21 December 2008 - Harrisburg, Penn State

This week I had to go to Harrisburg and State College (Penn State) for some meetings with other professors. This is at Harrisburg Area Community College, right near downtown and the State Capital.Here is a mural at the college.While in Harrisburg, I went for a five mile run along the Susquehanna River. There is an excellent trail that even includes a bridge to an island in the river. This picture shows part of the river trail, looking back toward the state capitol rotunda.
This is another part of the river trail, looking across the Susquehanna River.Not all of Harrisburg is so nice. Actually, a lot of downtown is pretty run down. This building has a very nice mural painted on it at street level, but if you look up, you see it is boarded up. Many buildings in the city look like this.
I did take a couple of pictures at Penn State, but they weren't very interesting, so I'm not including them. Once I got home on Wednesday evening, we were very busy getting everything ready to leave for Hawaii. The next update should have some good pics from our family reunion on Kauai.

Matt

14 December 2008 - Sledding

While mommy was out of town in Utah helping her mom, we got a huge snow storm.The girls decided to try to fool people into thinking they're angels.
Soon they got bored with that and decided sledding was more fun.
On Friday Madeline had a school field trip to a Christmas Train museum. I got to go too. It was awesome.
Madeline enjoyed herself while we were there too. There were more than 30 trains all going at once.
There was even a surprise visitor for the preschool children.We hope everyone is enjoying their Christmas season.

Matt

7 December 2008 - Piano Recital

On Friday, we had the girls' piano recital, this is their teacher with all of her students. She's going to have a baby soon, so we'll be off piano for several weeks until she's back on her feet.This is Jessica in action on one of three songs she did.
Emily did two songs. Each of the kids did at least one Christmas song.
I forgot my camera, but Saturday night was the ward Christmas party. Although it's less fun when you're the ones in charge of so much of the event, we still had a good time and it was a nice event. After the party, I was even able to call my mom, albeit one day late for her birthday. Happy birthday mom!

Hope you are all enjoying good holidays,

Matt

30 November 2008 - Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, we went to Reston, Virginia to spend the holiday with our friends Jenni and Ed Guzman. The drive down was pretty treacherous, in a blizzard and in the dark. Lots of cars were sliding off the road, but Joanne's car is a monster in the snow. We were only going 15 mph for a while, but we made it through. That was important too, because we had pressing work to get to when we got there.On Wednesday we were able to attend the Washington D.C. temple, and then go out for Ethiopian food with Jerry, Danae and Calista.
On Thanksgiving morning, we took everyone ice skating. This is Jenni with her boys, Noe (in the yellow coat), and Asher.Jessica's a natural skater. She raced me around the rink several times.
The younger girls are pretty good skaters too, but stick a little closer to mommy.
And sometimes they still crash.This is a shot of the girls in front of the Reston Town Center Christmas Tree, on the plaza just outside the skating rink.On Friday we got to go to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I had never been to this new one near Dulles Airport. It's awesome.On the way home, we stopped in Leesburg, Virginia to visit Joanne's cousin Jeremy and his family. This is Madeline with Jeremy's daughter Kora. Our kids love playing with the Goeckeritz kids.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Matt & family

23 November 2008 - Birthday!

Thursday was my (36th) birthday. Joanne bought me a chocolate, chocolate, chocolate cake.Saturday, we took the girls to see Madagascar 2 in the theater, then out to Chuck E. Cheese with some friends. Like most kids, they think Chuck E. Cheese is fabulous.The kids are playing inside a lot more these days, which makes them stir crazy, but they find things to do.

I even got my guitar out to entertain. I'm working on rebuilding my callouses on my fingers.
Matt :-)

16 November 2008 - Snow!

Two inches of rapidly melting snow was all it took to cancel school on Tuesday. Sometimes I wonder if the people running our school district really want to teach our kids.With no school to attend, Emily decided to try to make the best of it.The rest were willing to stay in, feed baby dolls, and keep warm. We even fired up our fireplace.One very exciting item of note happened this week -- Madeline lost her first tooth. It freaked Joanne out because Madeline is only 4. But it freaked her out when Madeline's teeth came in at two months too.If you get some free time one day and feel like thinking about the economy, read this quality article from Mitt Romney. Happy snow day!

