Catching Up Through Halloween

Argh. Today started out with the news that Cousin J is now in the hospital with unexpected complications. Further misadventures were followed by the unpleasant discovery that our Corporate overlords had made A Decision and, with zero advance notice, upgraded all the PCs to Windows 7 -- and absolutely positively EVERY file I ever had on the hard drive was now gone, all printer & network settings were gone, all remote connections & links were gone, all of it. Then came the automated text message on my iPhone about my Discover card balance that lead to my finding a $274 transaction manually keyed in at a Sears store in California that I've never been to... I could go on, but I think you get the idea. So... what better way to retrieve my last few remaining shreds of sanity than to revel in pleasant memories of the past few months?  (Dude, maybe you're not as dumb as I think you am!)

So lemme start over again... Hi, everybody! I hope you've had a happy Hanukkah, a merry Christmas, a good Winter Solstice, an enjoyable Festivus, a fun Boxing Day, a wonderful Kwanzaa, and just generally good times with the holiday(s) of your choice -- not to mention good health along the way! In terms of catching up, I believe I left off at a late August history lesson... so I'll pick up the thread there.

Early in September, we had our annual MIT Crabfest.  It's got nothing to do with the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (and no one's actually required to eat crabs); "MIT" semi-sorta stands for Moms In Training, which is what AJ and several other women in what is now our batch of adoption friends referred to themselves as all those years ago when they first met at one or another China- or adoption-themed event.  The locale has changed over the years but we always manage to gather en masse, ostensibly for crabs but really just to share time & food together. This year's get-together was cut slightly short because the restaurant was literally at water's edge and one heckuva mother of a major thunderstorm came sweeping through as we were trying to herd the cats --- er, arrange the kids together for a group photo. Still, it was (as usual) a lot of noisy fun, and one of those all-too-rare occasions where the majority of the group (if not everyone) can all share some face time and marvel at just how much all the kids have been growing.

About a week later we celebrated AJ's birthday. Miri happily helped Mommy blow out her candles and then serenaded her with a lovely solo rendition of "Happy Birthday" before diving into the brownie cake in the center of the table. (I'm never sure if she enjoys singing the song because she likes it or because she knows it's followed by cake.) A couple of days after that, we spent a couple of wonderful days being visited by an old family friend and her partner.  We first met this wonderful lady when AJ was younger than the Pipsqueak is now and we were all living in Chile. There have been many life changes since then, and for a good number of years all contact was via mail (snail or electronic), but all the old jokes, conversations, and memories picked up the moment she walked into the house as if they'd never been interrupted.  Miri almost immediately joined in on the group friendship but, unlike her Mommy, had no trouble with the names of either guest; back when AJ was just three, she had trouble with the lady's name so she officially dubbed her "Peaches" because she could say the word easily! (Dude, you know your sister's gonna shoot you for including that, don't you...?)

All through late September and into October, my niece was undecided as to exactly which "Frozen" character she would be for Halloween -- and surprised nobody by deciding it would be Olaf, by far her fave. Oh, sure, by then she had everything needed to be a good Elsa or Anna (and I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the size 12 Elsa Coronation Dress costume sent to me by mistake that the manufacturer insisted was an Amazon error)... but Olaf it was, and one of our friends found a truly excellent Olaf suit at a truly reasonable price, so on the 30th Miri marched in her school's Halloween parade looking very much like a snowman. I raced like a madman to get there on time, parking what seemed to be miles from the school and literally running across the athletic fields just in time to snap two photos of the Pipsqueak as her part of the parade re-entered the building -- but she saw me and was happy to know Uncle Brian saw her parading, so (with the exception of my hyperventilating for several minutes) all was copacetic. My totally unbiased opinion, by the way, is that of the three Olafs in the parade, she looked the most like the real thing. Even AJ, who'd been experimenting with that costume for a couple of weeks, thought the Pipsqueak was extra-cute.

