The Curtis Clan - Fall 2009

Fall Equinox to Winter Solstice

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Innsbrook Galic Festival

On the first fall weekend, we went to the Hammond’s 15th Annual Garlic festival at their Innsbrook retreat A-frame. There’s still some garlic laced food but it no longer is the focus of the day (along with wine). Having kids has a way of maturing one.

Cate with oar	Jane kayaking

It was a bit early for fall colors but that didn’t discourage the kids from taking advantage of the various paddling boats to take a trip to the beach. There the girls and Hammond boys ended up playing and wading in the water finally reaching a point where they were swimming in their clothes (yes their Dads were supervising them. Why do you ask?).

Paddling with the kids	The kids coming back soaked

Magaret Park - To Be Reborn

On the last day of September, Randy and the girls went to their favorite local park (Margaret Park) on the last day before it closed for an overhaul. It was bitter sweet as Margaret is the only park in the St. Louis area that retained their 1950s era merry-go-round and it was certainly going to be replaced by some safer but less thrilling playground equipment. Fortunately, we wrong as all the rest of the equipment was pulled out EXCEPT for the merry-go-round. We don’t understand how it got past the insurance weenies for the city but are happy that it stayed.

Jane and Cate dance on the Margaret Park merry go round

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We thought for the last tie in advance of the remodel but it stayed

Annual Maramec Springs Camping Trip

We started our annual camping trip to Maramec Springs on Thursday afternoon picking the girls up after school with a van full of gear to meet up with Uncle Charlie, “Sam” and Rollo at over favorite camping sites. The Hammond family, the Holmes family and others met up with us in stages over the next couple days.

Curti on the rocks at Maramec Springs

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Our activities were familiar: lunch on Friday in Rolla with Cousin Erin one last time (she’s a Senior); a 2 mile kayak float back to the campground from the Highway 8 bridge, on Saturday a trip to Heinrichhaus Winery, and meals around the campfire with hollow log pyrotechniques.

Jane and Cate outside our tent	Jane and Cate on the rock at the spring

As always, the girls had a great time with the other kids, making our annual pilgrimage around the fish hatchery and visits to the various playgrounds.

BJC and Eliszabeth at Henrichhaus	Bethany and Cate cuddling by the campfire

Kids on the rocks at Maramec Springs

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Cate and Jane's Classes Go Apple Picking

After being rained out on the previous Thursday, the girl’s school was looking for volunteers to accompany the Kindergarteners and First Graders, so Randy took the day and helped chaperon/herd Mrs. Kluesners’s Kindergartner’s class visit to Mills Apple Farm in Marine, IL (an hour bus ride). The kids got to make some cider (though they tasted the pasteurized version) and each got to pick a half a peck of apples. Randy was pleased to pick a peck of apples himself and gain the obscure volume lesson of how a peck relates to a bushel.

Apple picking with Mrs. Klusner's Kindergarteners

Visit to Grant's Farm

On a Sunday with little agenda, we decided it was time to for a trip to Grant’s Farm. We had been hedging on going this summer hoping the girls would learn to rider their bikes well enough that we could drive to Watson Road with the bikes and than bike the mile or so in on the flat Grants Trail, thus saving the $11 parking fee and providing for a nicer outing (maybe next year).

Curti at Grants Farm Beer Wagon

This trip went much better than our last time two summers ago when Jane freaked out over the goats (“THE GOATS ARE EATING MY SHORTS!”) and insisted we remove her from the feeding pen immediately. They were less interested in feeding the lamas but they were kind of grumpy having singed the roofs of their mouth with HOT hot chocolate. A snow cone helped take the sting out of it while their parents enjoyed the complimentary beverages. A noticeable change since INBEV took over the brewery was that one no longer had the complete offerings that A-B had. The Clydesdales were a treat. It was Bethany’s last day of full-length hair, as she had it cut the next day donating it to Locks of Love.

Jane and Cate enjoy feeding the goats

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Jane and Cate ride the carosel	Curtis girls relaxing at the Biergarden

With a glut of unused annual leave (vacation) set to expire at the end of the year, Randy took the week of Columbus Day off and puttered around the house working on finishing a number of projects and Honey-Dos that had been piling up for a long time. It also saw the installation of a white vinyl lattice fence placed along our eastern backyard line. Although we got the boundary survey in May and our construction permit back in June, we delayed ordering the fencing until October. Given relations with that neighbor, we contracted the work out and we are pretty happy with the results and are glad we contracted it out instead of Randy taking it on and spending DAYS installing it (he still ended up fussing with the sections around the tree that was in the middle of the fence line). Maybe this and finishing off the basement will be the impetus for using our brick patio more often (and expanding it) next year.

Good fences make good nieghbors, right?

