A Christmas photo show

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On December 7

The beginning of the holidays

The day after Thanksgiving it snowed. Not that it blanketed the city, but the snowflakes were wet and big, and they fell throughout the day. There was a wintry pall overcasting the day, but it lifted our spirits because it was the holidays. We went to the new upscale shopping area in Albuquerque with Janey and two of her daughters. First we stopped off at a jewelry store just to peek. The daughters went around to shop in the outdoor mall, while Janey, Cyndi, the boys and I went inside to an Italian restaurant. We got a large table in a large sideroom, next to both a servers' station but also next to large French doors that looked out onto a patio and the street of the mall. I ordered the cheapest bottle of wine on the menu (a Paso Robles cabernet for $20, but still a bargain). We ordered an appetizer of bruschetta and hot chocolate for the boys. Bread came, Jack and Ry colored on the butcher block paper that covered our table, and Janey, Cyndi and I drank our wine and watched the snow come down.

We decided to share threeways a wonderful salad and a panino, and we each ordered a small bowl of tomato bisque. The service was thankfully unhurried and otherwise very accommodating. We talked about something. Janey's daughters arrived, gobbled some bruschetta down, but declared they were "too full" from breakfast to eat with us and would order their dinners "to go" so they could eat them later wherever they ended up. The salad came and went, and then the soups. Janey's daughters ordered more bread, and I think they ended up tasting their mother's supper. I thought we should have another bottle of wine, no one objected, and the second bottle was served just before the sandwiches arrived. By this time, the snow was heavier and the boys became restless. They ran some laps around the circular table. Thankfully, there were only a few diners left in the entire restaurant, mostly families with older children, lingering over their post-turkey-meal meal, and the only other people in our side room were some staff celebrating a manager's birthday in the opposite corner. The waiter brought gold balloons for the boys, and then our tab.

After dinner, Janey and Cyndi went shopping and bought some shoes or something else. Janey's daughters went off on their own to be joined later by Janey for another shopping errand to be completed before they left town. The boys and I just walked around the streets of the outdoor mall, listening to the Christmas music that came from the outdoor speakers hidden in the lampposts or the rocks and walls that landscaped the sidewalks. We ducked into a Williams Sonoma and an Apple store. I bought a small (tall) Americano from the Starbucks, and Jackson got a plastic card for his new wallet. Despite the weather and because of the day, there was a crowd of people in the stores, though not so much on the sidewalks. Cyndi cell phoned me to meet me at another clothing shop, the one with the chic dresses and leather jackets, and along the way the boys and I found the only vending cart opened on the street. The cart was full of little wind-up toys, and the vendor helped the boys play with any of the toys they wanted to see. We picked two for about the price of a glass of wine (or 30 miles of gas) and met Cyndi.

Poor Ry's hands were cold—his mitttens were too large—so we bought two pairs of gloves for the price of one with an additional discount. And it was there that we discovered that Albuquerque now had its own Anthropologie store just down the street. So we had to look. Sure enough, there was a sweater jacket beckoning Cyndi. Jackson was playing with some expensive decorative hour glasses. A sweet employee came up to Ry to comment on his Spider Man cap as I was getting his fingers into the new gloves when I heard the sound of breaking glass. Jackson came running to me in tears and buried his head into my shoulder. The sweet employee said to Jackson, "Friend, don't be upset. I just broke some glasses this morning." And she gave Jack & Ry each a candy cane. Later, as we left the store, Jackson walked over to the sweet employee and said, "Thank you."

That's pretty much the story of that day. Janey and her daughters didn't leave town, afterall, and stayed with us that night. Later in the weekend, we got all the Christmas decorations out and slowly have been putting some up. The boys are very excited. The train is up, the tree and lights but not the ornaments, the village, the mantle.

Jackson is having growing pains and is often hungry. He is becoming tall and can stand in the pool. (He's mastered floating.) He is very excited this week because his kindergarten class will be moving into the new classroom. He has been showing more gentleness with Rylee, and the two of them are learning to share and cooperate. They take turns opening the back door whenever they return from a car trip, and they figure out whose turn it is remarkably amiably. I told Jackson that this is something Rylee is teaching him while he teaches Rylee about the world.

On Thanksgiving Day, I was playing chess with Nicholas. Nicholas had just learned from Don, who sat nearby and watched the game. Nicholas knows a lot already and gets his pieces out early. He'll recite some very good rules of thumb that Don taught him. Occasionally, I'd ask Nicholas if he was sure about a particular move. Jackson came over and began helping Nicholas in a very easy manner, quickly suggesting moves. Jackson gets frustrated whenever we play and he eventually loses his queen, but more and more he sees the board and this was a good opportunity to see the game from a slightly different perspective. Brendon joined us, too, and eventually he took my spot. I think I saw Juliette join the game at some point, too. I'm not sure the game actually ended in any checkmate by the time dinner was ready.

