Author: Andy Smallman

As I’m writing, Bob is using Ella’s iPad to try to log in to his Hotmail account. It’s taken him about 10 minutes so far, long enough for me to take this photo, connect the camera to my laptop, upload the photo, and use photo manipulation software to crop and ready the photo for uploading to WordPress for this blog post. Not only that, but to start writing this post.

Wait, there’s an update! Oh, darn. Bob just gave up.

That’s too bad because what he wants to do is show us what he described is the greatest picture of all time, one of his daughter Naclaysia who is getting married soon.

Wait, there’s another update! Melinda has moved Bob from the iPad to a desktop computer. Hope is returning.

Maybe not. Bob just said, “What am I doing?” I’ve been asking that about him for a long, long time.

Wait, there is a late, post posting update. Bob managed to not only show us the photo, but has convinced me to add it to this post. Here it is, the greatest photo ever!

It was a big day in Nantes two years ago yesterday. Why? Because two years ago Melinda and I, along with my visiting parents, took Frédérique and Laurent to the racetrack. Sitting across from my dad at a racetrack in France, one that was a short walk from our house, was as close to a dream coming true as I can imagine. Go take a look at the blog post I wrote for that day.

In celebration of that post, that day, of the racetrack in Nantes, of the sabbatical itself, I present today’s photo. It’s a screenshot from the Nantes racetrack website, which I regularly visit to watch videos of the races. Ah, I love doing that.

Today’s blog title comes from a song written by a man named Harry Chapin. He’s most famous for the song “Cat’s in the Cradle,” which is a wonderful song, too. But I think “Flowers Are Red” is its equal. The song has to do with the natural art ability in kids and how formal education tends to squelch it.

If you look at little kids, they are always creating something. Look at this picture of Ella. She’s sitting on the kitchen floor some 11 years ago just drawing away, fully absorbed in her creation. This makes me think that it’s natural to humans, but we seem to lose the drive (or have it taken from us).

I challenge you to see if you can recapture it, or pay attention to something creative that you do.

By the way, you can see Harry perform “Flowers Are Red” here.

Back in 2008 I turned my ballot over to Chloe, provided she educated herself about the issues being decided. She was most excited to cast my ballot that year for Barack Obama. She was 15.

This year, 4 years later obviously, she is 19 and has her own ballot. I think the enormity of the responsibility hit her last week as she was considering all the issues and races in Washington state. She called for a consultation.

Upon completion of the consultation, I asked if she’d be willing to send me a picture of her cast ballot. Today’s photo is the result.

I salute all the first-time voters!

So here’s Perrin from Halloween night, wearing the a vampire costume made by my mother many years ago for Ella to wear. What with her face make-up, black hair and all, Perrin makes a pretty impressive vampire, if you ask me.

Go ahead, ask me.

Perrin makes a pretty impressive vampire.

Since the time Ella was a vampire for Halloween we’ve been introduced to the “Twilight” saga, among many other vampire-related things. Did this all start with Buffy (as in the vampire slayer) or does it go back further?

For instance, can I somehow blame Grandpa on the Munsters for our modern fascination with vampires?

It’s three weeks until the Seattle Marathon and it’s on my mind a lot. It’s my first full marathon and I’ve been training hard. Today was my last super long run in preparation, after which is the 3 week “taper” stage in which the training runs are scaled down.

I ran for 4 hours today and figure my distance was somewhere between 24 and 25 miles. In case you don’t know, a marathon is 26.2 miles so I almost ran one today. And I think I overdid it a bit. I learned some things, too.

One, I think it’s going to be very hard for me to run a 4 hour marathon. To do so I need to run right around 9 minute miles. By the end of today’s training run, the best I could muster was 10 minute miles. And the reason for this is my ankles.

I played a lot of basketball when I was younger and, unfortunately, did some damage to my ankles. In today’s run, that really came back to haunt me as my ankles really started to burn. 6 hours later, my left ankle is very stiff. I’ll need to focus on how to treat my ankles well in the next 3 weeks.

Today’s photo has nothing to do with the post but I picked it anyway since I’m writing about myself. It’s better than a picture of my left ankle, right?

The mom in this picture (on the left) is Sahra, daughter of oft-mentioned Bob and sister to Si, he of De Colores Bookstore in Olympia. That’s David, Sahra’s husband, on the right. And sandwiched between them, loveliest of all, is Vivian, their daughter.

If you haven’t figured this out yet, that makes Vivian Bob’s granddaughter. And that makes me a little jealous of him and a lot excited for him. Bob has a granddaughter, one who will soon be two. And, to top it off, Vivian has a sibling due in February.

I’ve long told people, those willing to listen or pay attention, that my lone ambition in life is to be a grandfather. That’s a lot of pressure to put on my kids, I know, so I tell them I’m in no hurry to have my ambition filled.

But seeing Vivian today, who came (along with her folks) for an afternoon visit at our house, certainly got me thinking about it again.

That Bob. He’s a lucky guy.

Take a minute to study this picture. What does it look like Ella is doing? Maybe it would be a better question to ask what it looks like Ella is wearing.

Either way, the answer has to do with a hula hoop.

That’s right. At our last nutrition class we were on our typical break, a time for the students to go put into practice what we were learning and get some exercise, and Ella picked up the hula hoop, per usual. She impressed everyone with her ability so I decided I should take a picture to commemorate the occasion.

When I looked at the picture it was almost like the hula hoop had disappeared, or that Ella was wearing some fancy kind of flaired-out skirt.

Tricks photos try to play on you.

Two days ago I mentioned that it was our niece Olivia’s birthday. I included a cute photo of her to go with the post, what I said was one of my favorites. But I have some other favorites involving Olivia, and in most cases these photos include Ella.

Take this one for instance. So often you’d find these two cousins with their arms around each other. And, all biases aside, can you find two more photogenic kids than these two?

Switching subjects, most of my readers likely know I have another blog, one devoted to my work on the subject of kindness. I have a new kindness class starting in December and am biding my time until then by posting family stories that I connect to kindness. As an example, check out this post about my dad, me, and the racetrack.

So Ella is throwing a little get-together tonight at our house for three of her girlfriends, a Ghostbuster, Raggedy Ann, and a ventriloquist’s dummy. She, herself, is either a chaperone or a ventriloquist. You pick.

They left school at about 3:45 and it’s now 7:45pm. By my calculation, that’s 4 hours. So other than the bus ride home, they’ve been getting ready.

It was a lot easier to get Ella in her costume when she was younger. Perhaps that has to do with my mom’s ability to construct easy to wear costumes. Or maybe it had to do with Ella being anxious to go trick or treating.

Two years ago today we returned from Paris to our home in Nantes and had to beg kids to stop at our house to trick or treat…