::explanation and santa::

So good guesses everybody! I think my favorite was Matt's, with the American Growth Hormone Association. But actually, everybody that guessed gets a big high five from me! Alright!!

So the real explanation is this. We went to the zoo on saturday with Melissa and Grant. Santa was flying in on a helicopter to make an appearance, and we thought we needed to see that.

So there were these funny little old ladies wearing felt christmas tree headbands and jingle bells, carrying around a huge set of reindeer antlers. (they were supposed to be reindeer antlers anyway, but who knows what kind of deer they belong to!)
They would let kids pose under them for a photo op. I couldn't get back far enough to get all of the antlers and all of Max in the picture. Pretty exciting, right?

So there we were, waiting for Santa. Max wore his very christmassy skeleton hand gloves.

Festive.

As I think I mentioned, Santa flew in on a helicopter. Pretty new fangled if you ask me. It was pretty fun to see the helicopter fly in and land though. Max enjoyed it.



He kept motioning for applause. "Ho ho ho!"


And then up came the little train that was going to take good old Santa around the zoo for a parade. I specially include a picture of this train for Grandpa Ken. I know he'll love it! Check out the lawn mower or whatever is pulling it. It totally looks like an old train engine!


And off went the parade. Here are Max and Grant waiting for Santa to come by.

Just two dudes sitting on a wall, hanging out.


And Santa rode by in style, at the very end of the train. He doesn't actually look that comfortable if you ask me.
I think he was heading to his "breakfast with Santa"--only $35 per adult. Totally affordable, right?


And since we were at the zoo, we figured we might could see some animals.

A kind of creepy camel.
We actually saw real camels. Max really enjoyed seeing the camel relieve itself. Yuck. He also was lucky enough to happen upon a giraffe reliving itself and was very interested. Is he a boy or what?


Can you see the snow leopard? He was pretty.

Here's a fuzzy cute little red panda sleeping among the bamboo. So appropriate. And cute.


It's so nice that Melissa has a zoo membership and brings us along with her. We love it. And of course we like Santa too, breakfast or no breakfast.

::strange::

Can anybody tell me what's going on in the below photo?



If you can I'll give you a really big high five. Maybe even a long distance one depending on where you are.

::thanksgiving report::

We had a good thanksgiving day yesterday. We had been invited to have dinner with a doctor and her family from Kris's work. Unfortunately they had some sickness in the family and so that didn't work out. Hopefully they're doing better now!
Our friends Chad, Melissa and Grant were also going to go over there also. So we talked and decided we'd get together and just have our own little celebration.

I've cooked a turkey one time before, so I figured I could do it again. With some good advice from moms and dads and a yummy not frozen turkey from Trader Joe's we pulled it off.
The turkey turned out really good. My mom told me to use a turkey bag and it sure worked well. By the time Kris went to carve it the meat was basically falling off the bones. And despite a little scare about cooking the giblets in the turkey, all turned out ok. (we couldn't find the giblets, and then my dad told me they're up in the neck cavity.  By that point it had already been cooking for several hours.  I was just hoping they weren't in a plastic bag, or else the whole turkey would be ruined. Luckily they were in paper. Phew.)

We did about half the food and Chad and Melissa brought half the food. It works out well that way I think.

Poor Grant didn't get to eat anything for his first thanksgiving. It's hard to be little sometimes.
Speaking of first thanksgivings, remember this boy?

Luckily for him he was big enough to eat some of the goodies--he had a couple of months on Grant.

Anyway, back to today.
Here's Kris handing out some denture ice to everybody.

Have you heard of denture ice?

It's ice in the shape of dentures. Kind of gross huh? Pretty funny really. Kelly and Lechelle gave us the ice tray and Max loves it. It's pretty weird to see transparent dentures floating in your drink though.

We had a good meal. I didn't get very good pictures of everybody, but I did get pictures. It's so dark around here these days.

Kris got a whole bunch of Stewarts sodas for us to drink. Mmmm they're good.





Max was wearing Kris's scrub top before dinner. He was pretending to be Dr. Max. This was inspired by Kris getting called into the hospital an hour before dinner. It's nice to be on call...
Anyway, Max wore the scrub top all through dinner, and it made for a wonderful bib. We may start using scrub tops for every meal.

