All Hallow's Eve

Cassius and Maceo chose interesting costumes this year, and happily (in Cassius's case) stuck with them in the buildup to the big night. In past years, I'd get Cassius's costume a couple of weeks ahead of time, and then, at the last minute, he'd change his mind, throw on a wild coupling of various different costumes from our dress up bin, and voilá, weird costume! This year, he decided to be a knight in armor (shining armor, that is!).

We ordered a helmet for him and Kate made his buckler and swords. Mace helped me to make his: he learned how to spray paint, and he was good at it.

He works hard for his money/costume.

A few days before Halloween, there was the annual block party on Dad and Susan's block. The boys brought their football and made new friends.

They play a game I called 500 growing up, but they call it Moss after star
wide receiver Randy Moss who never played during their lifetimes. It's a bit of a mystery to me.

Here's one young football player taking a short break to sneak a cookie in. 

After being told by Dad that Cassius had eaten several cookies.
"How many cookies have you eaten, Cassius?" I ask.
[garbled by mouthful of cookies] "One," he replies.

Charlie Brown asks the hard questions.

From the block party, we went to a bar to meet some friends to watch a Charlie Brown Great Pumpkin tv special which the boys enjoyed and which mystified me because how could this have ever actually been on tv? There were such slow moments, such grown up jokes, and such terrible animation that I wondered if the boys would like it. But that Schultz magic worked and they were entranced.

Halloween night, Kate brought the boys over for some neighborhood trick or treating.
Cassius was a knight in shining armor.

Homemade cardboard armor added at the last instant.

However, the crest on Cassius's knight's helmet went missing the night before, and he was devastated. It took quite a while for him to warm up to actually enjoying trick or treating, but after about 20 minutes, the little guy was having fun. 

Maceo was dressed in a design on his own--a reverse vending machine. Candy went in and nothing came out. It was a fun costume and people were baffled by it.

The night was quite warm and we kept running into friends in the neighborhood, which was lovely. Sadly, our next door neighbors the Bigelows were not out. Houston is getting ready for knee surgery, and they were busy preparing for that. Every other year, they have specially prepared bags for each boy, filled with a variety of yummy candies and snacks!

Various images and moments

In the last few weeks, we haven't had too many outings. Maceo has soccer games on Saturdays, and those take up the mornings. We still have Friday dinners with Mamy and Maurice pretty regularly, and Sundays, now, the boys are getting interested in watching football games.

Cassius did not want to be in the NFL viewing party picture, but he's under there somewhere.

With no outings recently, I'll just present to you some fun moments from recent weekends.

Mamy's sister Helen and brother Paul were in town, and so I invited them all over to our house for dinner. Mom roasted a chicken and I did, too, and we all know Maceo loves him a roasted chicken. Cassius was entranced by Uncle Paul, whom he had never met, and wanted to show him his new book on cool cars. Maceo just wanted to eat some chicken.

Here, Uncle Paul is showing Cassius how far away
Oregon really is on our states map placemat.

You can see in the back the car discussion continuing unabated.
Maceo just wanted to eat some cake.

A few weeks ago, Cassius brought home a Chinese book, and neither boy could read it. I got a little worried, so I thought I'd make an appointment to come in and talk to both boys teachers and see how the boys are doing and what I could do to help them. It turns out that the teachers all think the boys are pretty great. Cassius apparently is friends with everyone, thinks math is easy, and likes to build forts at play time. Maceo writes in great volume his various stories, isn't roughhousing (which has always been a concern with his big frame), and has amazingly neat Chinese handwriting (as opposed to his super messy English handwriting).

Now that's some Chinese! (Or so I've been told. I don't speak Chinese. So I have no real idea.)

The boys have been way into riddles lately, and Cassius told me this one. "I was walking down the street, and I closed my eyes. When I opened them, I was in jail. What happened?" "I don't know, what?" "Who knows!" 

I don't get it.

Finally, the boys went over for a dinner party with Grandpa and Grandma Sue, who have been traveling a lot recently and haven't seen the boys. When I went to pick them up, game night was in full swing, and I got immediate updates on who had been winning and what the scores were.

Maceo and Grandma Sue played dominoes.
Cassius and Grandpa played Big Boggle.

Cassius did ask if he could have dessert at home because they'd had jello and "I don't like jello." Grandpa swung around. ""You can't say you don't like something if you don't try it!" he exclaimed. Someday that logic will sink in to Cassius's little tousled head.

Capture the Flag/Camping/BONFIRE!!!!!

One of Maceo's classmates, Seri, invited us out to her family's farm in Virginia, along with a ton of other Yu Ying families. This time, the invitation was for a rousing game of Capture the Flag. We arrived just as the game was starting. Cassius opted not to play and instead wandered the farm with his friend Lloyd,

Carefully, carefully feeding the pony.

but Maceo took part and had a rollicking time!

Meanwhile, I set up our tent, thus preparing to "rough it."

Our domicile is in the foreground, in case you were unable to guess.

After the game, the kids came back and played "football" for about two (2!) hours. I put football in quotes because it was "Throw the ball in the air, someone catches it, and then tackle that person." Which, technically, isn't football, but actually is more like rugby.

Cassius proved to be quite the adept tackler!

Once we'd eaten dinner and played more football, it was time for the bonfire and smores. Out there in the boonies, they go all out!

Football continued by the light of the fire, of course.

At 8:30, we all went right to sleep. It was cool, and I had been worried we might be cold, but everyone slept well and stayed warm, and we woke up at 7. One of us felt a bit sore from sleeping on the ground. Two of us went out to play football.