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Soccer Season Draws to a Close

The last full weekend of October saw the end of the girls’ soccer and with a make up game made it a 6 ½ hour day of it on the fields of Hudson. We decided to pass on the opportunity to sign them up for the Y’s Hoopsters, as they had even less desire to play basketball than soccer.

Jane in the thick of the play	Jane takes a shot

On Saturday night the 17th, Jane’s Daisy Scout troop participated in the Computer School first (?) Girl Scout Bonfire at Southwest Park, next to the Hawkin House where we got married. Each class did a short song or skit with Cate helping flush out the 1st grade numbers, as at least one was out sick. This was followed by a number of the obligatory S’mores and flashlight tag in the dark. They had a great time. The following day Jane started running a fever and she missed three days of school, along with over half the first grade class. It’s unclear if it was the H1N1 flu (Jane didn’t have it too bad) but given the number of kids that got hit all of a sudden it would appear to be the case. We were expecting it to hit the rest of the family shortly there after and it did get Cate for a few days the next week. It never hit the parents (knock on wood) but we did have a week or so needing more sleep and having lingering coughs from mild congestion that caused intermittent headaches.

Daisy Scout Bonfire

On Sunday was the 4th annual Tuxedo Block party/Chili cook off that Bethany and Lisa organized again this year. While there was intermittent drizzling, the gathering was mostly dry in thanks to the easy up awnings and tarps, we set up in advance. A good time was had with about a dozen chilies vying for the coveted (?) golden ladle 1st prize (a dollar store plastic one sprayed painted gold).

Halloween

After months of listening to the girls speculate on various ideas on what they wanted to be for Halloween, two pair of Red ruby slippers on sale at Target sealed the discussion: Cate would be Dorothy Gale, using Jane’s costume from 2008 and Jane would be a witch. Despite here parents entreating her to use the ruby red slippers and make a card board house to supplement the costume (i.e. the squished Wicked Witch of the East), she went for a fairly straight forward witch, that wasn’t a Wicked one unless someone was mean too her (or others) first. Randy made a really excellent looking broom for her but the VOCs form the varnished made it “smell” and she would only pose with it long it enough to have a picture taken.

Curtis Clan outfitted for Halloween

As room mother for the kindergarten, Bethany was at Cate’s party in the morning and Randy was one of the 9 parents that volunteered for Jane’s party in the afternoon and the school costume parade that took place inside due to rain. It was easily the wettest October on record in St. Louis (12+ inches, nearly 4 more than the previous record and about 10 more than usual). It wasn’t so much deluges but a nearly daily gray, sogginess that seemed to steal much of the month away as we stayed indoors and missed roaming the country side and tree peeping. Fortunately, it stopped on Friday allowing for a dry Saturday for the actual night of Trick or Treating.

Cate dresses up as a cat just for fun	Witch Jane on her broom

For the second year in a row, the neighborhood closed off Tuxedo between Mildred and Cornelia to provide a safer environment for the Trick-or-Treaters and allowing for people to congregate in the streets to hear the riddles and pass out treats. While Bethany passed out chocolate bars, Randy escorted the he girls to most of the houses on Tuxedo between Bompart and the train station before they got too tired and cold to care anymore and called it a night around 8:15. Cate decided to keep her riddle from last year:

Why did the cookie go to the hospital?
Because he felt crummy.

But Jane went for one in keeping with costume:
What’s a witch’s favorite subject in school?
Spelling.

Although we missed it, about 9:30 a car decided to push through the barricade at Mildred. Fortunately things had quieted down a lot by than but the remaining dads were livid and felt like pummeling the guy. The police were called and carted him off (he was drunk) and a wrecker towed away his car. We’re guessing the street closing thing will continue in the future.

Road Trip to DC and Pittsburgh

The following week, Bethany and the girls drove out to DC to join Randy while on a research trip. Not wanting to leave until Tuesday, an election day when the girls were off school, B made the drive herself, splitting it up into two days. She made it to Washington, PA the ancestral Sage home and location of her alma mater W&J. The girls had a nice breakfast with (Great or Great-Great) Aunt Sissy before heading on to DC on Wednesday.

Thursday tour of the US capital which even with tickets involved waiting lines over an 1 ½ hours due to an evacuation once the girls got to the front of line for unclear reasons. The several school groups further hampered the expediency of getting in for the 20-minute tour on time. After that they visited the exterior of the White House (you need a 6 month lead time to gets tickets for that tour anymore).

