The Steussy Ranch

We’re halfway through the season, and I still HAVEN’T WON. What happened? I won every week last year. Anyway, congratulations to Ashley who won with a full 10 points over her nearest competitor (Gabi). And Cally is more than 20 points ahead in the year to date competition.

The five of us went with cousin Alex to Tunde’s 11th annual pumpkin carving party last night. The subject of our first wedding came up. When I proposed to Gabi, we knew that we would run into problems with her citizenship, so the first thing we did (after a week or two of celebrating) was to go see an immigration lawyer. When he informed us of how long it would take to get Gabi even partially through the system (I think it was 2 and a half years), we decided to get officially married as soon as possible. Alex said she wanted to see our photo, so here it is.

The photo above is our only picture from that wedding. It was the perfect guy’s wedding – Wednesday afternoon at the Norwalk City Hall (recommended by the lawyer as being fast with paperwork), no fuss, $125 including lunch (at Denny’s, as you can see) and everyone is very happy! This was followed by the guy honeymoon – 10 days on a motorcycle through California wine country.

We would have had more photos, but we only had an early digital camera and we left without recharging it. We had enough charge for one photo only.

Anyway, so every year we celebrate two anniverseries – the guy wedding on February 7 and the main wedding on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Getting ready to leave for a Halloween party, and the kids found the blue electric car from Christmas. I’d recharged it a few days ago, so it was ready to go …

Congrats to Cally! I came close, but my big bets on Detroit (8 points) and Denver (6) did not work out.

No, none of these is for our house. Nor are they for any houses in our block. Nonetheless, if you drive around for a bit you do see these. It’s a big change to the region, and we’re just starting to see the effects.

Homework. Dan-dan’s teacher has been assigning it since the beginning of kindergarten, four weeks ago. Dan-dan got in the swing of it after a week or so. Here are his four Friday spelling tests so far, with grades out of a possible 6 points. After a terrible first test, he is now either perfect or missing one word on his tests. Mom and Dad are very proud of him.

Dan-dan is not the only one showing achievements. Camilla is showing off her early morning drawing of herself (left) and Mom (right). Pretty good before brushing your teeth in the morning!

A quick note on homework routine. Now that Dan-dan is doing his when he comes home (and getting parental praise for it), Camilla insists on doing her own “homework” next to him at the dining room table. Camilla’s homework consists of writing practice letters and drawings similar to the one above.

For most of the three and a half years we’ve lived here, we’ve put up a hummingbird feeder. We’d look up and occasionally see a hummingbird there. Food would get added once a month or so. This month is different, however. Most days, we can look outside our breakfast nook window and see one or more hummingbirds at any one time. Sometimes as many as seven buzzing around the feeder.

We don’t know what has caused the feeding frenzy. At this point, they are completely emptying the feeder every 36 to 48 hours. This could get expensive!

We got our new camera, to replace the Sony. We lost the Sony in a rental car while traveling three weeks ago. The Sony was a new camera in November 2007 to replace the one that we left on an airplane in Chicago. And THAT camera was to replace one that we left in Dan and Hongli’s car the year before. A stupidity tax, you know.

The new camera is a Canon SD1100, top ranked with Consumer Reports. It is smaller than the last one (and I didn’t think that was possible). Seems pretty good. Test shot of Aaron is above.

Note from wife: There is no “we” about this.