Tales
Feeling the Fire
September wound down with sports galore. Could we possibly be going to 6 soccer games in one weekend after watching Terren a couple years ago pick daisies with abandon while on the soccer field? Unimaginable to mom and dad. During one of mm’s soccer games, the coach was complimenting her buddy dd about his great defense and told him “you’re a superstar.” From the background, mm overhearing the conversations exlaims, “I’M the superstar.” Oh man, we need a little training in humility.
Between the girls' 5 soccer teams, competitive gymnastics, and swim team, the girls have found fire for all their sports. Dad also has his own routine triathlon: teaching swimming to mm, burleying her to up the huge hill to gymnastics, and then running in the hills. Mom is the only one who is out of shape.
October found us waking from our overnight car camping trip with Brian and Jack in Marin County to a sky filled with orange smoke. survived — braving his first camping experience in 30 years (since being traumatized by a sadistic trip leader) — and we managed to escape to breakfast, not understanding that Santa Rosa was in flames not far away.
The wildfire smoke covered much of Berkeley for the next 2 weeks, cancelling all outdoor practices and finding us suddenly with plenty of time our on hands. We escaped down to Stanford for dad’s 20th reunion, and enjoyed biking around campus with the girls. It was the first year we 1) attended and 2) paid for the privilege. You can tell how old you are by the ending time of the reunion class party. The recent grads party till 2am. This 20th reunion? Midnight was the last song on the dance floor. But if we make it to 50th reunion? 6pm.
The end of the month finished with a great visit from Oma and Opa. They were troopers, spending much of their trip watching Terren’s team get crushed in a Halloween-themed soccer tournament in San Ramon, 40 minutes away. We even participated in some playground yoga with Oma and Opa between games. The neighborhood Halloween chaos was fun as always, but the best part was our tradition: swapping out nearly all the candy for making and eating homemade chocolate chip cookies.
