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.