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{present day news for those of you getting thrown about my all the time-shifting}

Holden is about to enter is final year of preschool at a place down the road from us. We love this place for encouraging kids to be kids and teaching lessons of respect and kindness. And we really love that it’s a half mile from our house with hours that extend to 11pm one night a month so we can have a date.

As the upperclassmen at preschool, Holden and his peers are allowed to suggest their own class name and vote on it. They learn a little about choosing their own destinies and democracy in the process. The class names have all been animals (albeit sometimes rather fanciful animals like Sparkly Rainbow Pandas)

He was a Dolphin last year and is a Giraffe this year.

The names from the other kids fit the other patterns pretty well (sea turtles, bobcats, bats, penguins) with some minor deviations (princess whales) until they got to Holden. His idea was the ROBOT SKELETONS.

A week later, the teachers checked back in with the kids to see if they wanted to keep their original ideas or change their minds.

Holden told his teacher Rose, “I have 8 ideas but I’d like to stick with Robot Skeletons.”

As a next step, the teachers found images to represent each of the choices. Here’s Holden’s approved Robot Skeleton mascot.

Robot Skeleton as preschool mascot

Hi there, its me again. Three times in one week. Yep. And I’m not stopping until I’m all caught up. I posted pictures from August and September a few days ago and now, the long-awaited collection from October and November are here.

Some days, I swear it feels like all we do is sit on the couch exhausted after a day of working and parenting. Lame, right?

But when I look back at a year’s worth of pictures, I can see we’ve gone places (Hawaii, DC, parties) and done some things (trapeze, triathlon, remodel). Is that a good excuse for getting a year behind in my picture-posting: so I could appreciate my life more from a 30,000 foot view?

I would love it if Alec can find the time (but I don’t know where he would) to edit the great documentary of Holden’s first foray into Halloween candy.

You see, we live in Berkeley… so candy of any kind is not a given. And we’re kinda mean… so we eat all the candy after the boys go to bed. And furthermore, despite the fact that we’ve obtained one or more cute Halloween costumes each year, 2008 marked the very first time that Holden (and his lucky kid brother Milo) has ever been trick-or-treating.

Since he was pushing four and already pretty brilliant, we let him keep a fair amount of candy before we snuck it away for our own enjoyment. Here’s some preview footage of him indulging in a sloppy Snickers bar:

I don’t know if its worth going through all this memory lane stuff almost a year after the fact, but I can’t help myself.

I just posted some pictures from August and September 2008 so I offer a brief reflection.

We enjoyed a family adventure vacation out to the Adirondacks and Cleveland for Monica’s wedding(s) and the boys started up their second year at APS/preschool. Milo moved to the Toddler program and Holden moved on to becoming a Giraffe.

I changed jobs from working at TasteBook to working at a small design studio in SF called Sequence. Hazing at my new job included participating in the dodgeball tournament.

Next up… fabulous vacation to Hawaii in October and awesome trip to DC in November. Stay tuned for another few blasts from the past.