For breakfast, we had hot chocolate, hot cider, and hot coffee as well as homemade English muffins and serrano ham and various cheeses. The boys ran around, fed apples to the horses, went wading in the creek, and just absolutely enjoyed themselves. Once home, we had dinner, took a long bath, and checked for ticks! All clear! Yay!

A Visit From Aunt Lucy

The weekend started out with a visit from Aunt Lucy from Amherst. She arrived Friday night on the train when Mom and Maurice were over for dinner. Cassius and I made flatbread pizza--one with a white sauce and pancetta and one with pesto and potatoes--and I also made stuffed peppers. Maceo and Maurice spent an inordinate amount of time throwing the football in the front yard while we waited for dinner and then for Aunt Lucy. Cassius told Mamy knock knock jokes that don't quiiiiitttteee make sense.

On Saturday, Maceo had a soccer game. Aunt Lucy tagged along, and I spent an inordinate amount of time throwing the football with Cassius and his friend Dominic. Maceo's team won, 2-0, and the two goals were scored by Christopher (with an assist from Maceo) and Maceo (with an assist from Christopher)! We went home for lunch and quiet time, and then the boys walked over to Grandpa's and Grandma Sue's while I prepared another dinner party (I know!). They all trooped back over from the other house for burgers, asparagus, and dulce de leche cookies that Aunt Lucy and the boys prepared!

"So to make the leche dulce, you need to add some sweet, sweet amor!"

Dad and Susan referee the baking and keep an eye on the wine.

Cassius and Maceo are perhaps overly focused on cars and license plates recently, so I bought them a couple of used books to feed their mania. Here, Cassius and Mace show Grandpa their book of vanity plates that they have to decode.

The dentist's license plate "NODK4U" was ambiguous
and gave the adults pause.

On Sunday, the boys and I let Aunt Lucy go off and do her own thing while we went to a fall festival at a nearby farm. Most of the day was spent with me sitting in the shade while the boys spent an inordinate amount of time pedalling around a track in these little child powered tractors. There were plenty of other activities (In fact, Cassius told me his favorite activity of the whole weekend was the corn maze!) including an air bounce, bowling, basketball, water pump competitions, feeding goats, and more. But most of the day was spent pedalling small tractors.

Old style fun with rubber duckies and hand pumps.

Maceo was strong enough to pedal his freeloading passenger around the track several times.

Reminiscing about pedalling tractors.

We came home and I fell asleep HARD. When I woke up, we all went over to Mamy's and Maurice's for another dinner party, made our way home, took baths, and fell right asleep. Weekends are exhausting!

Science Expo

We decided to go to a free science expo in downtown Silver Spring. I had mentioned a county fair, but luckily, the boys forgot about that one (It costed money!), and we were off with little fanfare. We stopped, of course, for sustenance.

Maceo was stunned when Cassius ordered the same donut as he did.

From there, we drove on to downtown. There was a lot to do. At first, both boys were reticent to take part in anything and preferred to hide behind my skirt, as it were. We finally sat down and had a talk about it, as I was frustrated. From there, they were more involved. It helped that the next thing we went to was a fun making activity.

Building with Smart Blocks

We met some impressive Middle Schoolers who made their own robots for competitions.

And inside, we learned about a Japanese train that runs on supercooled magnets so it levitates 4 inches above the ground. That might have been the boys' favorite demonstration. It involved liquid nitrogen and actual levitating magnets! And a toy train to push around.

They also got a chance to make their own cars and run them down race tracks, marking mistakes and redesigning to try to complete the run.

Designing the cars. Eventually, they both had multiple successful runs.

There were other hands-on exhibits, too. Cassius made a pinwheel (though it blew out the window on North Capitol Street on the way home, sniff), and they also got to try to Virtual Reality headsets to explore under the sea.

Cassius makes photosensitive wheels spin with just a flashlight!

And then, surprisingly, another favorite was the hall of rainbows which was just multi-colored strips of plastic hanging down in a 10 foot by 10 foot shed. Maceo made a video of going through it.

Once we got home, we did a lot of football in the field across the street from our house, came in for dinner, and bathed and got ready for bed. As I came into the bathroom to brush Cassius's hair, he told me seriously, "Don't touch the hair!"

Ahh, my little fashion-conscious monster!

Genetics

Maceo has the genes from the Italian and Greek side of the family, and he turns a delicious golden color during the summer. Cassius, on the other hand...
The other day, while he was pooping, Cassius asked me, "Daddy, does your face turn red when you do stuff?"
Yes, son. Yes, it does.

Biscuits and Big Cats

Mom and Maurice treated Maceo, Cassius, and me to a program at the zoo where we got to have breakfast at the Lion and Tiger Hill and then got early entrance to some of the exhibits to see feedings and to meet animals. It was quite lovely and the muggy summer weather of earlier in the week dissipated, so Maceo in fact asked me to switch shirts with him so he'd be warmer. I did not switch shirts with him.

Here are the first two animals we met.

A typical mammal display of aggression.

Maceo, unfortunately, almost stole a vehicle, but we talked him into coming to see the prairie dogs get fed.

Quick! It's the coppers!

Lions are known for their roars of "Is it time for Dippin' Dots yet?"
Also, lions whine and can be a little annoying about Dippin' Dots.

Here, we met Sherman the Screaming Hairy Armadillo, distant relation to Screamin' Jay Hawkins. But cuter.