Matthew read a book to me for the first time. He’s read words here and there for some time, but this was the first book he’s ever read cover to cover. I’m so proud I could burst my buttons.

Someone posted excerpts from a CIA Sabotage Manual on flickr — "designed to destabilise the nicaraguan government and economic system."

tax, originally uploaded by Mickie Flick.

I was really fascinated & amused by this until I slowly realized that my kids actually have a play book for their household destructiveness. Until today I had always chalked the destruction at home to lack of impulse control and youthful exuberance.  Now I realize they are a tiny but determined insurgency bent on my eventual overthrow.

Here is a recent piece of schoolwork Matthew did. The idea is pretty simple. Color the fruit correctly in the cornucopia, then graph the results, in the corrrect colors, on the table to the right.

I don’t think I was doing anything as complicated as this in kindergarten. What do I remember from kindergarten? I remember unrolling the mats for nap time and lots of toys that involved pounding square pegs into round holes. 

[Elise is thankful for volcanos and her whole family.] 

I traveled to Wisconsin Rapids to celebrate Thanksgiving with my grandpa. He’s quite a grand old fellow. He is 88 years old and still preaches at his local church. After our Thanksgiving feast I had to find a vacuum cleaner to pick up after my kids. It was the same vacuum clean I remember from when I was a kid and my parents lived with my grandparents. It still works great after all these years. I’m sure it is quite a bit older than I am.

As soon as I get to grandpa’s house I always find myself headed to the cookie jar. It’s the same cookie jar they’ve always had out on the counter. Grabbing a cookie at grandpa’s house is as natural for me as removing my shoes is at my own house. It’s not that I’m desperate for a cookie — ordinarily I can take or leave store bought sandwich cookie. I found Oreos in the jar this time. I ate four or five over the couple of days we stayed there. Somehow when I’m at grandpa’s house I’m eight years old and I can’t pass up a cookie any more than I could pass up a free iPod today. I think I’m reaching into the cookie jar and I’m looking for more than a cookie. I’m looking for a sense that there are some things in life that don’t change. I think I’m trying to remember what it felt like to be eight and have no angst about anything at all.

I call it grandpa’s house but we all really know it’s grandma’s house. She put her stamp on everything she touched. She directed the vacuuming on Saturday. She picked out the colors that made the house so easy to find. She held forth at dinner, reading scraps of poetry or cute stories she had run across or telling us about something that happened long ago to people we would never meet. She isn’t present the way she used to be at holiday dinners, perched up on stool, eating on the pulled out cutting board ready to jump up and get something more for us. I hope she always feels a little present with us.

I took grandpa out to the cemetary. Grandma’s plot is just a stone’s throw from the family farm she grew up on not far from the Wisconsin River. “Bury me there too”, I told my wife. I want to hear the Wisconsin River gurgle in the spring; I want to be under the same sand that used to run through my hands. Bury me in Wisconsin, where the sand hills lie.

This weekend I thought a lot about what Pearl said about missed love ones being like amputated limbs complete with ghost pains. The loss I felt this holiday weekend wasn’t the loss of not having grandma around; it was the loss of her getting to see interact with my children the same way she used to interact with me.

At our house Sunday is candy day. We let the kids dip into their Halloween stash of candy and pick out an item or two to savor. Today Elise picked out the small gummi rat. She bit off the rats head and chewed it up. I asked her "what do rats taste like?" — "Daddy, they taste like glue" was her response. I don’t want to know how she knows what glue tastes like. Thus begins the era in my fathering where I don’t feel I have to know everything about my daughter.

My last remaining great-aunt died last week. You can see her obituary online at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

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I’ve thrown a lot of clothes out in the last year. I was sad to see these boxers go. I got these for Christmas a few years ago from the kids. Everyone laughed while watching me open up the package. I blushed profusely, since my in-laws were at my house for Christmas that year. They were comfy, so much to my wife’s chagrin I wore them. Between being the wrong size and the rips they had to be retired. I’m sad to see them go. Tossing these reminded me how my son aged 14-15 months or so found the idea that an animal was named “Pooh” to be hilarious. He hung his head and laughed with a “you have got to be kidding me” look on his face.

It’s time for the annual Fall Trip with the kids. This year since Matthew is in school we went on MEA weekend. That meant whole trip was a little later than usual and we missed the peak of the fall colors.

We spent the first night on Lake Vermillion. Fall is my favorite time on the lake. It’s quiet. You might see a boater every few hours. The weather is chilly at night but comfortable for a tramp through the woods during the day.

The children and I picked the remaining wild rose hips along the shoreline. Some animal, maybe a deer had beaten us to most of them, but walking along the shoreline I was able to find quite a few. I am planning on drying them and using them in tea.

Then we drove to Ely for lunch at The Northern Grounds which is right next door to Piragis. Piragis was having a pretty good sale in their outlet area and we managed to get an old aluminium canoe for a great price.

We drove down a few old forest service roads and didn’t see another car for hours. We finally caught Highway 1 and zoomed up the north shore to our destination at Lutsen. We stayed at a lodge at Lutsen that Jeannie found last year. Unfortunately, they remodeled all the rooms with kitchenettes removing the kitchenettes in the process. To make matters worse, they gave us a room with only one bed. This wasn’t what we had reserved so we were a little dissapointed. They did manage to find us a room with a futon which converted into a bed. Given the popularity of the weekend I thought that was pretty good.

During our first and only night at Lutsen the lodge next door had a fire. Based on the lousy weather and the less than ideal lodgings we decided to leave a day early. The management was glad to have the extra room to accomodate the people who had to flee their smoke and water filled rooms.

The alpine slide is the big reason we go to Lutsen, but we were rained out this year. While the kids were splashing in the pool I took the tram across the valley and hiked on the Superior Hiking trail for a mile or so. I can’t wait to get back on the trail in the spring.

Matthew had his first day of kindergarten today. All went well. When asked about his day, he recounted a song about peanut butter and jelly. He deemed the song silly.

Tommorrow is picture day.

Right on schedule, while playing quietly where I couldn’t see them, Matthew and Elise found a pair of scissors. Then they proceeded to cut huge hanks out of their hair. I gave Matthew an emergency buzz tonight. He looks like he just got out of boot camp. Elise didn’t fare so well. I had no idea how to fix her hairdo. She’ll need professional assistance getting her stairstep bangs into shape.

I found the entire episode quite funny, but tried to act stern.