Family Updates

Happy Valentine's Day.

I figured I'd celebrate by giving some updates about the people (and dog) I love.

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First, since it's Valentine's Day, I'll start with a quick Isabel and Bob item. The website FathersforGood.org has a quick story about our engagement. FathersforGood promotes strong fatherhood, and they asked for stories about couples' engagements. When I wrote ours, it was all about being a poor grad student, and how I wanted to be sure I could take care of Isabel before I asked her to marry me, and then I gave the actual story of tghe event. They said they would publish it, but then ended up cutting out all of that good stuff about being poor, emphasized the fact that we were engaged at Denny's, and put it in the "some of the more unusual engagement stories" section. Scroll down a little for our story.

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The kids are doing well.

Peter is flying especially high these days. He plays on his school's JV basketball team (5th and 6th graders), and they're very good. They have a couple of starters who are especially outstanding, though all 12 boys do their jobs well, and they've already won two tournaments so far this year, and are in the finals of their own school's tournamnet tomorrow. Peter comes off the bench, but is seeing more and more playing time as he gets more confident and shows the coach what he can do. Earlier this week, he played more than half the game, scored 6 points, had 7 steals, and a couple of rebounds (including one he took all the way up the court for a left-handed lay-up.) He's enjoying himself a lot.

He's also excelling in band. A couple of weeks ago, he tried out for the All-State Bands again (see posts from last spring). Last year, as a 5th grader, he squeeked into the Symphonic band (the second most prestigious), placing 17th of 18 chairs in alto sax. This year, 35 kids tried out, 17 made Symphonic band, and Peter earned 4th chair. He's doing great.

John has been playing soccer all winter. He had a great fall soccer season, finally breaking out after a couple of tough seasons, and played some awesome defense (as well as excellent offense and goalkeeper). For the winter and into the spring, he's been learning "Brazilian Style" soccer at a weekly clinic, and his footwork is very impressive.

John has also been playing clarinet in the school band. He started in September, and is progressing very well. But really, he sees clarinet as a stepping stone to oboe, a notoriously difficult instrument that he fell in love with the first time he heard it. We went to a music store a couple of weeks ago, and John tried out an oboe, and blew away the guy who worked there (who has a doctorate in clarinet performance). Maybe the guy was BSing a little bit to make a sale, but I don't think so -- John was making some great sounds. A neighbor of ours plays oboe, and told us when she applied to colleges, she got calls from school symphony directors begging her to come to their school -- such is the rarity of the oboe player.

So we're pushing oboe.

Catherine is doing well, too. She, like her brothers, is gearing up for the Connecticut Young Musicians Festival in a few weeks, where she will play piano before some judges. She's also still dancing, and has her tap and ballet recital coming up in the spring. For the ballet piece, they're going to dance to "Pure Imagination" from Willie Wonka. It was bad enough last year when they danced to "Rainbow Connection" and I cried the whole time. I'm going to be a mess again this year. Good thing they turn the lights down low.

Speaking of dancing, Catherine and I attended a Valentine's Sweetheart Dinner and Dance last night. She and I dance a mean Cotton-Eyed Joe together, along with a passable Macarana. No slow dances last night, which is probably good, because I used to be able to pick her up to slow dance with her. My inability to do so has to do with her growth, not my weakness. (No slow dances, but I think they played every song from all three High Schol Musical soundtracks. Plus, I heard Miley Cyrus' "Girls Night Out" three times.) But best of all was that I didn't spill any ziti and meatballs on my white shirt.

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Strudel is officially sick of winter. Between the snow and ice and the various illnesses we've been passing around our house, she hasn't been able to go for many walks, or to the dog park, or play ball in the back yard. She mostly spends her days on the Internet, and then every night at dinner, she presents us with reams of paper of whatever "research" she's been doing about the superiority of schnauzers.

Her latest: a diatribe about Lady and the Tramp. She insists that Tramp is actually a pure-bred schnauzer, and offers video evidence of the fight Tramp is in with the alley dogs (the fight starts at about 4:20 in the clip -- you have to get past the obnoxious Siamese cats to get to it), as well as side-by-side photo comparisons.

I can't wait for spring so she can play outside again.

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And then there's little ol' me. I'm still running, building up slowly to race shape after a tough winter. Seems like we've all been sick since the middle of Decemebr with some head thing, chest thing, or stomach thing. So I've been slowly building up speed and distance, not pushing too hard. It's been encouraging so far. I ran three miles this morning for the first time in a couple of months.

There are a couple of local races in March, one a 5k and one a 4 miler. I hope to do one or both of them. If I don't, it will depend more on a busy schedule than illness, at this point.

I have an appointment for a CT scan soon, and a follow-up visit to Dr. R a few days after that. I had that unscheduled visit with Dr. R about a month ago, and everything seemed fine then, so I'm not anticipating any problems. I will, of course, let you all know what's going on.

Happy Valentine's Day. Eat some chocolate -- the antioxidants are good for you.