Thanksgiving thanks

Thanks to Mark and Stephanie for allowing us to crash the Thanksgiving party after we postponed our trip to Arizona. It has been 7 years (I think) since we spent a Thanksgiving in Minnesota.

I wish I had brought my camera to capture Chip's perpetual smile; I would have posted. It is heart-warming to see him enjoy himself so much.

Todd

Farm Buildings

The first picture we believe to be taken somewhere around 1905 to 1910. The second man from the left is great grandfather Charles Pearson. The man on the right in the hat is grandfather Alfred Pearson. I need to get Curtis to fill in the blanks on the other names though I do know that the brother on the left moved to Saskatchewan. Notice how ornate the building was with stained glass and fancy woodwork. The old picture was taken from the east. The second picture was taken a couple weeks ago from the south. Needless to say, the house needs some maintenance. The other pictures are of the barn and outbuildings. It is a nice place to be when you want to relax and as Katy would say, "do some naturing".

Mark Andrew Pearson, son of Curtis, grandson of Alfred, great grandson of Charles.

Deja vu all over again

The lab tests confirmed today that Ramius' baseball size growth on his chest is cancerous. Melinda is taking him to the vet this afternoon for chest xrays and a biopsy. If the cancer has not spread, I expect that surgery will be the next step. If it has spread, there really isn't anything that we can reasonably do.

I expect that one of us will update this post later today.

Todd

UPDATE: The news is not good. He has a tumor on his heart and in his lungs. There is nothing they can realistically do to treat him.

Sorry, Grandma!!

There really isn't a lot to report about the weekend at the farm except that we had a great time, Mark got one pheasant and Stephanie won the Friday night Texas Hold 'Em tournament. We did make a trip to Tokheim pottery where a beautiful dark red plate was purchased, one that Stephanie had been eyeing for a couple of years.

The girls have the entire Thanksgiving week off school. Woo hoo!! Mark and Stephanie have a conference with Katy's teacher, Mrs. Sladek, Monday evening. She has been doing fabulously in school...since this is the Pearson Family Blog, Stephanie feels this is the spot to brag...perfect report card, involved in the reading and math challenge, and scoring between 98-99% on her MAP reading, math and language tests. She is a TRUE "love of learning" kid!!

To all a Happy Thanksgiving! We are truly thankful for each and every one of you!!

Comments from Grandma

I am enjoying this blog enormously....and awaiting posts from Mark & Stephanie, as well as Chuck & Kim...The Pearson-Peterson week-end at the Pearson Farm would make good reading..and ..more family stuff: Kim and Chuck's comments about their Madison visit with Avis, the house, the town. (as well as other details about your 19,000 mile drive , and life in Eugene in general)..By the way, Avis has been back home for over a week now and seems to be doing just fine with those stairs, thank you very much.

The Granny Awards at Zachary Lane

Matthew and Kallie performed in three premiere showings of the Granny Awards at Zachary Lane Elementary school on Tuesday, November 15th. Kallie starred as Wheezy, the dwarf, that met thunderous applause as she carried an "Applause" sign across the stage after each award. Matthew starred as Prince Charming with a brief solo. A spectacluar event with moments captured on video.

Posted by Scott

Close call

Near disaster at our house today. Click here for details.

Todd

New comment feature

FYI --I took out the default comment feature and installed Haloscan's comment system for 2 reasons. First, the default feature was already getting spammed. Second, Haloscan's comment system is just better. I transferred the couple of comments we already had to the new system.

TODD

An old friend

POSTED BY TODD:

I remember Rascal sleeping in my room at home during a visit from St. Olaf and looking at her and thinking that it would probably be the last time that I would see her. In the only time I remember doing so, I let her on my (water) bed that night. I'm glad I did, because it turned out that I was right.

Suggestions, not rules

POSTED BY TODD:

I am really pleased to see that there has been a positive reception to this blog. My thought was that all of the emails and other communications that go back and forth among us will be lost in time, but this blog could be a permanent family diary.

As we all try to figure this out, I would politely suggest that people try to follow this convention in posting: Please identify yourself somehow in the post or comment. Whether a post or comment is from “Todd”, “The Holdridge Group,” of “Fenton” is relevant. If and when I’m nominated for the Supreme Court, I don’t want Fenton’s anonymous posts attributed to me.

A couple of other pointers:

1. If you click on the time-stamp for a particular post, you will get just that post and the comments to it. For that reason, I suggest that comments to posts and photos, etc. actually go in the “comments” section to that post. That way, everything will be linked forever.
2. If you want to post pictures, is relatively simple. There is an “Add Image” icon on the “create” post page. If you need help with that, just let me know.

Personally, I hope that everyone uses this as a place to communciate about anything they want (personal or otherwise). I hope we can have fun and, at the same time, create something that memorializes family history.

Orchestra Hall Fieldtrip for the Larsen Kids

Today, Matthew and Kallie went on a field trip to Orchestra Hall. They heard a world premiere of Blip, Drip, Sparkle, Glow, Chop, Glint, something, something, something... It was wierd but very cool (their words). At the end, everyone voted for songs and Pirates of the Carribean won. Darth Vader came in and demanded a recount as he wanted the Star Wars theme to win! Orchestra Hall was a pretty neat place.

Cole's first crush

Cole has asked to have his new friend Anna come over for a play-date this week, and the last couple of days Anna has been a preoccupation for him. Tonight, we went to the store and he mentioned to me on the way there that "Anna lives on that street." On the way back, he said "I wonder what Anna is doing now -- having a snack, watching TV, playing."

By the way, we had a parent-teacher conference today and, after a rough start to the year, Cole has settled in and is doing very well with all aspects of being a first-grader. After the last three difficult years, that was very good news indeed.

TODD

Day one

For the initial post to this new family blog, I will start with this photo of two people who look familiar.

TODD