Remembering

AD ASTRA: This week, humankind lost one of its best. Apollo astronaut Dick Gordon.

A graduate of the University of Washington, Richard (Dick) Francis Gordon Jr. (October 5, 1929 – November 6, 2017) was one of only 24 people to have flown to the Moon, as the Command Module Pilot for the Apollo 12 mission. Gordon also flew in space in 1966, as the pilot of the Gemini 11 mission.

A U.S. Navy Captain, aviator, chemist and test pilot, Gordon definitely had the "right stuff." He was born in Seattle on Nov. 5, 1929. In his 88 years, Gordon had 2 hours and 41 minutes of space walk time. 

That's 2 hours and 41 more than the VAST majority of humanity.

Gordon graduated from North Kitsap High School in Poulsbo, Washington, in 1947, and earned his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from the UW in 1951. He's pictured center, below. 

Unfortunately, we never had the opportunity to meet Gordon. However, I have a number of friends who have met him, and they all rave about what a nice, friendly guy he was.

To the stars, Astronaut Gordon!

SWEET CELEBRATION: This afternoon, the kids and I attended a small Veteran's Day celebration. We brought a few dozen cookies for the occasion. 

It would have gone a lot faster if I had made royal icing and piped the cookies, but I went the slow route and did fondant, which meant rolling out stripes and placing each dot as a star. It was worth it seeing the octogenarians make a beeline for the cookies after the assembly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrIefWtQBZ0

White Weekend

THE WHITE STUFF:  The last few days have brought a bit of a surprise ... in the form of snowflakes!

We had snow Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Friday was not in the forecast. A quick drop in temperature thanks to a change in the wind in the early a.m. along with some precipitation made for some surprises.

And then Sunday morning, ea-Tac Airport measured 0.4 inches of snow, the second-most snow measured this early in Seattle's "winter" season since weather records began being kept in 1892. That's a long darn time!

Only Oct. 27, 1971, had more snow earlier in the season in Seattle, when 2 inches fell at the airport. There was also 0.2" measured on both Nov. 6, 1975 and Nov. 3, 1973.'

Not only was there snow, but it was cold. The three day period of Friday through Sunday each set records for coldest recorded high temperatures of their specific date: 43 degrees on Friday, 41 on Saturday and just 40 on Sunday.

Here's the National Weather Service tweet confirming the unusual state of affairs. 

NWS Seattle 

✔@NWSSeattle

In 73 yrs of records at Sea-Tac there has only been 8 days w/highs 43° or less in the 1st week of Nov, 3 of them in the last 3 days. #wawx

6:35 AM - Nov 6, 2017

DID NOT THROW AWAY MY SHOT: So, in case you haven't heard, there is this musical called "Hamilton" that has become a bit of a deal. 

It has won multiple Tony Awards, and it has worked its way into mainstream, not 'normal' for most Broadway shows. 

The show is finally going on the road and it's the hottest ticket in the country. It's coming to Seattle and we want to see it, of course. A couple of weeks ago, it was announced one possible pathway to a ticket was the new Ticketmaster "Verified Fan" program. Supposedly designed to help battle 'bots snatching up tickets, one had to go online, enter some info and then hope they were selected in a lottery for a chance to buy tickets (it was no guarantee you'd actually be able to buy a ticket).

So, once we got an email saying we had a shot, the next step was waiting for a text message with how to log in for said shot. That made for some interesting dreams/nightmares last night.

I was awake about 6 a.m. waiting. The text came a little after 7. I had my computer on at 8, already on the page and its countdown. I waited until 8:45 to wake Christian, handing him a laptop, his phone (with his code), and blaring "My Shot" from my computer's speakers. :)

There were many tense moments, but in the end, we got our tickets. Hooray!

To help celebrate, afterward, we watched this carpool karaoke with Hamilton's creator, Lin Manuel, and friends: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YshgmStEZh0

BOARD: Every month, the kids and I put up a birthday bulletin board at their learning center. It was Oct. 31 before we realized the next day was Nov. 1. And that meant we needed a birthday board. Oops.

