theparkerfamily.org

Month: November 2010

  • hike: limberlost trail, shenadoah national park, virginia

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    photo of the week // thirteen months
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    trail information:
    Trailhead: 38.579997,-78.381389 (Google Maps); Length: 1.3 total miles; Elevation Gain: 100 feet; Trail Type: Loop; Skill Level: Easy.
    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    hike: limberlost, shenandoah national park, virginia

  • found: jack-o-lanterns

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  • daylight savings

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    it looks like everything is back to normal in the sparkler household — well, healthy, if not normal.

    this weekend we opted out of yet another social event — our fourth missed halloween party / birthday party / playdate in 10 days — out of an over-abundance of caution that viruses (viri?) aren’t a heck of a lot of fun and probably shouldn’t be shared with friends and neighbors.

    so, we did what we could to keep sparklet’s mind busy while her body adapts to the time change — even if it meant carving month old pumpkins a week after the passage of Halloween rendered them seasonally inappropriate.

    p.s. i absolutely love the picture, above — there is something special in the annual slide towards winter, and in eeking out every last drop of sunlight with your friends before running inside for dinner.

  • pumpkin carving

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    firsts: pumpkin carving

  • spreading like a virus

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    yesterday was a day of worshiping the porcelain bowl goddess for the sparkler family.

    it started with the nanny shortly before noon, followed by myself around 12:30pm, emily the cat was next at 2pm, sparklet later around 9pm, and finally the lady sparkler at 10:30pm.

    and, it turns out that our nanny share family had a similar vision — they just got a two day jump on us.

    it’s looking like it’s just a 24-hour bug — the first three hours you think you’re going to die, the next three hours you wish you would, closely followed by 18 hours on your back.

    sparklet’s actually been a trooper through it all — not only last night during all the madness, but today with no nanny and two utterly debilitated parents.

    she even took an hour and a half nap on the couch with me early this morning once it was pretty obvious that i wasn’t going to be able to do much else.

    that’s my girl.

    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    spreading like a virus

  • found: braids

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  • fraggled

    after a week of saying it was just your average adverse (non-contageous) reactions to some recent vaccinations, our pediatrician announced today that sparklet could (?!?) have a virus.

    … which would have been really useful to know a week ago before we played typhoid mary with a half dozen of our friends kids.

    (fwiw, i’m still not convinced it’s anything other than the vaccines — this is completely unlike anything she’s ever had before, and she’s done the virus “thing” a couple times already.)

    she has been feeling pretty crappy since Friday, so we preemptively canceled all non-essential activities this past weekend — including jon stewart’s rally to restore sanity, unfortunately — to give sparklet the max chance of enjoying halloween Sunday night.

    so, the traditional role of a sick kid’s parent distracting the patient — especially if doing so will get them eating and drinking. but, after a couple of days worth of efforts that yielded no distraction, the lady sparkler and i finally pulled out the big guns:

    fraggle rock.

    and for a few brief minutes sparklet has found happiness, boucing up and down, moving her head like she was a heavy-metal headbanger. (i’m still working getting video, but she stops whenever she sees the camera.)

    it wasn’t much — twice, each time barely enough to get a couple of ounces of bottle in her — but it’s enough.

  • i’m pretty sure …

    … that i’m the only prog in D.C. who’s jumping for joy on his couch right now.

    and that’s because instead of watching the Democratic Party getting swept from the U.S. House of Representatives, i’m watching Tottenham Hotspur beat the crap out of reigning european champions Inter Milan in the champions league.

    nancy pelosi? tottenham hotspur? i’ll take the younger one, with the fewer surgeries — zing!

  • vote

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    i was thiiiiiiiis close to skipping voting this year — it’s the off year for the presidentials, all of the local contests were decided back in the September primaries (which d.c. conveniently screwed up my ballot for) and our representative in Congress can’t vote anyway.

    however, someone at work suggested it was sparklet’s civic duty to vote today, and who was i to get in the way a toddler executing her civic duty.

    so we voted.

    her picks were pretty reasonably across the board, until we had a bit of a disagreement over her choice for D.C.’s Shadow Representative.

    Sparklet was drooling towards Republican Nelson Rimensynder and i was going to object — but he’s never going to actually win (with 75% of D.C. voters registered as Democrats) and the position has no power anyway (technically, he would be seated if the District ever got the right to vote in Congress but that’s never going to happen).

    with that in mind, who am i to object?

    besides, as a resident of D.C., sparklet needs to get used the the idea of throwing her vote away.

  • video: fighting for control

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VjZG94fzn8