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.