Outside the Capital	In front of the White House

On the route back to the museums, Bethany realized that her cell phone was missing. What ensued was a couple hours of trying find a pay phone which no longer exist in many of the Smithsonian museums but there was one working one at the Castle building across the mall (deceptively wider than one expects until crossing it with 2 early elementary kids who’ve already done their share of walking). Once a pay phone was found, Bethany informed Randy of the situation and tried to call her phone on the off chance that somebody found it. Well they had and were rather surly demanding a ransom for the return of the phone. They were skeptical / reticent about arranging a meet-up point, so fed up with the situation and the day, Bethany called AT&T and canceled the service and took the loss on the pay-as you go cheapie phone.

A serendipitous rainbow over the mall helped buoy the moral but the challenges of the day kept coming. The museum visitation hours reduced two days earlier for the winter and they only had 30 minutes left to visit everything. They did a super quick visit through parts of the Natural History Museum to see the Triceratops, T-Rex and the Hope Diamond. The Hope Diamond did NOT impress Jane and led her to ask incredulous: “Is that it?” A nearby quartz crystal the size of a medium dog seemed more suitably impressive to her eye. They than rushed over to the American History Museum to see the Dorothy’s Ruby Red slippers from the Wizard of Oz. Although it had been a bumpy day, seeing the slippers made all seem right with the world again.

Dancing under the rainbow at Capital Hill	At last with the Red Ruby Slippers

Randy picked them up at 6:30 as quickly as he got off of work and did a quick driving trip of the west end of the mall to do a windshield inspection of the monuments and the entrance to Arlington Cemetery in the dark. We did get out and walk trough the FDR memorial. With limited success, we attempted to pique the girls’ interests by informing them FDR was on the dime and was President while the Walton’s took place. Standing next to the statues of Fila and Elinor Roosevelt were more to liking. Afterward we dropped by our friends Kent and Greg for a short visit.

With Smithsonian Triceratops	With Eleanor Roosevlet at FDR Memorial

On Friday we drove to Pittsburgh after Randy got off from work, staying in a Marriott downtown across from the Penguins Arena. We had dinner with Aunt Katie and Uncle Don before calling it an early night.

On Saturday, we did some site seeing in Pittsburgh visiting the Phipps Conservatory on the edge of Scheney Park and Panther Hollow. Although it did not have outdoor grounds that our hometown Missouri Botanical Gardens (MBG) does not have, the connected interior gardens were fantastic and the girls had real enthusiasm for the kid scavenger hunt of items to see along the way, which included an exhibit of Fabens glass figures. Interestingly, they had several glass Chuluy works that came from an earlier exhibit, which sounds exactly like what happened when the Chuluy exhibit was at the MBG as well. It came off as kind of a high art racket that we’re guessing will seem dated in a few decades. Afterwards Don gave us a short tour of his alma mater at the bottom of the hill, the University of Pittsburgh. As usual Don was a wellspring of knowledge and provided a well-guided tour of the Heinz Chapel and the Cathedral of Learning building. The stained glass windows are fabulous but Jane and Cate were unimpressed, even when we explained that profits from ketchup had paid for it all over 75 years ago. We decided it would be OK if the girls ended up at Pitt for college. Katie made us dinner at their place and we stayed up to 1 am talking before heading to our hotel downtown.

A glass mystery cube intrigues Bethany, Katie and Jane

Above Panther Hollow at Scheney Park	Uncle Don and Aunt Kate in a similar poise

On Sunday we made our second IKEA run of the trip(after the one in College Park), picking up a few items we had debated about in College Park/DC. Afterwards we met up with Bethany’s college chums Heather and Paula and their families at Paula’s fiancée’s home in Sewickley, a charming upscale suburb on the Ohio River (home to many professional athletes). We had dinner with Katie and Don at the Avalon Italian restaurant near their home but didn’t stay late, as it was a workday for them.

W&J pals: Paula, Heather and Bethany

As for us we got up and made the drive home in about 10 hours which included our traditional stop at I-70 Exit 29 outside of Dayton to enjoy Skyline for lunch. Yummo! Having the girls watch movies with earphones on most of the way made them happy. It also gave us our first “alone” time of the trip to kibitz, which is always a pleasure.

After returning home for DC and Pittsburgh Randy spent another week off with Veteran’s Day in the middle. The home improvement projects involved tiling: the mudroom / hallway from the garage to the basement steps: the basement bathroom and the granite wet bar sink. Although not a particularly large spaces, there were a number of hitches that slowed things down a bit: a diamond pattern requiring lots of cuts, cutting several doors including the metal one to the garage which no longer fit with the addition of the tiles and busting out and replacing about 6 SF of bad concrete leveling in the bathroom when the old vanity was removed. It was nice to have plenty of time to fuss with these tasks while the girls were in school. The week also had beautiful and unseasonably warm weather (high 50s and 60s with lots of sun), so lots of leaf raking occurred even if all the piles will have to wait their turn to get to the curb (only 3 trash cans and a refusal to use bags). The entire basement won’t be DONE this year but hopefully the floors will be completed over the Christmas holidays when Randy has another 2 weeks off.