We started brainstorming. I refuse to do the obvious stereo types, like turkeys in November. Just no! 
So what to do, what to do?  I had a couple of thoughts but they were too hard to execute in, oh, and hour or two. My mind turned to birds other than turkeys, and I thought, "Whooo doesn't like owls?" So, we went with an owl board.

A quick check in with Pinterest showed us that owls out of brown paper bags are quick, cute and easy, so that's what we did. Annabelle pointed out that many of the examples had big ol' ears on the owls, and owls in real life don't have big ol' ears, so we opted for a model with little twists representing ears. We didn't have a tutorial, per se, so we had to wing it (pun intended).

Stuffed with recycled paper, they were super fun to create. We used a variety of printed paper for their tummies. I would have *loved* to make owls with stomachs from antiquarian books or sheet music. I think that would look so cool.

While we were installing the board, we visited with a number of families who loved the little owls and told us they would be making some of their own at home. We also had one of the teachers tell us that one of his jobs when he was student teaching many years ago was making bulletin boards, and that his favorite one he ever made had owls.

Us + Them

BOOKENDS: Sunday, we ripped up to another country (specifically, Canada), to catch the Roger Waters Us + Them tour finale. We had the chance to see the show a few months back down in Tacoma. It was so good, we wanted more, and that's what we got.

We left the Seattle area around noon, and made good time to Vancouver. We went to Renee and Jim's place on the University of British Columbia campus, hung out there for a couple of hours, and then made our way to the show. 

We had nice seats - the first row up off the floor.

I never thought I'd get to see "Great Gig in the Sky" performed live once, let alone twice. It was remarkable.

If you're at a Pink Floyd/Roger Waters concert, you have to expect flying pigs.

 This show did not dissapoint.

In the photo below, the pig is just feet over CJ, Christian and Jim's heads.

Roger Waters always has been, and always will be (I'd wager) a political person. This tour is no exception. Common themes throughout were the refugee crisis and his obvious disdain for the current U.S. president.

The concert was a multi-media affair. Huge screens were used dynamically throughout the last half of the show, and during "Dark Side of the Moon," cool lasers were employed.

At the end of the concert, tends of thousands of papers rained down from the sky. 

This was the message ... 

In other news, this much lighter message was on a delightful mousse cake after the concert, back at Renee and Jim's. It was delicious!

 We had a sunny, swift drive home, save the 40 minutes or so at the border.

All in all, a wonderful 24 hours.

On the Run

TRAILING: We are so, SO far behind on MPA posts. I'm not sure how to even start catching up. :(

Just this weekend, alone, is enough to make me need to kneel down to catch my breath.

Saturday night, we were leaders of a crew providing dinner at a youth homeless shelter, Teen Feed. When we started volunteering there (once monthly, or so, over a year ago), we used to have 25-30 guests for dinner. Last Saturday night, we had twice that, at least. 

We were in charge of menu planning and execution of serving the meal. 

We opted for a chili dog bar with all of the fixins. We served up nice, big quarter pound hot dogs and oversized buns, mostly homemade savory chili with mega protein and veggies, with toppings including sour cream, onions, jalapenos, cheddar cheese, hot sauce and such. Naturally, we had to provide vegan and/or gluten free options for the dogs and chili and buns. There were also sides of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Dessert was six different kinds of crispy rice cereal bars, with Halloween influences. 

The diners loved having all the options and ate like they hadn't eaten in awhile (for instance, more than one had four hot dogs).

It was a challenging evening, and we were thanked profusely by many of the diners. 

TREATING: Halloween was all sorts of fun. Abbreviated version: The kids both had award winning costumes. :)

Bee was Taco Belle, a mash up of Disney Princess Belle from Beauty and the Beast, and Taco Belle, one of America's favorite fast food establishments.

I cannot put into words how happy this costume made the general public who saw it. People yelled "TACO BELLE!!!" across stores and parking lots. They just loved it. 