Max, of course, was way too hyped up to actually eat his meal. He was busy talking and giggling and fooling around. So as usual he ended up at the table trying to eat long after everybody else had left. It was so funny--I went in there and there he was very carefully cutting slices off his piece of cranberry sauce with his knife and fork. It was surprisingly civilized of him. And cute of course.

He didn't get all his food finished, but he did end up eating at least some of it. It was quite the effort to get that much done.

After dinner we cleaned up, then we watched some football of course. Then as per Max's request we watched Wall E. This was thanks to Grandma Kathy who had sent it to Max as a thanksgiving gift the day before. It was fun. Then we ate some delicious pumpkin and pecan pie. I was really full after all that.

Then Max held Grant on his lap for a while, which was hilarous.

Grant loves Max, and Max loves Grant. They're good buddies.


And then we called it a day. A good day.

We're thankful for good friends, food, family and our religion. We feel so lucky and blessed this thanksgiving.  Here's hoping everybody else had a great day too.

::happy thanksgiving::

In honor of Thanksgiving today, I'm going to show you some pictures from the "Harvest Feast" at Max's school earlier this week.

It's basically a Thanksgiving party that's held the day before thanksgiving vacation.  But there are a lot of different people here in the city, and nobody wants to offend, so Harvest Feast it is!

The kids and teachers started making food for the feast at the beginning of November, and I think they made at least one different thing every week.

When I arrived at the school all the kids were outside playing on the playground. They were all being fire fighters. Max was up high on one of the slide platforms yelling, "FIRE!! FIRE!!"

The other kids came running and put his fire out. It was pretty cute.

The menu for the feast was pretty extensive:

Pretty impressive, huh?


Here's the butter and pickles. Max's teacher said that Max's class is the first class in 13 years that actually made the butter all by themselves. They made it by putting cream in a jar and shaking it. They took turns all through the day I guess. How cute!

Max was especially proud of the pickles. The kids cut up the cucumbers with those little pumpkin carving knives that aren't very sharp. I was told Max ate at least as many pieces of cucumber as he put into the jar.
The pickles turned out tasting pretty good!



Here's Max getting served some oatmeal bread. I was the helping parent the day they started working on the bread. They talked about yeast and kneading and all sorts of things. It was pretty fun.

Here we have applesauce and apple crisp.

Max had about 17 servings of apple sauce.


My plate! I especially liked the corn bread and the pumpkin bread.


The kids had decorated art for each table. I don't know if this is Max's or not, but it could be. He didn't know when I asked him. He said "Maybe I drew that." Silly.

It was so fun to get to see what the kids had been working on. We're thankful to have such a fun school here that Max loves. It's helped us all to feel more at home.

We're lucky.

::coolness::

Back when I was in high school there were times that I thought I was awfully cool.
One of these times was after I saw how this picture turned out.

Obviously somebody else took this picture, but it was my idea.
And I'm just so edgy, right? So artsy. It's mostly the braces and the National Honor Society sweatshirt--oh, and the chewed off silver nail polish.  I was cool.  
What happened?  Ah well, that's a subject for another day.

Anyway, the other day we were at the dog park, and suddenly there was a photo op.

Look familiar?

How about now?
What's that saying--Like mother like son? Hmmm, I actually don't think that's a saying, is it?

All he needs is some braces and some nail polish and he'd be set for life in coolness.
How can he help being cool? He's my kid.

::what i heard::

So the other day I saw that I had a couple of voicemails from Kris on my phone.  This was odd, since it was saturday, and we'd been together all day. Hmmm I thought. Then I listened.

Here's what I heard.


Voicemail 1 from Ginna Hendricks on Vimeo.

Wow, good to know, right? I'm really glad that the phone's ok, and so glad to know Max was going around dropping it.
And then the next message.


Voicemail from Ginna Hendricks on Vimeo.

And how could I be mad at the guy that left me that message? Honestly it's pretty much impossible. Lucky for him.

