Frank

• Date night for Frank's birthday. We tried out Heritage Brewing Co. and went to Four Sisters for Vietnamese. 

Good Food

• A great Ethiopian meal at Enyate. The family was so happy to see Zach, and he won them over again!
• Lots of pumpkin bread - thanks to Brian for his recipe!
• Fish Tacos!

Visits with

IX Art Park in
Charlottesville

• Aliana, Evera, and Nathan. We saw them two weekends in a row, and they're expecting a baby boy in April!
• Katie and Suji - dinner and time outside by their firepit!
• Met up with Emily R. for dinner, and we had such a good time. 
• Emily, Grandad, Gamma, and Daddy Bob all visited.
• Dinner with Auntie Em after her trip to Italy was a blast!
• Visit to Charlottesville. A great dinner with Ralph, Chuckie, Christopher, & Mia and Jim and Susan. A nice visit with Sam and Zahra. 
• Mary Kay via phone. Monthly check-ins are good!
• Emmy came to babysit!

Professional Fun Stuff (or just Fun Stuff)

Foggy Gainesville

• Mentoring advice and calls with Patti and Jeanne
• DRIVE group coaching and kickoff
• Learning about Green Dot and creating a community in support of non-violence
• Definitely not fun stuff, but Anna left SCORE, and I'm so sad to see her go. 
• Advisory Council meeting...good bonding with Hugh, Eileen, Ann, and Julie
• Trip to Gainesville, FL for a district meeting. Drove from Jacksonville to Gainesville on two different routes. A good meeting, a walk around Gainesville, dinner at a local restaurant...all interesting
• Listening to Serial's Season 2! Got in four episodes in early November