September through December 2009

You can see all the photos for October or Nov/Dec in the Photogallery
Well, most of September; you can see the first week in September, where Brie played her first tennis match for RPI, here.  Below, the annual hike up the mountain (well, hill if you want to get technical) at Tophet Canyon.  This trip included Kate, Tasha, Patric and me.  The view has been blocked by growing trees over the years but you can still see downtown Boston  (really, Hancock place and the Pru sticking up over the hills; everything else is hidden).  
 


Then there was that freakish mid-October snowstorm... nothing really stuck but it was unusual
 

We attended the RPI Family Weekend October 24th and 25th, which was fun despite a lot of heavy rain.  Brie has settled in at this point and is enjoying herself immensely.  We skipped a lot of the activities because of the inclement weather... we did watch an incredibly muddy rugby match for five minutes (I didn't even know RPI had a team), saw an international festival with music and food in the McNeil room at the student union, attended a legacy reception (where Brie met the current RPI president Shirley Jackson) and did some tours and the like, but I think everyone's favorite activity was playing ping-pong in the student union game room. 


Kate at the new Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center


Brie with RPI President Shirley Jackson


Will and Kate in the Rathskeller


Rain was coming down so hard the streets outside the student union flooded

I'm still convinced that the new RPI biotechnology center is going to be the birthplace of the brain-eating-mutant-zombie virus... if you were going to film a movie about zombies, wouldn't this be one of the sets? (It's the inside of the biotech center, by the way)
Not to mention the "artwork" that adorns the place.  This piece is entitled "the wonder of re-animated corpses" and comes with a little instruction manual on how to make your own.
 
Kate went to California the next weekend to attend her Mother's 80th birthday party.  She had a chance to visit the San Fernando Mission while she was there, but not much else.  But we are going back as a family for Christmas break while Brie is off from RPI.
 
Will and I also had a few opportunities to get some time in at the range... mostly skeet and handgun shooting (below, we've run out of clay pigeons so it's time to play "blow up the cardboard boxes the clay pigeons came in" with the over/under 12 gauge shotgun).
 
Will continues to play tennis tournaments to prep for his upcoming year as the captain of the Acton Boxborough High School Tennis Team (as a Junior, it's quite an accomplishment); here, he and partner David Lowenthal win a level 6 tournament for 18 year olds (Will is 16 and David is 15, but you can "play up" if you want to).
 
Brie came home Thanksgiving Weekend; she and a friend from Acton (Jake) were picked up by Jake's folks and we drove them back on the weekend.  Thanksgiving was at my Uncle's house.  Below, Thanksgiving dinner, the cousins at Thanksgiving, Brie spends some time with Patric and Tasha, and Kate and I at dinner with Brie at Brown's in Troy the night we dropped Brie off.  
 


Tasha and Patric wish you a happy new year!