The Curtis Clan - Winter 2008
Winter Solstice to Spring Equinox
The Holidays
Ahh the Holidays…as has become the norm Randy takes off the week between Christmas and New Years, but with the quirks of the 2007 calendar the holidays lasted the twelve days between the Solstice thru New Years when we gathered with friends and family almost everyday to share in the joys of the season. For the most part it followed what has become our normal holiday routine.
The winter solstice is the anniversary of our first date and this year’s marked the beginning of our ninth year together. Falling on the Saturday before Christmas, we attended a neighbor’s Christmas Party after a nice dinner out, instead of our traditional concert/theatre/movie outing.
Sunday night, we decided to make up a batch of Sage pizzas and invited our neighbors the Kennedy’s over to join us, as the recipe makes far more than the four of us can enjoy. We had some momentary chaos, when while swapping the cooked and uncooked pizzas out of the oven, we knocked some corn meal off the pizza stone, which burned at the bottom of the oven, which set off the smoke alarms throughout the house. Mild panic ensued with an impromptu fire drill while we ran to turn off the circuit switch and disconnect the battery backup in the closest sniffer. Holiday memories….
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Jane and Cate with Nana at the Botanical Garden
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On Monday Randy and his Mom took the girls out of the house for the day to give Bethany lots of un-tethered time to wrap, cook and complete last minute preparations for Christmas. The Missouri Botanical Gardens was having their annual O Gauge model train display with this year’s theme of the National Parks, which served as
the impetus for the outing. It was successful in all regards and appears likely to be an annual ritual.
We went to Christmas Eve five o’clock mass at Christ the King Church followed by
a traditional soup dinner at Bethany’s folks with family gospel readings and caroling before the older family members left to attend “Midnight” mass (which starts a 10). We returned home to hang the girl’s stockings and ones for the dogs and prepare for Santa’s arrival. Both girls were very excited but Jane clandestinely expressed a moment of suspicion at church with an “Is Mama Santa?” query to her dad. Randy danced around it with a reply of “What do you think?” and focusing on singing the hymn that had just started and fighting back tears for an odd mix of melancholy and joy. Sad to see she moving past a pure innocence but happy at her burgeoning awareness of the world, intellectual growth, sensitivity not to show any indications of doubt to her younger sister and trust in her dad. Bethany was just horrified that it had started so soon.
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Jane and Cate hanging their stockings
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Christmas morning was spent enjoying the bounty of Santa’s generosity that relied heavily on books and Groovy Girls dolls. Randy’s mom and sister came after afternoon naps for present exchange followed with dinner and desert, which we shared with the Kennedy’s and long time friend Bob.
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Jane, Bethany Lilly and Cate
amidst Santa's bounty
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On the fifth day of Christmas (26th), Randy met up with some out-of-town friends in the afternoon
(Kent and Greg). That evening we gathered with the Sages at Bethany’s folks for present exchange and yuletide merriment. The merriment included fun Uncle Van showing the kids a table game about guessing which hand had the quarter under it. The kids loved it and we’re completely unaware that when played under typical circumstances the loser had to consume some “refreshment” as their penalty. It’s only fitting that Uncle Van was the one to teach his nieces and nephews their first drinking game, even if clandestinely.
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The Sage Siblings dressed for: A) A Devo Tribute Band gig B)
A post Holiday Adopt-A-Highway cleanup
C) Christmas Caroling on the mean streets of U City/Clayton
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The next day the cousins came to our house to play for a bit before heading up to another Sage family gathering in St. Peters for the present stealing game. As always the swapping of various $30 presents back and forth was great fun for the group (we ended up with some Pampered Chief items and another Entertainment coupon book). That Friday, (28th) it was a smaller gathering at Bethany’s folks with only the Sage family with kids for spaghetti and movies. On Saturday 29th, we hunkered down at home and enjoyed a quiet day. The 30th is Randy’s sister’s Rhonda’s birthday, which we celebrated by taking her to out to dinner, while the girls were at Gramy’s.
New Year’s Eve we spent the first part of the evening at a kid friendly party at the Hammonds. It was good fun as the kids required only minor supervision in their basement and the adults got to have some have conversations with complete sentences. The girls were in bed by 1015 but not before a minor meltdown.
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What tragedy caused the tears and sadness on these two angels faces? Hunger, intolerance, a time out?
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No, the mere threat of releasing their puppy in their rooms where she might chew on items left on the floor (particularly Bunny). Lilly has done wonders for the tidiness of the parts of the house she has regular access to.