Rylee and I have been suffering some sort of bug. Poor Ry's voice was hoarse yesterday, and he's having trouble breathing at night. Jackson has a favorite show at the moment that both of the boys watch together. We have recorded some episodes that they watch over and over. It is about phonics and reading, and Rylee is picking some of it up. Ry is definitely counting. By rote, he counts past twelve, and he easily counts any set of three objects. He's learning colors and uses noun combinations and increasingly more complex sentences. He loves possessives and words describing motion and direction. This morning I swear he was looking at each one of his toes. I thought he was counting, but I heard him say, "Mommy, Daddy, Jackson, Dorrie…."

Ariel had a birthday on Saturday. She and Chris had Thanksgiving dinner together in Fairbanks on Thursday and were going up to a hot springs resort on her birthday. I think she said it had been too warm to go before, which I took to mean that it was easier to deal with the usual ice than the occasional slush.

My parents leave tomorrow for a trip to Hawaii. They'll be on the cruise with Jennifer. David and Sandra, I gather, are somewhere north of Miami and will shoot across to the Bahamas sometime from now.

Thanksgiving 2007 Photo Show

A photo show.

Thanksgiving

We've been having unseasonably warm weather for several weeks now, and it's been very dry, but the national atmospheric people are saying we will have our first sub-freezing temperature Wednesday night and a chance of snow on Thanksgiving Day. Cyndi loves this time of year, and any snowfall and the wintry days forecasted into the weekend will set a holiday mood. That will assuredly translate into digging out all of the Christmas decorations this weekend. Jackson will make sure of that because he feels the holiday mood, too. And Rylee, he just gets excited about everything.

Our plan on Thanksgiving is to get up in the morning and run the Turkey Trek. It would be wonderful, I think, if there's a light snow already while we run. I love to hear the crunch of snow and the stillness in the air, and those who show up to run will be even more exuberant, all bundled up, rubbing their gloved hands together, waiting for the start.

Thanksgiving this year will be at Dorrie & Pete's. I think everyone on the Sanchez side from Albuquerque, Belen and Las Cruces should be showing up. Cyndi's already started on preparing the sweet potatoes ahead of the day and there's still more to prepare, including her signature pecan pie. I'll be contributing cranberry sauce. Cyndi and her sisters have been planning the meal for some time now, and there's still details and changes to sort out. I look forward to the wonderful meal, the opportunity to drink a glass of wine in the middle of the day and snack with no recrimination, and the triple effect of overeating, alcohol and trytophan as the afternoon settles into lolling in front of the television with the traditional, and usually sleepy, Detroit Lions game.

Ariel will be in Fairbanks with Chris, and then they will go to a nearby hot springs resort for some skiing and maybe a chance to view the northern lights or to dogsled. The temperatures in Fairbanks have been hovering in the single digits. Ariel's been exploring glacial caves, and I hope she'll forward some pictures from her trips that I can post. She's been working on some magazine articles--one is about glacial spelunking--and I hope she will get some published. Terra, I hear, is down in Anchorage and will have Thanksgiving with her family on Sandra's side, while Jennifer is circling Hawaii, and Sandra and David are moored somewhere in Florida. It sounds like the rest of the Bleichers will be together on Robley Road.

Nana & Papa

Nana and Papa drove out from California to visit us. I don't think they cared much for the drive, but they did appreciate the accommodations. We loved seeing them, and I think they loved seeing us. As with most Bleicher getting-togethers, we spent a lot of time preparing meals, eating meals, cleaning up after meals, and waiting for the next meal. Nana brought some of her home-grown spaghetti sauce and treated us to lobster tails from Costco. (A couple of Costco adventures, but we'll save that story until Christmas.) Cyndi made her signature shrimp pasta the first night, and I grilled TriTip and sweet potato fries for a supper at the Ranch. As Rylee said, we got two papas that day.

Meals taking up a lot of the day, there was only time left for a couple of naps and a wonderful autumn day at the new Japanese Garden. Impressive.

Fall Time

50s theme at school. Jack's "wearing the belt". Ry adopts suspenders for the first time.






Jack and his class mates.

It was Grandma's 80th birthday.

Jackson is taking tennis lessons and piano lessons.
Here he is serving for the very first time.

An Autumn Weekend

Pre-Halloween festivities, annual Ryan's Run, Tina at the movies, Ursula's 80th.

