All Zack Wants For Christmas ...

... is his two front teeth.

Zack in the Leaf Pile

We started the annual ordeal of leaf raking today. As usual, Zack had fun jumping into the leaf piles.

Here's some video too. If you're wondering about the "squares" in the yard, those are our carpet tiles from the basement, drying out after a little leak incident we had this morning.

Why It's Cool to Work for NASA

Check out this video of Discovery's launch on Oct. 23. Pretty cool views from the cameras mounted on the two solid rocket boosters on the side of the shuttle.

Halloween

Zack decided this year he wanted to be Frankenstein (well, really Frankenstein's monster, but you know ...) for Halloween. We're not sure where he got the idea, but he seemed to enjoy running around grunting a lot and saying "Fire bad!" and things like that.

After a lot of discussion about how to do it, we finally found some latex "bolts" in a costume store. Here's Kelly attaching the bolts with the "spirit gum" -- this is similar to the makeup routines you see for Hollywood horror movies.

Here is the finished product in all it's gory detail:




Kelly also went all Martha Stewart on the house this year with a bunch of spider webs all over the place. We also did these glowing spiders with glow sticks and styrofoam balls.

Night at the Symphony

On Saturday, October 27, we had a big night out on the town. We took Zack to the Kennedy Center to see the National Symphony Orchestra play a concert of John Williams movie music.

It was Zack's first real chance to get dressed up for a big event:

Of course, Zack insisted on taking a few of his usual "silly poses." Here's one of our favorites:

The concert was great. The first half was music from Jaws, ET, Superman, Indiana Jones, and some others. Then they took an intermission and came back and did a whole section of Star Wars music, complete with characters staging battles in front of the orchestra. Jim even got to meet "Darth Vader" before the show.

The Local Wildlife

We've had a lot of activity on the back porch lately. We've got two birdfeeders now, and we get lots of visitors. We also had a strange visitor the other morning at our front door:

This Year's Beach Trip

We wrapped up the summer at Bethany Beach,Delaware. Zack is getting better about getting into the water, as you can see.

The Seacocks

Well, our singer is off to become a Coast Guard officer now, so we're officially on "hiatus." But here are a few pics of us playing and recording.

Here we are at the Marina in DC. It's near the Jefferson Memorial and you can see the Washington Monument from where we're standing. It's also right across the Potomac from the airport, and the President's helicopter flies by from time to time -- all making for interesting playing conditions. The wood paneled boat in the background is Sequoia, which used to be the Presidential Yacht. Marilyn and JFK "spent time" there, so they say.

Alan is on the left. He plays a mean harmonica. Jodie's in the bathing suit (it was pool party night.) The guy to the right of me is Jacob; he works with me at NASA and plays the cello and some cool jazz piano.

Here we are recording at my place, and me "acting a fool":

The New Car

So, after 13 years and probably over 200K miles, Kelly finally gave up her old Saturn for a new Prius. Here's a picture of us with the old and new cars at the dealership -- yeah, it's a little blurry. The salesman apparently couldn't operate a camera.