MonsterFool

like the burned-out pier. I know I have a million pictures of the pier, the waves and Sam from over the years, but still I couldn’t resist taking just one more.

I am still wiped from last night’s “Family Football” hour. This morning Sam found our inflatable England football from last summer in the basement, and she’s been practicing her fancy footwork with it.

Sam and AC got home from their first Parent-Child football class at 7:30 and regaled me with stories of games and goals and grass over dinner. So it was quite late when we made it out the door for our evening stroll around the neighborhood. There were the usual frogs (AC didn’t catch any tonight) […]

Look who we picked up!

This video is likely of interest only to me, but I wanted to preserve it, because it is so representative of our time in the UK: a train ride through green and wet countryside, Sam gazing out the window, and my reading of a book (in this case, Watership Down) interrupted by the automatic train […]

As I write this, AC is now on an airplane (hopefully asleep!) bound for London.

we arrived in Brighton. What a year. I could have never predicted one year ago where we’d be today.

We walked to the downtown Mall and back today, passing right through the Charlottesville Pavilion– scene of summertime concerts, we hear. Sam said, “That doesn’t look anything like the Brighton Pavilion.” We laughed. She’s right.

Our shipment from the UK arrived today. It is lovely to have a fresh set of clothes, but oh am I sick of boxes. And I must confess that the glee of different threads was mixed with sadness. The arrival of our stuff brings a new closure to our UK adventure. Except that AC gets […]

and a dragon. But of course! They never did succeed in trapping their parents and running away together, but at least they still get to see each other thanks to Skype video chat.

This is one of Sam’s Valentine’s pictures for Cerys. I took a picture of it today before taking it to the post office. (Sorry for the spoiler, Cerys!)

Daddy’s in the UK. Sam’s in the US. Thanks to Skype, they had breakfast together. (So far this is my favorite photo of 2011).

It was hard to choose a photo for today. It’s not that there were many brilliant candidates. It’s just that there were moments that I thought defined the day: the words “The End” that I typed on the last page of the novel I’ve been writing since November 2009 (I finished it this morning!); the […]

Parents were invited to watch the final class of the year. Sam is straight back in the center, wearing the blue leotard, pink skirt and purple tights. This was also her last class in Brighton.

Sam and Sofia played warrior princesses today. See how fierce and scary Sam looks? I also like to think of this as her “I’m-tired-of-saying-goodbye-to-my-friends” look.