(Watching the parade, I was amazed at how many kids, both boys and girls, were dressed as assorted members of Marvel's Avengers or as Minecraft characters... and also at how many of the elementary school girls were wearing costumes I wouldn't have allowed a high schooler to leave the house in...!)

For Halloween itself, we were in Ocean City. It wasn't exactly a vacation; AJ's professional group had inexplicably decided Halloween weekend was a good time for their annual convention, so off we went. We had all been a little concerned that Miri would miss trick-or-treating and handing out candy at home, but the group held low-key mask-making and costume competitions that evening. After several awards were handed out for assorted fun masks & outfits, the much-coveted "Best Costume of All" award went to the smallest attendee's Asian-looking Princess Elsa. (Sorry, no web-appropriate photo of that one.) We had adjoining rooms, and after saying "goodnight" to Grandma & Grandpa several times, and reviewing the story of how she peed aaaalll over her Uncle Brian in the hotel back in China, the Pipsqueak finally drifted off in bed with Mommy.  I got to spend some quality time with her the next day (Mom & Dad really needed a breather from their nuclear-powered granddaughter), and we had fun watching the gulls & waves from the hotel's verandah, eating lunch with Mommy, visiting Miri's friend Megan in the jewelry shop, and just enjoying being away from the usual "stuff" of everyday life.

Of course, this being the end of October and start of November, we didn't spend as much time actually on the beach as we have in prior years. It was cold to begin with, and when those sea breezes come whipping across the dunes... Well, the beach attire worn by AJ & Miri, and the massive crowds on the sand, in the two photos below (both taken shortly before hitting the road) should give some indication of how warm it wasn't.

Now... set the WABAC for a day late this past summer, when one of the MIT moms got a line on a good price for tickets to Disney's Frozen on Ice at the Baltimore Arena. What seemed like a safe date was chosen and non-refundable tickets purchased in advance, so of course the show was at 2:30 in the afternoon on the last day of AJ's convention in Ocean City...! The result was that the ride out from OC was literally a race, me in the Rav with a bunch of luggage, everyone else in AJ's van, literally flying low all the way back from the Eastern Shore and then up into Baltimore in a desperate attempt to make the show. Well, despite the best efforts of more than a few idiots on the road (one of whom literally cut me off with inches to spare at 85mph) and AJ's last-second wrong turn coming into downtown Bawlmer, everybody was present for the opening moments of the show. Miri didn't have time to change back into her Elsa costume, and some of the souvenirs were priced orders of magnitude beyond their actual value, but the show was fun for everyone, the special effects were far better than expected, and a wonderful time was had by all. (I hadn't realized they actually encourage photos during the show, so I left my camera in the car... thus the somewhat lower-quality images from my iPhone. Sorry!)

Marshmallow was actually life-size -- waaaay cool!

(Dude, isn't "Frozen" ON ICE something cooked up by the Department of Redundancy Department?)

<Ahem> As I was saying, a wonderful time was had by all, and I can personally vouch for the fact that you ain't heard nuthin' until you've heard several thousand kids (and an almost equal number of adults) belting out "Let It Go" as loudly & enthusiastically as they can in a fully-enclosed arena consisting entirely of hard surfaces that reflect sound without muffling it. I only wish the father of two who was sitting behind me could sing on-key...  Afterwards, there was a very pleasant group dinner at a restaurant outside the city, and then the five of us headed home "for real" late in the evening. When we finally got back to AJ's, we learned she had lugged a halloween cake all the way to OC and back again without a chance to share it with us... so we closed out our adventures with very tasty chunks of my sister's home-baked Halloween dessert.

There's plenty more that happened in November & December, but I think I need to get some sleep so that's all for this post. It's unlikely I'll be posting again before New Year's Eve, so I'd like to take this chance to wish all my followers and readers, and all their families, a happy, HEALTHY new year... and I'll see everyone in 2015!