Beach afternoon

My afternoon classes cancelled, Crispin and I were able to have a little bit of scootering and baseball and beach before picking up Liam. This was in part because Liam enjoys playing with some friends at school so much that he did not want me to pick him up early. In the picture above, Crispin has improvised his own batter's helmet a la Don Quixote.




Crispin then realized his helmet would be good for pouring water and went to play at the beach. He had a fine time creating volcanoes in the sand and pouring in water.




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Running Laps

The boys, Kelly, and I met to play tennis at the high school tonight. Like diligent athletes, Crispin and Liam wanted to jog a post-game lap to warm down properly.




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Location:Maxwelton Rd,Clinton,United States

Theater Arrangements

As I may have mentioned in previous posts, Liam has been at work composing, rehearsing, and performing musicals and ballets with his brother.

Recently he has taken an interest in production and management. The picture below is of the theater he is building, complete with different seating sections with different price tickets.





We had a fine time playing basketball, came home to make a stir fry, played wiffle ball, had the power go out for a few hours (which did not matter because dinner was over and the sun sets so late here this time of year), and are ready for another day.

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Crispin the Flower

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My 5th grade strings class is cancelled, so I am able to spend the afternoon with my boys. We are about to pick up Liam and then head off to castle park for some sports in the drizzle.

Hoops

Milder weather has brought us a chance to scooter, play football, basketball, soccer, and fly Liam's airplane.

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Liam's class play

In March Liam played the role of a prince who had under enchantment metamorphosed into a bear in Snow White and Rose Red, the first grade play. Like some other students, Liam knew every line for every part in the play. He is excited to act in future productions.

He has also been creating ballets and wants to listen to soundtracks from musical.

filet mignon

No cute pictures of the boys this post, but I promise some of them soon.

I think a while back I wrote or intended to write about sea changes in my life. When I was a teenager who played the violin, I was an incredible snob toward cellos; they always sounded out of tune to me, and their repertoire seemed pale and boring compared to the violin repertoire. When I learned to play cello some 22 years later, my attitude shifted a great deal (perhaps my hearing and sense of intonation has declined), and I love to play the cello and listen to music for cello (while still enjoying the violin).

My Prime Steakhouse years had made me an anti-filet snob (except for some excellent pepper steaks made by relatives or filets with fancy sauces in French restaurants); at Morton's we learned that prime steaks really show their primeness in cuts such as the New York strip and the Ribeye (indeed, Morton's did not guarantee prime filets because in fact choice filets--a lot cheaper--tasted better than prime filets).

My sons' fascination with teppanyaki restaurants has caused me to experiment with various ways of stir frying beef at home, and it has never seemed to be as good as at Kabuki or Benihana until I finally bought filets, seared them, and sliced them right in the pan. They were delicious, and the boys ate them. They were so good I bought more for the grill, and the boys--who did not like the fat of ribeyes but would eat the parts I carved out for them--eat nice rare filets with enthusiasm and no fuss. I enjoy them a lot, too, and appreciate how easy they are to cook. While it is possible to undercook a ribeye (where there is so much uncooked fat you can hardly eat it), it is hard to undercook a filet on a hot grill (and I realize a problem with restaurant filets is they don't believe you when you say you want it rare; an overcooked ribeye is much less of a tragedy than an overcooked filet).

No real moral here. Expect more pictures of baseball playing boys soon.

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