We bought a cheap Belle dress off of Amazon, and made the tacos out of felt, spray insulating foam (the meat/beans), yarn (for the cheese), tissue paper (the lettuce) and tomatoes (red foam). 

Annabelle crafted the famous rose from the story out of hot sauce packets. 

On Monday night, Halloween Eve, we went to our new neighborhood's Halloween celebration, at Skyway Park Bowl. Her costume won first place for funniest costume at the event. 

CJ was also a winner, with his Mario Kart-themed costume.

Amidst all of this, I have left out our trip to Canada this weekend, and a Halloween visit to an amazing Harry Potter themed attraction in Seattle. Tomorrow, hopefully!

A-Maze-ing

 
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PATCHY: We're busy, busy, busy here at MPA with this, that, and the other thing. But we wanted to make sure we carved out a little time to visit a pumpkin patch and corn maze this year, and that's just what we did today.

Since we've moved a bit south of Seattle, I looked around our immediate vicinity for options. It's not too terribly far until it becomes farm country in these parts!

A clear choice quickly became Carpinito Brothers, in south Kent, WA. They had a Sasquatch corn maze this year, we'd never been there before, and it was about 15 minutes from home. Sold!

We arrived a little before 2 p.m. It wasn't sunny, but it wasn't raining, so we were happy enough with the latter to make up for the former. 

Check out this cool grid, below. Carpintino works with MazePlay (http://www.mazeplay.com/), a corn maze company out of Idaho. 

Per Carpintino's website, "In previous years, we would plant a full field of corn, and when the corn was about a foot tall, MazePlay would drive a small tractor with a roto-tiller and cut away the paths in the shape of the maze. But now they have a new process which is remarkable and extremely effective. This year, they planted the corn exactly to the design of the maze. Think about that. How it works is a tractor with a seed planter will do passes, back and forth on a bare field. The seed planter communicates with a digital file of our maze map, and drops seeds where there needs to be corn, and doesn’t drop seeds where there are paths. Imagine all the stopping and starting the seed planter must do during each pass with all those paths."

Pretty cool, isn't it? 

I have to say, this corn maze was the tallest and thickets and healthiest we've seen in our 10-ish years of greater Seattle area corn maze traipsing. 

There were 12 checkpoints to find within the maze. We found them all with no trouble, thanks to a very accurate map handed out before entrance. 

We were grateful that our maze trip was almost entirely mud free, and it was entirely rain free. 

We do kind of wish we'd gone an hour later, when blue skies dominated. Oh well, if that's the biggest complaint, we're lucky!

Before leaving, we picked up a couple of pumpkins (of course!), as well as some other on-site gorwn produce, including kale, green onions, celery and cabbage. 

Hands down, it was the nicest produce of its type I've seen ever. We need to get down to Carpintino's for produce on a regular basis!

Lucky #13

UNICORN-Y: We interrupt our European travelogue recap to bring you more recent news. Specifically, Annabelle turned 13.

We have been talking for months (years?) about her getting some color in her hair, and we decided her thirteenth birthday was a good time to make that happen.

Last Friday we went to Steven at Salon Spectrum in Burien on the recommendation of a waitress we know who has fabulous rainbow hair. Poor Steven didn't know what he was getting into when he booked Annabelle's appointment over the phone. The estimate was it would take two hours. It took twice that, because of her super loooooong and thick hair.

The first step was bleaching the ends.

Next up, time to add some cobalt blue. In the end, she had an ocean of curls and was super happy!

Monday afternoon, Annabelle had a few friends gather in Ballard for a small party at Full Tilt, an ice cream parlor and arcade. They have a nice birthday party package where you can bring your own food in (we brought in some Costco pizza, and unicorn candy pops we made), plus kids get a soda and a custom ice cream designed by the birthday person.

Annabelle requested a Unicorn Ice Dream flavored dessert. She chose vanilla bean ice cream, with M&Ms, rainbow sprinkles and mini marshmallows. It was a party in a tub!

The Full Tilt scooper even served the ice cream up unicorn style - in a cup, with a sugar cone horn.