New Year’s Day was spent thinking about going away somewhere, (anywhere) next year…:)
Randy - Ace(?) Electrician and Plumber
Over 18 days from the 21st of December through the 6th
of January, Randy worked 2 days at the office, which allowed for lots of time to work at home in between the family events. The main task was wiring for our basement refinishing job. The wiring tasks included adding:
- Three new circuits for the basement and brick patio
- 14 wall outlets and another 3 outlets on the patio
- 2 switched patio lights
- 14 recessed ceiling lights on 2 different switches including a 3-way switch for the two rooms being finished
- switched lights for the storage room, a wet bar, a closet, a potential pool table and retrofit of the office lights
- Inserting a four-way switch for the existing 3-way for the basement stairs.
Randy had some help from the Kennedy kids Blake and Charlotte who wired the wall outlets but the rest of the job took lots more time than expected (it always does) and completing it all lingered through the weekends until the end of January. Although we long ago got in the habit of buying more things than we needed at Lowe’s/Home Depot and returning the rest later, there was still a nearly one-to-one correlation between trips to
the hardware store and days worked on the project.
The foray into plumbing to add a couple shuts offs, bury a few water lines into the basement ceiling joists and add a wet bar occurred over the MLK holiday in January. It included dozens of soldered cooper joints that all worked the first time and
Randy felt like ACE plumber, at least momentarily (BTW-1/2-inch copper pipe is just over $1 a foot now for the thin stuff). There was however one small leak…at the cold water shut off valve installed upstream from all the other work. Before installing it,
Randy noticed the brass valve had been dented (obviously dropped, possibly by
him) but with some filing and sanding it appeared OK. Not! The joint was at a particularly bad location in-between branch lines, a reducer and the floor joists. After a trip to the hardware store and utterance of more bad words,
he gave up and took the valve out only to discover another leak! This time it resulted from an old pluming fix: the connection between the retrofit cooper pipe and the original bathroom shower iron pipe.
The interface didn’t have dielectric couplings and the iron had rotted away (and half clogged),
which resulted in another hardware store trip, for the couplings and some shut-off valves but after 1-½ days it was done…or so it seemed. Another very slow drip appeared at the “fix” of the new cold water shut off valve
he had cut out. It was in the 1-inch gap between a joist and the HVAC ductwork.
Really frustrated, he let it go for a week, before cutting it out and installing a new-new inline (non-dented) shut off valve.
There is reason to the g-hockered looking solution in that it allowed for clearance in soldering the pipes and placing the shut off valve lower the surrounding pipes in case it ever needed to be drained.
We also stubbed out some water line runs for outdoor faucets in case we want to add them in the future but it will be a while before
Randy willingly picks up the propane torch. Cutting into the main sewer stack for the wet bar drain line was a couple hour piece-of-cake. PVC
is good!
Actually when all the plumbing and electrical was done, a sense of melancholy came over
him that there wasn’t a bit more to do. Adding new stuff is ever so much more fun than fixing something that’s gone wrong (and generally easier too).
January Fun
That’s not to say January didn’t have its share of fun events. Bethany threw a cocktail birthday party for her friend Elisabeth the first Saturday. The next Saturday morning, the girl’s preschool had a Beach Fun day in the gym. Temperatures were in the 20s but they happily donned the dresses we got them last year in Hawaii. They were clearly in the minority (not even the teachers/facilitators attire themselves in beach wear).
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Whispering secrets to her
sister before a winter Beach Party
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On a very cold Thursday that Randy took off after a work trip, we visited the zoo and essentially had the place to ourselves for a few hours. We saw 4 other guests that day while moving from one indoor venue to another. Once inside
though, there was no one else but the zoo keepers. It was a terrific experience although Jane grumbled that the train weren’t running and was not at all pleased at the time we spent in the reptile house (she HATES snakes).
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Bethany, Cate and Jane
enjoying the Galapagos Turtles all to themselves
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At the end of the month, the Sage family once again fielded a Trivia night team for the Christ the King School. Having placed each other time, we won this year from a field of 40 tables. A month later we marked Leap Day with the Sage Family entering another Trivia Contest in St. Peters for the Fort Zummalt South Band. We finished a respectable second but were disheartened that we hadn’t equaled our win from the previous month. Having a couple of high schoolers would have helped with a couple categories but the team that beat us didn’t have any either.
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CKS Trivia Night Ringers
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February
The biggest 1-day snow in 15 years arrived on Friday 1 February. We woke up to a good 6-8 inches on the ground. With school canceled and a day off, we had clear license to play. Since it was as deep as she is tall, Lilly had a cold time of it doing her business and didn’t elect to join the girls latter for additional frolicking. Bundling the girls in snow pants and good boots, made for some excellent goofing around in the snow for a couple hours. Jane revealed in making snow angels through out our yard. After a couple of sled runs down the slight slope of our back yard, she abandoned them for the thrills and camaraderie of
sledding down the stepper slopes of the neighbor’s driveways on the north side of the street with the older kids.
