Lasagna

Tonight Wuggie Norple made his first ever lasagna. He did every bit that didn't involve a hot oven or boiling water. Doesn't it look great? I made one with more vegtables and less cheese. I think his looks better...

Curriculum Night

Wuggie Norple's class made these self portraits which were hung outside the classroom when parents arrived for Curriculum Night. I guessed which was his pretty quickly. The Spaghetti gave it away.











Here is what Wuggie Norple's day is like.
Looks pretty rigorous. An hour of math? Phew!

Evil

This is the evilest skeleton ever! Controlling the powerfullest longest coolest evilest laser in the world!

"I can't believe anything..."

Says Wuggie Norple this morning.

"Say more about that" I reply

"I can't believe the Play Structure is finished
I can't believe I have to go back to school.
I can't believe church is starting again.
I can't believe we have pizza Goldfish."

I sang him David Byrne's Once in a Lifetime.
He didn't seem to understand my reference.

Monster Mouth

Wuggie Norple and I have been doing some cooking. Last week we made spiders with our Baltimore cousins. Yesterday- Monster Mouths.

Opening Day

Sunday was opening day both for church and for the NFL (I'm going to overlook that Thursday night game for purposes of the poetic parallel.)

Now that we live on the east coast, the tragic conflict between church and watching the Eagles play is mostly behind us, but with an hour-long drive home from church, I am sad to say we missed kick-off. We parked the car in front of the house, frantically threw off church clothes and replaced them with, in my case, a shirt that says "Eagles" in rhinestones, and after Wuggie Norple grabbed his travel-pack of Pokemon necessities we were off. Unfortunately, the Eagles are STILL not our local team, so this week we headed to the local sports bar to watch. Fortunately, Uncle Joe's is less than a block from our house. (The parking lot was so packed, that I think our house may have been the closest parking available!)

Joe's was filled with excitement inside. I don't think I've ever seen so many different jerseys in one place. Eagles, Bills, Pats, Steelers seemed to make up the largest groups, but Wuggie's Dad said he even saw a Titans Jersey. Joe's makes the best wings in town, and has $3 Bombers. (Sadly, a 16 oz soda costs the same as a 30 oz beer. Part of the unique reality paradigm that exists only in sports bar.) We grabbed the last booth in the place, Wuggie settled in to his Pokemon deck and cheese pizza, and we strained our eyes to see the nearest TV showing the Eagles game. (Now we know- this is no spontaneous outing. Come early and camp to be close to your game.)

The last time we watched Eagles games at a Sports Bar on a regular basis was at Jersey's Cheese Steaks in California with Wuggie's Aunt and Uncle. Ah, those were the days - Eagles jerseys as far as the eye could see. In this new inter-team environment, a cheer goes up and you have no idea which of 16 TVs has the touchdown on it. Thank goodness the Steelers fans brought their towels. We always knew when the Steelers were doing well.

All that really matters is this; our first ingathering service at our new church was warm and full of energy. And our first Eagles game of the season went 38-3.

Go Eagles!

Back to School

With great trepidation we have put summer behind us and are now back-to-school. After long summer days at camp trading Pokemon cards and whatever it was he did to get so muddy, camp ended last Friday with a genuine camp-fire and s'mores. Wuggie and his friends agreed it was the best day of camp ever. Fortunately this weekend we had cousins in from out of town to distract us and to play with. Then Tuesday we went to visit the new "big kids" building Wuggie is now attending. Over the summer parent volunteers had installed a huge fancy (and very fun) new playground, which seemed to mitigate Wuggie's trepidation somewhat. We we toured the whole building (upstairs and down- it's the first time he's gone to a school with more than one floor!) met his teacher and saw that some familiar faces (Mom was impressed with the small class size and all the cool looking djembes in the music room)and we both felt a little better about things. I just dropped Wuggie off for the last day of his first week. He tried to explain that the situation has unexpected upside. Something about being at the big-kid school...