or how i learned to elevate the mundane

I find myself with President’s Day off for the first time ever. The Girl wanted to go to the park. It’s a nice, sunny day out. I can see summer if I squint hard enough.

Last night at dinner we were celebrating the lunar new year with some traditional Korean rice cake soup. I’m not entirely sure how the discussion started, but we were talking about how times were harder a while ago for minority children and he busts out with a comparison to “The Little Rock Nine“. My wife and I sat there slack-jawed for a moment and then she asks him, “How do you know about The Little Rock Nine?” To which he casually responds, “Oh, my teacher was telling us about it.”  Now, I don’t know about you, but I did not learn about The Little Rock Nine when I was 7 years old.  I’m pretty sure I was still learning about how rocks were hard and water was wet, but things are a little fuzzy from those days. Anyway, so he goes on and on and he has a surprising level of depth and understanding of what was going on back then and why. He asked very pointed questions about segregation and asked whether our families lived through that time (as it happens, only 1 of his 4 grandparents grew up in America during the 50′s and most of the 60′s).

My wife got an autographed copy of Terrence Roberts’ new book since her uncle and Mr. Roberts are friends, so she pulled it out and showed The Boy some pictures.  After dinner, The Boy decided to write Mr. Roberts a letter, which will be going out in the mail tomorrow.  But we wanted to keep a copy of it for posterity.  I think it shows surprising astuteness and empathy.  Here it is. I guess you get to read it before Terrence Roberts does:

AndrewLetter2TerrenceRoberts3

Every 2 years I sit back and enjoy the spectacle of sport that is the Olympics.  I have a slight preference for the Summer Games, but there are many events to enjoy in the Winter Games as well.  Certainly enough to keep the TV/DVR busy.  This year, my boy is 7 and he has really taken to the spirit of the games as well.  During the last Summer Games, he was 5 and he participated in Michael Phelps mania with his parents (he loves to swim and has been swimming solo since he was 4 yrs old), but he wasn’t really into the games as an event.  Well, this time he is as into it as I am, and possibly more.  It’s really gratifying to sit on the couch watching ski jump and hearing him provide commentary on how good various athletes’ take-offs were and then watching him get excited as they land (e.g. “Oh, I think that was a good jump! He’s probably #2 or #3!).  I think for us non-Olympians it’s part of what the Olympics are about.  It brings the world together at a macro level.  And this year, it has provided another way to bring our family together at a micro level.

Due to last week’s Snowpocalypse here in Seattle, the streets before Christmas were essentially unpassable.  UPS and Fedex had a particularly difficult time getting packages delivered, which resulted in a number of Christmas presents not being under the tree on the 24th/25th.

We made do with the Santa gifts by me going out and buying one more gift each for the kids.  So the “Santa Crisis” was averted, but only just barely.  Thankfully, the kids seem to like their replacement Santa gifts.  However, the gifts from us and my parents hadn’t arrived by then, as did various gift packages from my wife’s side of the family.  Some of those arrived on the 27th, so we ended up with a second Christmas then.

Since then, packages that should have been delivered a week ago have been trickling in and a FEW HAVE NOT YET BEEN DELIVERED.  It’s basically been a full week since Christmas and a good 4 days since the roads have been totally cleared.

The city plan for snow has been a total disaster.  And it’s almost acceptable NOT to have a plan in place for a situation like this, but what is NOT acceptable is to not put an emergency plan together that takes action when a situation like this occurs.  This is not about Christmas gifts (though, that is not a trivial issue where kids are concerned), this is also about city services, public safety, and now with the garbage piling up, public health.

So we said goodbye to my in-laws today after a nice Christmas visit.  Little did they know that they would be snowbound for almost an entire week!  We’ve now got a day and a half of downtime before my sister and her family come into town for New Year’s.  This year, our kids will be 6.5, 5, 3.5, & 1.5 years old, which should make all of them fully interactive.  Unfortunately for them, they will have missed all the snow (so no sledding down the street).  Although, come to think of it, maybe they don’t mind after having survived a few Boston winters.

You are all no doubt aware of the amazing amount of snow the Seattle area has had over the past week.  It all started with the ominous NoSnow Day on Wednesday, December 17th where all the kids in Seattle were told to stay home due to the threat of snow.  My son declared it “The Worst Snow Day Ever”.  It may very well have been.

But that’s all been made up for starting on Thursday.  The snow has been AMAZING.  It has gotten so deep and so pervasive that the street we live on is now suitable pretty much only for sleds.  The kids have been using the street as a sled run for the last 5 days:

It has been a blast, I have to say. The street is at just the right slope as to make the sled run fun but not “too exciting”, if you know what I mean.  Also, one of the neighborhood kids created a little sled jump for that little added adrenaline rush for that run down the hill.

On top of all that, on Saturday night we had what was probably something that could only happen in the PNW (although, I will concede that it’s possible in areas of the South with little snowfall).  We had a neighborhood block party!

And it was pretty much an all-out block party including the obligatory barbeque (sausages, etc.), plastic lawn furniture, wine and champagne, milling about, and kids doing their own thing.  It was as surreal as it was totally amazing to have the neighborhood out there enjoying the snow and acting as if it were the middle of July except that it was 25 degrees outside.  Plenty of fun, and good neighborship to be had.  And the kids were maxed out to boot.  Within minutes of them getting into bed, they were out cold.  The perfect end to a perfect evening.