Rylee's Uniform

You may have noticed it in some of the photos, or read me writing about it before. Rylee has a little uniform he constantly wears, and it's a struggle, especially for Cyndi, to get him to ever change out of it. The first element is the T Ball shirt. This is a t shirt but also must have something on it about baseball. The original T Ball shirt is probably retired now, but for a while he wouldn't let it be washed and he insisted on wearing it to bed. To this day he won't wear pajama tops. It's now okay to wear a football T Ball shirt or a soccer T Ball shirt and lately we've convinced him to wear a golf shirt (polo shirt) or a rugby shirt. I'm sure we could also convince him to wear a NASCAR T Ball shirt if we had one. (Next to sports with balls, cars are okay.) The second element is running shoes. They were also worn to bed for a long time. Running shoes look like running shoes, but lately he's accepted his "new running shoes", which are actually clean sneakers. Ankle socks are unacceptable. Socks have to be pulled high, so they have to be at least crew socks. Color doesn't seem to be an issue with socks, and he'll wear the loudest colors. He's most comfortable in baggy shorts, but lately has agreed to wear pants in deference to the change in weather. He always wears a cap. He confiscated Jack's old Isotopes cap until it was completely tattered along the edge of the bill. Cyndi's managed to find another red or magenta cap to replace the old Isotopes cap. The cap has also been known to go to bed with him. On the brim of the baseball cap rests his blue, Thomas the Train sunglasses, ala his daddy. He has a couple more accessories: one is Jackson's spy watch, a big gangly thing that Ry will wear on his wrist. There is almost always a car in his hand. He's still at the stage where a Matchbox car is acceptable. (Jackson's eye will find the biggest box in the toy store and then we negotiate down from there, predominately using the argument, "that's a Santa gift, put it on your list"; whereas, Ry is happy with the 99 cent toy car.) Finally, there's all sorts of things to find in his pockets: rocks, cars, "ponies" (pennies or other coins), Angel coins (from Lola), and a folded up dollar bill (I don't know where those keep coming from).

The Black Forest, the Gila & Silver City

Part I.

We spent a three-day weekend going to a corner of New Mexico we'd never been to before. Jackson had a day off on Monday. Columbus Day, I think. Saturday morning I went in early to finish some work, Cyndi packed the boys' stuff and we loaded the Durango with some of our camping stuff and headed south toward Belen to borrow "Papa's Motor Home," a PleasureWay converted van. Bennie had it all gas-upped & ready to go, and by noon off we went for a day of driving to the Gila Cliff Dwellings, some 220 miles south and west from Belen. The boys were belted in the back, watching a Mickey Mouse DVD. We stopped in Socorro for provisions, intending to grill outside along the way.

We took the Hwy. 152 exit to Hillsboro at Caballo Lake. The drive over the Black Range in the Aldo Leopold Wilderness is extremely mountainous. As far as I could tell, there really isn't a pass. You just keep driving up the mountain for ten miles after Hillsboro, a charming small town, and down the other side. In this area, you'll see signs telling you that such-and-such a place is 2 1/2 hours ahead. You think to yourself, how can that be? It's only 40 miles away! We took a right on Hwy. 35, only 40 miles away to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. That road starts in a beautiful valley around Mimbres, but eventually becomes increasingly twisty and steep, passing by Lake Roberts, where you join Hwy 15, a corridor surrounded by wilderness area that ends at the monument. The day was getting late now, the shadows long. I knew we could park for free overnight at the end of the road and that there was an RV park in Gila Hot Springs, just 4 miles short of the monument.

At Gila Hot Springs, we saw an RV park by the side of the road, and I didn't think that was what I had in mind exactly. The general store across the street had been closed for over an hour. So we followed a sign just before the RV park that led us through corrals of horses and goats. Now we were on a dirt road and it came to a small dirt intersection with hand painted signs. I stopped there for 5 minutes, trying to make sense of where I was and whether I should go on. I decided to follow the sign to the right to Wildwood Retreat.

To be continued.

Sunday morning at the hot springs pool at Wildwood and a meditation garden.
(Our RV is behind the fence behind the boys.)

The Gila caves, viewed from the trail below.

The one-mile trail begins at the river along the canyon floor.

Cyndi & Jackson on the trail in Gila.

Along a "riverwalk" in Silver City.

A garden, balloons & friends

Paper Airplanes

Jackson didn't go to school on Monday. He was pretty sick for several hours in the morning. I drove back home late morning with some pedialyte drinks & popsicles. Ry greeted me in the kitchen with a toy car in his hand. "Hi Daddy, you home from work?" he asks with the confidence and delight of a two year old who already knows the answer but only just learned the words. I heard a little bell summoning me and I laughed, recalling all the privileges of a sick boy being cared by his mother. Jack was in bed, watching some children's show, a big smile on his face, holding his jingle bell from the Polar Express train he got last year. He gave me a big warm hug and didn't let go.

By afternoon, he was his bright self again. He will tell you that he got well by hydration and electrolytes from the pedialyte I brought at his mom's request. She'd explained to him how important they are for him. He's not afraid to use big words.

