Later in the day, the rain turned to our first snowfall of the year. It may be necessary to click on the photo to see the snowflakes. Meanwhile, our burning bushes are in their full fall glory.

My mother sent me this cartoon in the mail. She follows this blog and has been keeping track of my various soccer injuries. Ironically, I sustained no new injuries in my game today even though I played then entire 90 minutes. Temperature was below 40F and it rained for the entire game. You need to be a die hard fan of the sport to play in these conditions. I decided to stay in for the remainder of the day and did a little woodworking and crutch maintenance for Nicolai.

This evening we were joined for dinner by Rob and Kyle Shurtleff who are visiting from Seattle. Rob’s daughter Katie is competing in the Head of the Charles Regatta tomorrow and Kyle has been visiting colleges in the area. Rob’s wife, Cindy, is a friend from my Stanford days and was unable to join her family here because she is competing in a squash tournament in California. If my soccer match is not delayed tomorrow, I will have just enough time to make it to the finish line in time to see Katie’s boat finish.

After work I went to watch Maya play soccer in Newton. It was freezing cold and the game ended in near total darkness. Fortunately she played for nearly the entire match and stayed warm in so doing. I on the other hand froze my a$$ off. She has less than twelve hours before she plays again tomorrow.

On the drive into work today, I stopped briefly to say hello to this fellow. As concerned as I was about his horns, you would think I’d have framed them in the shot.

 
Spotted a little cherub this morning and although she was being shy I managed to come away with a nice image. Maya has been thriving at school and has developed some very good work habits. She is quite organized, very neat and is showing a lot of pride in her work.

Autumn is my favorite time of year. Soccer season is in full swing and fall foliage abounds. I have been experimenting with my commute trying to find a shorter and/or more scenic route into Cambridge. I have now found at least one option that gets me off the main roads without adding any time and takes me past some beautiful farms and fields.

I have admired this painting, which has hung in the cafe at work for more than a year now. It reminds me of the farm in France that belonged to Jeanine’s relatives there.

Why would a high school boy play soccer while injured? A close examination of the spectators might offer some clue. CCHS defeated Boston Latin by a score of 5 to 0 and Kyle’s game looked strong with some nice moves and creative passing.

 
Maya is going to be a cupcake for Halloween. We worked together to fashion the skeleton over the weekend. Today she requisitioned one of my speaker stands as a modelling platform and is applying sprinkles to the frosting with hot melt glue. Of our children Maya has emerged as the most construction project oriented and I am still holding out some hope for one engineer in the family.

Jeanine spent the afternoon picking apples with Maya and her friends, Isabel and Kelan. The harvest was great, and I am sure there will be a photo of an apple pie in this journal’s future.

More often than not, obtaining a leaf required climbing high into the tree. Why Nico would choose to do this without a shoe only reinforces my belief that the teenage brain is still missing some critical executive thinking functions.

I am thrilled that my calf has recovered sufficiently to allow me to play soccer. Even though I could only go at about 70% effort it was great to be out on the pitch this morning. We have a make up game on Thursday and I hope to be in even better shape by then. Back to the leaf hunt. Nicolai uses a field guy to verify that he has the correct specimen.

I spent a good part of the afternoon with Nicolai hunting for leaves. He has a science project which involves collecting leaf and needle specimens from a list of 50 trees. He can earn extra credit for having 20 photographs showing him in the act of collecting. This project took us all over the town of Concord guided by a Google Earth map showing us where each tree type could be found.