Tuesday, November 6

Ok, it has been two very busy weeks!!

My Uncle Steve (Jabe) from Silverhill, AL was in town for a conference. So he came over for dinner on Thursday, Oct 25. We had a very nice visit over some delicious potato soup (my first of the season). We also had Don (our landlord) up for dinner. The conversation was very interesting and we lingered at the table over coffee and pumpkin cake.

The MIT Children's Halloween party(Sat, Oct.27) was a great success.

Even though it was raining the whole day. We had over 50 children and their parents attend. The kids seemed to have a good time eating, playing the games, and joining in the costume parade around the student center. They even learned the songs "5 Little Pumpkins" and "The Old Woman All Skin and Bones". Jamie was a big hit as the mad scientist!!

On Monday, the kids and I set to work carving our pumpkins. We called the family from Finland to see if they wanted to join us to see how to do it. It's funny to think that traditions that are so common here aren't held all over. But, they had never carved pumpkins before.
They eagerly accepted the invitation. So, we had 2 moms and 5 kids carving 4 pumpkins. Minna said the the inside of the pumpkin was totally different from what she had expected.
David's pumpkin was a Mickey face, Jamie's was a frog, and Rachel's was scary. It was a lot of fun to share the tradition with a new family. Minna says that her daughter, Kia, loves Halloween and wants to know how many more days till the next one.

The adult Halloween party (on Tuesday) was also a lot of fun. It was at a candle pin bowling alley. I was a little leary of the venue at first, but it was a very fun party! Candle pin bowling was fun - it's a smaller ball with no finger holes and you get three balls per frame. My score wasn't much better than in regular bowling, though. The shoes - are the same glorious things!!
Tim and I went as Gandalf and Galadriel from Lord of the Rings. Our costumes were fairly well received, but many of our foreign fellows were unfamiliar with the characters.

Tim's Uncle Marvin passed away this week. So, he made a mad dash home to Alabama for the funeral. He really enjoyed seeing everyone. It was his first trip back south in about 6 months - almost as long as he was in Japan in '91. His most interesting comment was that all of the raido dj's sounded weird! He has grown accustomed to hearing that New England accent over the airways. I, on the other hand, occasionally tune in to the streaming audio of "Rick and Bubba" just to get an earful of home.

Halloween was fun. Both Jamie and Rachel had half-days of school (they will for the rest of the month to allow for parent/teacher conferences). We had a skype call with Grannie, Beth, JT and Aunt Kiki to let the kids see each other in costume. This is the first year they haven't been with them for at least a pre-Halloween party. Afterward, we went to my friend Susan's house for pizza and trick-or-treating.

There are two differences I noticed in trick-or-treating in Belmont vs Hartselle or Cullman:

1) we had to climb stairs to get to almost every house, and 2) the kind of loot you get. The kids all came home with multiple full-sized chocolate bars, and the rest of their candy is probably 80% chocolate!! Yummy, but mom has hit the bags too hard. I just can't bear to see all those Reeces cups go to waste, since none of my kids like them!! To finish off the evening, we stopped in on Jan and Don. They were glad to see the kids in their costumes, and even took a couple of photos. We have been so blessed by our housing situation here!!

Tim came home on Thursday night, but had to leave for England Friday morning for his friend Paul's retirement celebration.
Friday night was the MIT Japanese party. There are a lot of Japanese families in the Sloan Fellows! They served sushi, California rolls, teryaki chicken, Kirin beer, moshi, and Japanese desserts. Rachel really liked the teryaki chicken! I experimented with several kinds of sushi and California rolls. David didn't eat anything! Rachel ended up going home with Esther, a Sloan kid from Brazil, to spend the night and all day Saturday.

It was cold and rainy all day on Saturday (Nov3)!! We started our day with a trip to the food pantry to donate the canned food we collected at the children's Halloween party. (Jamie has to do 12 hours of community service for school this year. I think it's great!! Jamie keeps asking me if it's legal for the school to force them to do community service. What a cheerful giver! That afternoon, the boys and I went to see The Bee Movie with some friends from Korea. It was cute, but not just fabulous. We ended the day with a trip to the mall and dinner at McDonald's. Then we picked up Rachel and headed home.

Sunday, Nov.4, we got up and went to church. The sermon was really good this Sunday. It was about Zaccheaus and how his story opens the doors to all people, no matter what their past or present circumstances. Then we had communion and sang "One Bread, One Body" - a hymn I actually knew!! The church is going to do a couple of Wednesday night classes on keeping proper focus during the holidays, and I hope to go. After lunch, we went out to the Belmont Habitat ( an Audubon nature preserve) to help with the fall trails day - to get more community service hours in. We all enjoyed working outside. Tim was back home when we got back home, and was ready to get outside for awhile. So, we went to Middlesex Fells to do a little hiking before dark. We hiked up to a tower and were rewarded with a fabulous view of Boston right at sunset. We ate dinner at Chili's - the closest thing to Las Vias' chips and salsa we've found up here. Then we went to Jordan's Furniture. Sound like a strange destination? Well, it's more like an amusement park than a furniture store!! Inside are an IMAX theater, a trapeze school, Fudruckers, an ice cream parlor (they had pumpkin ice cream!!), a huge candy store, some arcade games, strollers that are like taxis, and a musical fountain show (like at Disney Epcot) with lights and music and "liquid fireworks". It was really amazing!! Oh, there was also a recreation of Boston Public garden, the capital, and Fenway's green monster - all done in Jelly Bellys. It makes me want to buy some furniture!! We did walk around and look at furniture a little, and the kids all found new bedroom furniture they want to have back in Alabama. I think that we'll wait until March to buy, though. This is the place that promised that any furniture purchased last March would be free if the Red Sox won the World Series. I wonder if they'll do it again. . .
Speaking of the Sox, the McKelvy's have all caught Red Sox fever. Especially Jamie! He watched parts of several games in the division championship and the world series. The world series games were all on late, though, they started at 8:30 Boston time. Tim and I stayed up late several nights watching to see how our team would do. Jamie even worked out a system with Tim to leave the hall lights on if the Sox won and turn them off if they lost. That's one thing we'll definitely be bringing back home to Alabama - baseball team we root for.