When I got home, there were paper airplanes all around the house. Mom and Jackson had discovered "The Dangerous Book for Boys" by my bed and had spent the afternoon together learning how to make paper airplanes and testing out the flight of each. There must have been 50 of them, like origami swans filling up our little house. Jack then showed me how to make them, and then we went on to make paper hats and paper boats.

Strangely, it had ended as a good day for our family and Jack's still making paper toys. Guess what's the subject of this Friday's show-n-tell.

I've been taking the boys swimming almost three times a week for the last month. The boys do a lot of jumping. Ry says, "one, two, tree", and jumps right in. Then I put him on the edge of the wall and he makes his way along the wall until he reaches the steps. He gets out and jumps again. Jack's improving his rudimentary swimming skills and Ry tries to imitate him. "Me go underwater," he says, water running down his mop of hair.

Mostly we play, but there's a few backfloats and glides. Here and there, I'll show Jack a scissor kick or a frog kick or a breast stroke, and maybe for the first time he thinks he can learn to swim from me. I like the time. Sometimes we'll end the swim with a warm jacuzzi and sit and talk. The boys are starting to walk instead of run around the pool, so I know they're finally listening to me, and there's a certain routine to showering and getting dressed afterwards. Rylee will commentate endlessly on what were taking off or putting on: his running shoes, which he wants to wear in bed, his T-Ball shirt, which he never wants washed, and his socks, which have to pulled up high. When he's in the dressing room, he's much more accommodating about everything. "Yes, daddy," he says agreeably. "Me good boy."

But one of the reasons I'm even writing about this is that Jack is coming around on some things. When we do this little activity, he watches out for his brother more, he showers himself and dresses himself like it's a competition, he asks for permission before he runs out of the dressing room for a drink of water, and he holds my hand again in the parking lot. He seems gentler lately and sometimes more mature than his years. That may be an illusion, I guess. I see the same thing in Ry, too, when all of a sudden he can't just be two. These boys are wonderful little guys. Cyndi knows that with all of her heart, of course. She's very proud of them.

Now we're in the middle of planning a trip this weekend to Silver City and the Gila, simply because we've never been. Maybe we'll also play at White Sands and go up to Cloudcroft.

Some Times

Last weekend included seeing Garrick's play on North Fourth. An impressive performance and an equally impressive venue. Our Durango was in the shop that weekend, and there was a feeling of autumn in the air. On Saturday, we went to Dixon Apples. (There's pictures of that day in the blog from last week.)

After the performance, we took our monster of a rental up to Santa Fe for a few minutes of shopping at J Crew and the toy store and a couple of Margaritas up on the balcony where the boys and I put together a Lego toy. Jack has three of these now. Ariel sent one for his birthday. I pulled out the pieces, and Jack constructed the toy by following the instruction book.

This weekend was slow, with a run, a Costco run, some yard work and house work, watching the cousins and cooking outside. Cyndi's going to the equestrian show this Sunday afternoon and I'm going to get some work done. Friday the boys and I swam while Cyndi went to yoga, and then we went to our favorite little restaurant. Talked to David on the phone as we ordered and David & Sandra were reading on their boat, tied up to a buoy in the harbor off Annapolis. We're making plans to travel by Papa's RV next weekend.

Dixon Champagne Apples

A Saturday morning trip to Pena Blanca, New Mexico and Dixon Apples.

Jemez Camping & State Fair Rodeo

Dollar Day at State Fair.





More Bandelier. See Jemez Camping.

First day of school, a night at the opera, and another birthday.

A busy weekend.







The week before, Jackson started kindergarten. He goes to Dennis Chavez Elementary School. His teacher is Ms. Goodwin, and the assistant teacher is Miss Lori.

A new wing, with new kindergarten classrooms, was scheduled to be completed by the start of the new year.




On Saturday, Cyndi and I went to the opera in Santa Fe. We dropped the boys off at Ellie's and drove north, listening to Amy Winehouse. (Try right clicking and opening a new tab if you want to keep this blog and the music on at the same time. Here's another version.)


We arrived early, around 6:30, for the traditional opera tailgating in the parking lot. We parked about fifty yards from the front gate, alongside a view of the Sangre de Cristos, and enjoyed a bottle of wine and a picnic.

The opera was Puccini's La Boheme, the popular opera about four artistes living in a loft in Paris, the painter Marcello and his sometime girlfriend Musetta, and the love struck between the poet Rudolpho and the seamstress Mimi. Doomed, of course. (Here's a translated libretto. Here's a CD with selections from the opera.) Somehow the company condensed the opera into two acts, aided by a mechanical set, so that there was only one intermission. I think we saw the crescent moon above stage right during the scene at Cafe Momus. There was a wonderful children's choir.

Jackson's 6th birthday was Sunday.
In the morning, he opened presents.
We went to the pool, and then we had a birthday party in Belen.