Orlando Public Meetings

Following his week off, there was s series of public meetings in Orlando that Randy attended wearing his standard kaki Corps of Engineers shirt. These people must wonder if that’s the only clothes he owns as he that’s all they ever see him in.

Randy speaking with the public	"Regrets, I've had a few but than again too few to mention..."

Frolicking at St. Louis City Garden

Returning to St. Louis after lunch on a Friday that the girls had off due to teachers meetings allowed the family to do the Hallmark greeting of a returning love one at the airport of the girls shrieking “Daddy” as they rain and jumped into his arms (fatherhood moment don’t get much better than that). We took them to visit the new City Garden in two blocks of the Gateway Mall with lots of fun sculptures and nice landscaping. We followed that by a lunch at the Boat House in Forest Park. Wonderful afternoon.

On the White Bronze Rabbit	Striking apoise with a horse and star

Thanksgiving

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As is the norm, we had two Thanksgivings: Thursday at our house with the Curtis tribe and Friday at Bethany’s folks with the Sage tribe. Although we hosted Turkey Day meal, we didn’t have to cook the bird ourselves this year having “won” a smoked turkey for a $25 bid at the girl’s school silent auction / Trivia Night last spring. We didn’t think we get if for such a low figure but made a charity bid on the item when no one else had. Now that we know the family that donated the item, it seems even more weaselly. It was good but not the same as making it ourselves with the favorite family stuffing. Nana brought the Curtis stuffing as a side dish with Rhonda and Doug bringing Brussels sprouts and cheesecake. Webster’s J-V team lost the Turkey Day game to Kirkwood but winning the State football title on Saturday more than made up for it, 30 years after the first one that happened while Randy was in there.

Curtis women making yams for Thanksgiving Dinner

(more marshmellows, more marshmellows...)

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Curtis Family Portrait x 2

Sage Thanksgiving was a gathering of 23 for dinner with all the kids and the St. Peters Sages. We planned to capture a nice group photo but after slide presentations of Amy and Alvan’s recent 17 day cruise from San Diego through the Panama Canal to Baltimore, there was no corralling the group back together. There will be opportunities over the December Holidays.

On Saturday the women through a wedding shower brunch for Bethany’s cousin Erin, whose is getting married on the 2nd of January. We did get a group photo of that.

Erin Sage's Wedding Shower

We skipped continuing the recent tradition of taking the cousins ice-skating at Steinberg without the extra female hands to help the novices around the rink. Instead Randy, Justin and Alvin took the cousins to the Science Center. The weather was fantastic so the outside exhibits were a hit. After a lunch at McDonald’s, we considered a visit to the zoo but the rest of St. Louis had a similar idea, so we went to Turtle Park instead. The kids were hardly let down, happily crawling on the turtle sculpture followed by assaulting the playground equipment to the east, And using the abandoned tee-ter-toter focal point piping as a balance beam with the kids competing against each other to see how far they could go.

On the Triceratops	Putting Dinnosaur puzzles Together

Mouth of a Snapping Turtle	Exhibiting the Right Stuff on a tire swing

Returning home the shower was still going on after 3 ½ hours, we took them to the nearby football field for Clayton High School. The Sage kids had generally good patience and understanding of the Curtis girls unfamiliarity with the concepts involved with scrimmaging or kicking the ball. More successful was playing the playground for Clayton schools Family Center, including the always popular tire swing with the U-bolt maximum spinning fun. Showing that kids have more of the Right Stuff than their parents, nobody vomited. As per tradition, we had a pizza night at the Sages with the Notre Dame game on.

I-64 Reborn

On the Sunday before the reopening of I-64 between Hanley Road and Kingshigway, MODOT opened it for pedestrain and bike traffic. We did 2 miles (1 eachway) and got some free bike helmets and ht chocolate.

Curti at I-64 Fun on the Freeway	Randy disobeying the safety guidelines by playing on the median

The Piano Recital - #1

On Sunday the 13th we attended Jane’s first piano recital where she played “Go Tell It on the Mountain”. She was 27th in line out of a field of 39 kids, ages 5-12 performing, mostly on the piano but including five singers and one flutist. It took an hour and a half but seemed much longer while the other kids were on stage (particularly the Mariah Carey wanna-be singers. The Disney / American Idol scouts have nothing to fear for missing this event). But for the minute and fifteen seconds that Jane had the stage we were riveted. Actually only 25 seconds of it was her actually playing AND singing the first stanza of the Christmas hymn. The movie this came out OK but the pictures were poorly lit B&W ones that aren’t worth posting (Dad was so excited he didn’t double check the camera settings).

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