Pilgrim Feast

So the whole fam just got back from the Woods School Pilgrim Feast. Every year, the week before Thanksgiving, Woods School puts on a Pilgrim Feast for the students and their families. It was pretty fun, and a nice way to build community. Grandpa and Grandma D came with us. We met up with Emma and her class and were seated and served by the junior highers. It was a full Thanksgiving meal with turkeys, ham, and all the fixings. Cyndie cooked two turkeys (getting up at 4:30 am to do so) and some rolls. Emma and her classmates had made/decorated place mats and indian style ponchos. All in all, a fun time.

This afternoon will be a bit crazy with Emma's swim class, a bit of help setting up for the art show, dinner at McDonalds (Emma's free compliments of a McDonalds reading program), Cyndie and the kids to the library for An American Tale, and me back home for worship practice. Phew!

Oh, and since I know you're all dying to hear how the Ham Fighters fared during last night's bowling league, we took 3 out of a possible 7 points from the defending league champions. Not too bad. I had my best night yet including my all time high of 164. Go Neal, go Neal!

Random Pix ...

Alrighty -- here are some random pix from the last several weeks. We'll start with when Papa Lee was here. We did a little Christmas early ... here's Tim with the Hulk he received from Papa.

Emma got a doll and a doll outfit. I'm not sure what the deal is with pictures that I rotated, but again they aren't showing properly.

There's Emma, Papa, and Ruby Robyn, Emma's new doll.
Cyndie painted a painting of Half Dome in Yosemite for Lee since they went there a lot together.
Emma happy about something ... probably the thought of opening presents!

Here's Tim and Emma working on some plans.

Papa and Tim.

This is when Emma brought Papa to school as show and tell.

He told the class about all the big trucks he works with.

Here's the game Emma made for us to play last night. It probably needs a little explaining. The orange part is the game board. You move by closing your eyes and pointing on the white piece of paper with a pen or your finger. There are numbers 1 - 10+. If you hit 1 - 4, you move that far. If you hit 5 or more there's a little line marking that you don't get to go ... because you got too greedy! The board "squares" have labels ... W is for water, if you land there, you go in the water (the blue paper) ... M is for mud, you go in the black paper and lose a turn ... T (I'm not sure what T stands for) means you write (copy) a word on the white piece of paper. It was really creative and original, and actually pretty fun to play!


Here's Timmy's preschool class. His friend Lukas is the third from the left in the front and friend Joseph is fourth from the right in the back. I hear a lot about Ben too, but I don't know which one he is!

Okay, here are some pictures from the weekend away. Here's Rico, Eric, and I playing Blokus.
Emma and her friend Jasmine (Rico and Julie's older daughter).

Here's the gang dressed up for the murder mystery.

Here's Cyndie and I as Rocco and Tara.

Art Pix

Here's the latest paintings that Cyndie and I finished today ... just in time for the coming art show.

This one is Cyndie's Christmas themed painting ... I'm calling it "Winter Door" for now ... she'll have to add her own title later!
This is mine ... we'll call it "Shared Malt"

Here's Timmy hanging out with me while I paint!

Nuggets from today

A few blurbs on what's happening around the DeVries household lately ...

• Cyndie and I are working on our final paintings for our art class ... hoping to finish them in time for the Friday/Saturday art show. I'm working on a painting of Emma and Timmy and Cyndie is working on a Christmas card-esque painting.
• We have swim class, Timmy this morning and Emma tomorrow afternoon.
• The kids were all excited this morning when their new box of Blueberry Frosted Mini-Wheats had a free blanket offer. Upon finding out that we needed eight "tokens" (one per box) Emma promptly asked Cyndie to go buy seven more boxes (good math Ems).
• Dad was over yesterday working on cutting some more dead trees down. There's a lot still to go, so we'll see how far we get before the snow comes. Cyndie's planning on burning some more scrap wood (small branches) today.
• Timmy's thrilling discovery today ... the sweats that he put on this morning have zippers that turn them into shorts. Now he wants to wear them to school tomorrow for show and tell!
• Big events for the evening ... Bible study for Cyndie and bowling for me.
  

Back

So here we are, back from our weekend away and abruptly into the swing of a pretty busy week.

We had a really good time with Andersons and Fords at our weekend away. The area, Galena, IL, is very pretty. Lots of hills and woods interspersed with the farms. The town itself reminded us of Eureka Springs, AR, built into a little valley and very quaint. Aside from a trip to a park on Saturday, we mostly just hung out. The kids were a good mix of ages to play well together and largely allowed the adults to hang out, play games (board games, ping pong, darts), play guitar, and relax. The murder mystery was pretty fun. It turns out that Rico "done it" ... although he accidentally killed the victim ... accidentally because he was trying to kill me!! Oh the horrors!

Anyway, we left Monday morning first thing and got back in time for Cyndie to do her lunch recess duty at school. Then we went and had our last (for the fall session) art class. This weekend is the big art show, so we'll help with that.

So that's the story!

Running out the door

We should have a pretty short day today. By that I mean I'll work this morning and Cyndie will straighten up the house a bit and get some things packed, and then we'll hit the road around noon to head out to our long weekend/vacation. We've very excited. Initially we were planning on leaving in the evening because there was a church event that we wanted to support occurring over dinner tonight. However, that event was canceled, so now we're headed out earlier, which is great because it will give the kids a chance to settle before bed time, and we'll have a normal bedtime hour too.

The big excitement for the weekend will be the Saturday evening murder mystery that we're going to do. It's an Italian/mafia-esque theme. Here's the summary and Cyndie and I's characters:

Passion, Pasta and Pistols

Four days ago restauranteur Giuseppe (Pepi) Roni was found murdered in the kitchen of his renowned New York City eatery, La Sperenza. Pepi had been shot in the back with his own pistol. Tonight, his family and friends have gathered to pay their respects to poor Pepi and two eat a feast of Italian food in his honor. One of them is a murderer.

THE SUSPECTS ARE:

Rocco Scarfazzi (Neal): Pepi's twin brother, a tough talking no-nonsense Italian businessman. In addition to his vineyards and real estate holdings, it is rumored Rocco is in the 'laundering' business. He had no love for his brother Pepi, but his reasons are his own… capische?

Costume suggestion: black three-piece suit, white shirt and black hat and cane. Limousine optional.

Tara Misu (Cyndie): Kara is Rocco's vivacious young fiancée. She was just an upstairs maid in Rocco's villa until she swept him off his feet. Now Tara keeps a smile on his face and a firm grip on Rocco's assets.

Costume suggestion: Kara is dressed to kill. She knows the effect she has on men and flaunts her charms shamelessly.

There are four other characters too. We'll let you know if either of us "done it" when we return.

Bragging!!

So we had our parent/teacher conference for Emma last night and came away feeling very proud of our little girl. Her teacher, Mrs. Hintz, had only good things to say about Emma, and on all levels. She tried hard and does well in all subjects, socially, in PE, art, music, etc. Said she was a leader of the class and has a really good attitude. One thing that we were especially proud of was when Mrs. Hintz said that Emma was especially kind and helpful with Tiana. Tiana is an autistic girl in the class. We've had other parents tell us that Mrs. Hintz doesn't mince words ... she'll tell it like it is, so we figure we got a pretty good image of Emma in school.

So there's your Friday morning bragging from a proud parent!