::grandpa guy=eggs for breakfast::

At least if you ask Max.
Before my parents came I had a talk with Max about some things he might like to do with them. First on his list was "Eat eggs for breakfast every day!"
Yes, the poor deprived boy gets fed oatmeal almost every day of the week. Nice fresh oatmeal with strawberries or raspberries and cream and honey on it. Lame, right? No wonder he's always crying about how he wants cereal or eggs.
Anyway. That's not the topic here.

When my dad comes to visit he makes eggs. He came and stayed with us for about two weeks in 2007 while Kris went on a dental humanitarian mission to Nicaragua. My Dad and Max made tons and tons of eggs for breakfast.

See?



That's when it started.  Max loved helping--I wasn't letting him help in the kitchen much at that point.

Later when we would visit my parents, my dad would make sure Max got eggs to eat in the morning.

He visited again in March of this year for a week. They made more eggs. I didn't get any pictures of the egg making, but I did get this photo, which I think makes up for it.


Anyway. The whole point of this is, that Max loves to make eggs with my dad. And he loves to eat them. When my parents were here last week they made eggs a whole bunch. He was in heaven.

And the older he gets, the more involved he gets to be. He's actually stirring the eggs nowadays.

He's very serious about his job, and very careful of the burners.

I like to see them working together. It's so fun.

And somehow his eggs ended up looking like a Land Rover at breakfast one morning. Do you see it? I barely do.

He's a funny kid, with a funny Grandpa. We like them both.

For Grandpa Ken

We went to a school open house this morning. We're trying to find a good kindergarten for Max. He got to hold a snake. And he liked it. Look out Grandpa!

During the tour we went to the science room. This is where max got to hold this little snake.

Also for Grandpa Ken, a little shot of an overhead digital projector in action. This one was pretty clear and it was still light enough in the room that I could take notes. I hope you get one.


And for you Utah people, don't kill each other, it's just football.

My Cell Phone

I've been taking a lot of pictures with my cell phone and Ginna asked me to post some on the blog for our fans. 

This is actually a picture from Ginna's phone: Max trying to use chopsticks. Funny, cute. This was taken while I was in Brooklyn this week.

Turns out I have a liquor store in Bay Ridge--that's where Saturday Night Fever was filmed.
I was in Brooklyn to interview new residents for our program next year. Last year one of the residents from Providence helped me out a lot. I was hoping to find someone I liked enough that I would try to help them out, but I didn't. There were plenty of good applicants, but none that stood out too much to me at first glance.

There was a time when pediatric residencies couldn't fill their program to save their lives, but times have changed. We have people beating down the door to come. The Brooklyn program doesn't sell their program at all and there are still countless people hoping to get in.
More proof Brooklyn doesn't have to sell their program:

This was right next to the table where they had breakfast and coffee for the applicants. Yuck. I was embarrassed, still I listened to people beg to be accepted all day.
Then we had to take a test when I got back to Providence. It was faxed to us from Brooklyn. The transmission didn't come through very well.

The person who gave us this exam would probably try to have me kicked out of my program for posting this, but since I couldn't read it to take the test, you probably can't either. Anyway, I hope he doesn't follow this blog. Give me a break.


The concert:
Tonight, Ginna and I decided to take Max to the Brown University Wind Symphony concert. When we were in college, the Wind Symphony was a big deal, the best band at the university, something for only the best musicians in the college. Lately, I'm not super impressed with the Ivy league schools. They're expensive but what else? (In the residency applications this year, the Ivy schools didn't release GPA or class rank--as if to say that merely going there should be good enough. Ironically, many of the Ivy applicant's national board scores--which we all take--were no higher than national averages. If you're going to withhold academic information, the board scores should at least be higher than average shouldn't they?)
So, the Wind Symphony. What to expect?

Here is Ginna while they were tuning.

Here is what they looked like.
But the real reason we went was for this guy:

He loved it. He doesn't sit still for anything. But guess who hardly moved for the entire concert?

His eyes were ginormous during the concert. Ginna thinks that the band was worse than her high school band. Go Bulldogs.
It was fun to be able to go to something like this and have Max behave and even enjoy it. Too bad the music sucked. I don't think people go to Brown for music.
Afterward, Max said, "I want to go to this school every time I don't have nursery school.
Good news was the price--free!