We also had some super special Unicorn Froot Loops - which we sought out and carried back from Europe! (For whatever silly reason, they're not available in the States.)

All in all, it was a really nice afternoon with some nice families, fun games and great treats. 

BOUNCING BOY: In other news, we have a trampoline. A biggish one. We've always had a little jogger/exercise sized one, and it has forever been CJ's favorite exercise outlet. However, a couple of days ago, an ad popped up on one of the email Moms and Dads lists I'm on, a full size trampoline for just $50. We were on it immediately, and were lucky to be chosen to buy it from the list of the 'yes, please!' people. (The key: Always in your response tell them how and when you can pick it up.)

So, the kids are happy jumpers now - fun!

Going Dutch

WINDING AND WINDMILLS:  After Dover, Dunkirk, and Bruges, the next big item on our 'to do' list was heading eastward, toward Germany. 

We drove through a bit of The Netherlands along the way. One can't help but think 'windmills' when thinking of The Netherlands. While we didn't see any traditional old windmills, we saw lots of these wind turbines!

A significant part of our entire trip involved driving from point to point, but we didn't just want to make the journey all about getting there, we wanted interesting stops along the way. That's where our stop at Labyrint Drielandenpunt came in. 

Back when we were plotting our map for our trip, I Googled interesting or odd places to visit in Europe. I wound up on the "Atlas Obscura" page, and on an article about Labyrint Drielandenpunt. Its name translates into three country labyrinth, and it's so named because on the grounds of the attraction, you can stand where Netherlands, Belgium and Germany meet.

Once we found the attraction, one of the hardest parts of the puzzle was figuring out where to park. With that hurdle out of the way, we made our way toward the hedgerow, Europe’s largest outdoor shrub maze. 

I have to say, I was not expecting to hear "Summer Nights" from the American musical "Grease" playing, loudly, over the PA as we approached the ticket booth. 

We paid our admission, and hoped we were up to the challenge. But before entering the maze, we couldn't pass up this photo opp. Nothing says The Netherlands like oversized wooden shoes!

Reviews I had read about the labyrinth said to expect to spend 1.5 to two hours to make your way through it, and that it was hard. Reviewers suggested asking other visitors for help. 

Well, we happened to be there late on a *** afternoon, and there were only two other small parties on site neither of which spoke English. That, and we didn't have phones with Internet access, nor do they give you maps at the entrance. 

We were on our own.  

The maze was definitely a challenge for four weary travelers. When it started to feel like maybe it was too tough, I reminded myself (and the family) that we had been in corn mazes that, geographically, were MUCH bigger than this here maze.

Fortunately, there were some uplifting distractions along the way, as well.

As we worked our way toward the center, we came to realize the way to the middle wasn't a straight line, and the route that got you closest to the center wasn't always the right route.

There were a couple of up-and-over bridges in the labyrinth. When we got to this one, we spied and tried to pick a path forward. 

Fortunately, our studying paid off, and we were soon to the gazebo in the center!

I went back to the bridge over and snapped a shot of the intrepid travelers in the middle!

Below, Annabelle shares some recollections from our brief visit to the labyrinth.

Labyrint Drielandenpunt is a large labyrinth technically located in Vaals, Netherlands. I say technically, because the labyrinth is actually located in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands all at once- when you stand in the middle (at the finish) you can run around and be in all three countries at once!

The labyrinth is actually fairly difficult and requires a bit of thought and planning. It includes multiple water obstacles that you must step through to progress (some are on a timer- others are not).

The Labyrint is obviously oriented towards kids, as there are drums, chimes, and smaller mazes on certain signs throughout. A cool fact about the labyrinth is that it is in the shape of a lion, a falcon, and a dragon, each representing one country.

The labyrinth took us about an hour to complete, which seems to be the average time. The Labyrint was fun but challenging, and I would strongly recommend it if you’re ever in Vaals!

A couple of other interesting factoids: The site is not only the most South-Easterly place in the Netherlands, but it's also the country's highest spot. 

All in all, it was a super fun stop that certainly broke up the monotony of the drive!

Next stop: Achen, Germany!