Cate wasn’t too interested in the sledding preferring to traipse through the deepest piles and drifts and eating snow while she watched the older kids sled. Confidence that a ski vacation would not be a horrible idea is building.
Jane taking Lilly out
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Cate of the Antarctic (?)
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On Saturday night, the entire family took the Metrolink downtown for the Barrack Obama rally at the Edward Jones Dome in a run up to Super Tuesday. We got there at about 7 for the event that was supposed to start at 830
pm. We had figured they let us sit in the seats but the estimated 20,000 folks were on the concrete floor of the stadium/exposition space. So it was a long 2+ hour wait until the state’s Democratic heavy hitters took the stage, along with Obama. It was pretty thrilling to be so close (a few hundred feet away) and it was a fairly good speech from the most eloquent politician of our time. We ended up leaving after about a half hour or so
as the girls were exhausted and we were somewhat concerned about fighting the crowds to board the trains back home with throngs after it was over. It turned to be a smart move as the train was packed with other folks from the rally and that was before the Mardi Gras and hockey fans squished in down the line. St. Louis seemed to be a BIG city at least for one night.
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Waiting for the Metrolink to go to Obama Rally (we weren't close enough for any good pictures with Barrak)
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On other election notes, both Jane and Cate’s response to hearing we were electing a new president, expressed a desire to keep the one we had. We didn’t think we had hidden our feelings about the POTUS though we weren't consciously brain washing them either. We suspect that the response was for stability, as they were hardly informed. Another interesting view was Jane’s initial support for Hillary Clinton because “a girl should be President”. We didn’t argue with her but she soon aligned with her parent’s support of the skinny guy with the funny name from Chicago.
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On the Friday before Valentine’s Day, Randy took the girls to a Father – Daughter dance at the Webster Groves recreation center.
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The weather throughout the winter see-sawed between really cold days to really warm ones. We tried to make the most of all the warm days by playing outside.
The week after the big storm we were in our fleeces.
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Cate sliding at Avery playground |
Jane sliding at Avery playground
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Our Favorite Valentines
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March
There was another major snow storm the first week of March that gave us about 10 inches in 24 hours. School was called off and the girls enjoyed playing it with Bethany, while Randy was at work. The fun was short lived as the temperatures popped back up the next day and melted much of it away. The adults weren’t too disappointed to see it go as the novelty of snow had definitely worn off for the season.
The girls tears on New Year’s eve regarding the potential for Lilly to get up to their room and mess with their stuff foreshadowed the early March tragedy of Lilly snagging Jane’s treasured Bunny from the couch and hiding it in her crate, where she chewed off his/her chin and bowtie before we noticed it. Not surprisingly Jane was very upset, though the damage was far less than it could have been. More surprising was that both of us (Bethany and Randy) were on the verge of tears over the damage to her proverbial security “blanket”. Maybe it was a concrete symbol of our child’s innocence, vulnerability and the limits to our ability to shield her from heartache and pain in the world. We were both a little amazed about how important such an insignificant item is to the entire family. Anyway, Gramy and Bethany fixed him up with a new tie and a chin-job and he looked almost as good as new. In the interim, Jane consoled herself with Two Bunny, a near duplicate that we had purchased when she was 1 for just such an occasion (or the lesser trauma of only having to launder Bunny which was a big deal a year or so back).
On Thursday before St. Pats Randy took the day off work to spend some time with Jane and Cate after a work trip and before ditching them for the weekend to attend a reunion weekend with his college fraternity brothers and the 100th Anniversary of St. Pats at Rolla. He took them along to pick up his college/fraternity roommate Jake from the airport in the morning. After a breakfast at the City Dinner, the guys took the girls to the City Museum for Cates’ first time and the first time since Jane was 1 ½ (on Jake’s last visit). The girls were a little tentative at first crawling through the tunnels and exploring the caves but once they did it once, they were ready to do it over and over again. They must have gone through the floor tunnel a half a dozen times. They were less adventuresome on the outdoor mazes, getting nervous at about the 20-30 feet off the ground point. Still we happily explored the place for hours (seeing the turtles, the giant underwear, making crafts, going down the 3 story slide, saved architectural pieces, etc.). No one seemed to mind putting off lunch until 3 except Bethany who planned on meeting up with us.
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Crawling through a tree tunnel
on the ceiling of the City Museum
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Jane and Cate on a pedestal
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100th St. Pats in Rolla
On Friday Randy abandoned the family for the reunion weekend with his college buddies having rented a couple of cabins on the Meramec River outside of Bourbon about a half a hour out of town and drove into on Saturday for the festivities. It was a great time, although Randy was hoarse for nearly a week afterwards, having worn out his “Wooo!”.
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Group picture before heading off to Rolla
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