I'm pretty sure most readers get a copy of this one way or another, but in case you don't, presenting Moore's (a.k.a. Travis') annual Christmas missive. In real life it's on pretty paper, but here you get hyperlinks to the footnotes!
Hello, Hello!
Let’s jump right in…. Finn loves
2nd grade, and similar to probably most parents, I’m amazed at the
level of work his class is doing. I think I’d have to up my game a bit if I
were a modern-day second-grader, because my efforts from decades ago wouldn’t
cut the mustard now. I know I didn’t have superficial
or loquacious on my spelling test
when I was 7. (In fact, loquacious
didn’t enter my personal lexicon until sometime in high school.) Math is trickier,
too. Compare these:
o
Travis’ old-school 2nd grade
math: If you have 5 apples, and you eat two, how many are left? (A likely
answer of mine, using the Socratic method – or perhaps dodging the actual task
at hand: What kind of apples are they?)
o
Finn’s modern 2
nd grade math:
Mary
goes to the park and sees only dogs and pigeons. She sees 4 dogs, and a total of 32 animal legs. How many pigeons does Mary see in the park?
Our major family
wing-ding this year was a ski trip to France that has been in the queue for
several years. Since Finn and I had
never been to France we added a bit of sightseeing in Paris and Switzerland
before heading to Tignes / Val d’Isere for a week on the snow with Ann and Eric
and mutual friends the Rushers.
o Paris
was great, and we saw the key tourist-district sites: Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Pont Neuf
bridge, and Musée d’Orsay; and ate our fill of crepes and croque-monsieur.
o The
TGV train from Paris to Geneva was super-smooth, and super-fast, clocking in at
almost 150mph. Check-in? Just walk on your train car. Snacks? You bet -- Brie and a glass of wine. We’re all fans of high-speed rail now!
o We
arrived in downtown Geneva mid-trip, so I set out to take care of some laundry
while M and F did homework at the hotel.
The laundromats in Geneva are conveniently located in the red-light
district
,
so laundry-doing has a bit different vibe than coin-ops elsewhere.
o One
rainy day in Geneva we rented a car and went to Gruyere to see where the famous
cheese is made. Even for factory-tour
veterans, the cheese factory is pretty cool – they even have a cheese-turning
robot that flips each wheel of cheese as it ages. Finn campaigned to bring a wheel of cheese
home with us, and after calculation I determined that it would be hard to fit
85lb of cheese into his suitcase.
o The
most dangerous thing on the road from Geneva to Tignes was not the narrow,
winding, icy, road, chock-a-block with racing buses, but British tourists who
are grappling with driving on the
wrong
side of the road!
o Tignes
is high in the Alps, and is essentially treeless, so there are massive expanses
of pure white. Lifts and the network of
groomed runs are there mostly to take you to
off-piste
skiing. The tail end of a hurricane made
the first few days challenging
but when the sun shone it was world-class with cloudless skies and big fluffy
powder.
Finn was a Holly Park Shark again this summer and was a top competitor
in his age group, especially in the breaststroke. The Sharks team swelled in
size this summer to over 100 competitors and made a formidable sight as they
sung the Park Shark Power! team cheer
at the start of each meet
Trying to remedy the displacement of June camping by swim meets and the
rapidly-shrinking feeling of our “4-man” tent, we adopted the logical approach
and purchased a pop-up camper. While
extending our camping season and providing enough space to take refuge from regular
afternoon hailstorms, the camper has had some interesting effects on our family
and traveling:
o
Finn is enthralled by the whole scene, and turned
instantly into a proto-camper salesman.
If you come within earshot, he will explain every feature in exacting
detail, ad infinitum.
o
We became accustomed to some new facts of camper-life: driving in the right-hand lane up big hills
(wave as you scoot by in the left-lane, please…); the merits of “pull-throughs”;
huge turning radius; choosing businesses that have way-out-there parking; and
an eagle eye in the backseat commentating on all of the other campers on the
road.
This summer Finn
convinced across-the-greenbelt BFF Emma that camping is awesome, and the two
laid plans for a backyard summer camp out.
The tent was pitched and stocked with the absolute bare essentials
necessary for an authentic suburban wilderness experience: sleeping bags and pads, stuffed animals,
numerous flashlights, pillows, books, headlamps, glowsticks, jammies, spare
clothes, and two kiddos. Marshmallows
were roasted before bedtime on a disposable charcoal grill to make some s’mores,
and two relatively sticky campers hit the sack.
Finn and Emma elected to spend the night in the tent without any
parents, which is pretty plucky for recently-graduated 1st and 2nd
graders. I left the back door open that night and slept on the couch with an
ear open for any bumps in the road. All
was quiet until about 5:45 the next morning when both came bounding gleefully into
the house campaigning for breakfast.
Maggie’s paternal
grandfather turned 90 this year, and there was a big family party to
celebrate. Bill is a WWII veteran, and
was in the infantry at the Battle of Normandy.
After listening to tales of a family member’s recent trip to France,
Bill didn’t miss a beat and quipped “Last time I was in France, I had to wade onto
the beach…”. He’s happy and in good
spirits, and makes us all smile.
Maggie and Finn made
several trips to KS this year to visit Maggie’s maternal grandparents, and
Cousin Katie
and her parents. Katie turned 2 in
November, and Finn is smitten. They both
have huge personalities, and it’s hard not to smile when they get into their
rhythm together.
Grannie Annie’s
birthday gift to Finn this year was a ride on the Royal Gorge Train near Canon
City. Finn was thrilled at getting to
ride the train. In the dome car! Through a canyon! The train ride is an out-and-back through an
exceptionally deep, narrow, and spectacular canyon. The canyon is so skinny that there is a
section if the track that is suspended by girders attached to each side of the
canyon. Apparently a train long ago was
a bit too big to fit under the suspension beams and crashed into the support
structure, leaving various dents and bent things in the process. Now, as you would reasonably expect, the
train stops at the scene of the incident so everyone can more closely inspect
the structural damage to the very items that are holding up the train above the
icy river.
Gardening was
relatively good this year, with some adjustments to the garden makeup. I inadvertently discovered a way to expedite
the gardening by bypassing the harvest of a portion of the crop: (1) Hastily construct a bean trellis out of
scrap bits of dodgy lumber and make it about seven feet tall just in case you
have some of Jack’s beans. (2) Be sure there are a few well-placed knots toward
the bottom of the trellis supports. (3) Install the trellis upwind of a bunch
of small and delicate crops. (4) Plant beans that will entirely envelop the
trellis with 80 lbs or so of biomass. (5) Wait for a big wind, and (6)
Voila! In one cataclysmic event the
knots on the structurally-deficient trellis will snap and the trellis will
crash into the veggies below, efficiently doing away with a mass of beans, a
few bell peppers, some edamame, and baby tomatoes. Gardening made easy!
We hope you have a
joyous and satisfying 2015 –
Photos – clockwise from
top-left: sunrise at the Eiffel Tower;
M&F at the top of Mt. Evans (CO); Chihuly glass + F at the Denver Botanic
Gardens; Louvre in Paris; awesome day at Tignes; off to the Broncos AFC
Championship
;
Hooray for the Camper!
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