Matt

9 November 2008 - Being Musical

We were a very theatrical family this weekend. The touring Broadway production of Mamma Mia! was at the Benedum Center in Pittsburgh. Joanne and I had seen this production five years ago in Las Vegas when we were there for our 8th anniversary. Although the subject matter in the story is a bit dicey, we felt that is was OK for our girls and that we could discuss anything that raised a question for them. The musical is primarily about the music anyway, which the girls really like, so we decided to go for it, and they we all had a lot of fun singing along with the cast.On Saturday, we went back into Pittsburgh to see the Rogers and Hammerstein version of Cinderella. This production was at the Byham Theater, about two blocks from the Benedum. We have season tickets to the Byham, which we tend to enjoy more than the Benedum because it is much smaller and more intimate for musical stage productions.

Cinderella crossed the stage pulled by four white horse people, who had been changed by the fairy godmother from four little mouse people.Here are the girls in the Byham following Cinderella.
That's the most exciting thing in our lives right now. Hope you're all well.

Matt

2 November 2008 - Halloween

Here are the three girls all decked out for Halloween. Jessica was a black cat, Emily was Elphaba, the wicked witch of the west, and Madeline was Barbie princess Luciana.Here is Emily with her purple witchy hair, but no green skin.
This is Jessica as the black cat in her school Halloween costume parade.
The girls have had a serious amount of Halloween this week -- school, church and neighborhood. Mommy and daddy wish there wasn't quite so much candy around the house these days.

Happy Halloween to all of you too. Send pics of your kids (if applicable).

Halloween wasn't the only thing that happened this week though. We celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary on Saturday by going out to dinner (sans kids) at a very nice restaurant called Alfanos. During the day on our anniversary, Joanne did crafts at Relief Society Super Saturday, and I presided over the funeral of Ethel Kelley, who was baptized into the Washington, PA branch of the LDS church in 1947. It was a very good experience to meet and help the family of a true pioneer in this area.

Matt

26 October 2008 - Fall

I found this scene in the basement when I went downstairs the other night. If you click on the picture to expand it, you'll see Emily on the elliptical in the background. Jessica is enjoying my recumbent bike, and Madeline is doing a yoga pose along with the YogaKids DVD that she's watching.Joanne finished another patchwork quilt for Humanitarian Aid this week.
Madeline had here fall singing program in Preschool. They sang all about how God created everything. They also made their t-shirts for the program.

In addition to singing, she also got to play the bells.

Have a happy fall!

Matt

19 October 2008: Charlotte / Stake Conference

Joanne went to Charlotte, NC this week for the AFPA Mind and Body Conference. It was a little rough being home with all three girls, but she pulls it off all the time when I travel, so I figure it was definitely my turn to take one for the team.

Saturday was Homecoming for W&J. We went to a tailgate lunch and saw Joan Downing, who is now in graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. We haven't seen Joanie in a while, the girls were disappointed to hear that she wasn't here to babysit them, but they were still glad to see her. They wanted to read the coal miner's book while we were on campus, and then we went to part of the homecoming football game.Saturday afternoon I took the girls to the stake center for stake conference. I had priesthood leadership meeting at 4 PM and the evening session at 7 PM, so it made for a long day. The girls were very good.

The Sunday morning session was at a high school near the city, and Joanne's flight home was landing just after 1 PM, so we went to stake conference, then to a park to get some wiggles out while we waited for mommy's flight to arrive. We played on the swings... ...on the rocky horses...
...and drove the train!For the first time in her life, Emily mastered the monkey bars without anyone holding her legs. It was such a momentous accomplishment, she had to show mommy on our monkey bars when we got home.The thing that makes daddies so cool is they let you do this stuff in your church clothes. (And they give you pop tarts in your lunch box.)

If you get bored this week and need a compelling read, check out this excellent Wall Street Journal article from Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig.

12 October 2008 - Visitors from Maryland

I've got kind of a picture heavy update for this week (Don't forget you can click on them to see them in big form). Pictures are more interesting than reading the minutiae of my life though. Joanne has recently become addicted to making patchwork quilts for humanitarian aid. This is one she recently finished.Madeline had a preschool trip to Simmons Farm and got a baby pumpkin!
She petted a bunny...
...and a goat.
Emily lost both top front teeth this week.
Madeline has decided she loves curly hair.
At soccer on Saturday morning, she decided she was cold, and I decided I was hot, so I took off my sweatshirt, and Madeline put it on.
Baby cousin Calista brought her mommy (Danae) and daddy (Jerry) to visit for the weekend. We got the tandem swing going for her.She was a monster on the slide.
And she's just too darn cute for her own good.
That's about it for this week. Have fun, happy fall.

Matt