Sperger Family

Bouncing away the day

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Programming note: There will be no new posts next week, the week of April 26th. I have a business trip. During the week of May 3rd, posting may be disrupted because we have to change our blogging platform. (For those who are technically inclined: Google is ending FTP support for Blogger. Boo.) We'll be back up and running as soon as is practical that week.

All right, back to the important stuff. For our last day of spring break, we met some friends at a playground, and then went to an indoor bounce playground a couple towns over from us. What is an indoor bounce playground, you ask? Picture a moon bounce. Now picture ten different varieties of moon bounce, all inside a converted warehouse. Yes, it's as much fun as it sounds.

First, a quick look at our playground romp, which included a small but spirited game of Whiffle ball:

When we headed over to the bounce place, we started out in a room that contained a sort of inflatable boxing ring, complete with comically oversized boxing gloves that weighed about ten pounds (5kg) each:

And did I mention that parents play for free?

For the pacifists in the crowd, there was a nice inflatable climbing structure with a big slide at the end:

There was also a two-person racing obstacle course, which yours truly ran several times, to the detriment of my bone and joint health:

Truth be told, the kids had a good time, but this was really a workout opportunity for the parents, and we loved it:

Until next time, have fun out there!

Easter dinner

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:31:00 +0000

My uncle Mick and his family hosted for Easter dinner with the Spergers this year, so we trooped out to their place for food, conversation, and the traditional Easter egg hunt:

Our events are always well documented, thanks to the efforts of your intrepid reporter, his lovely wife, and Little Sis:

It was good to see everybody - we hadn't known my cousin Dan was home from college for the weekend - and thus refreshed, we headed home for one more day of spring break before it was time to head back to work and school.

Tomorrow: Bounce.

Easter morning

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Like Christmas morning, only a lot more low key.

Here was the scene before the kids woke up:

By the way, I had to wake up the older two after Anna came to get me. Nick was downright unhappy about the wake up call. Chelsea didn't even get out of bed this year. "Take some pictures," she mumbled.

You'll notice how chipper Anna looks compared with the other two:

You'll also notice there is pretty much no candy in sight. We are those parents:

Anna insisted on standing on her chair after a while... possibly to show that she did indeed possess more energy than her two siblings combined:

It was a nice, quiet, sunny Easter morning. We eventually rousted Chelsea and made it to the late Mass. Tomorrow: Easter dinner with the Spergers.

Spring baseball

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 13:48:00 +0000

The day before Easter, Nick and I took a couple of his friends to a Phillies exhibition game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. (The regular season didn't start until the day after Easter, so this was technically a spring training game, albeit one played here in Philadelphia.) We took the subway down to the park, which turned out to be a real novelty for his friends, neither of whom had ever been on the Philly subway before:

We got to the park early enough to see batting practice, which was a first for me. I've never managed to get to a game that early before:

Our seats were up high and away, along the first base line in the upper deck, but the price was right - we paid $4 per ticket with taxes and fees included. As it turned out, the weather was perfect and we had a fantastic time. But it could have been 45F/9C with clouds and wind. And this was an exhibition game, meaning both teams pulled their starters after a few innings.

If you look closely in this picture, you can see about two dozen Pirates players standing around in the outfield before the game started. That was a strange sight:

The boys did plenty of roaming around during the game, and plenty of eating too:

It was a fine way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Now, where were we?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 13:24:00 +0000

All right, I found my cable for downloading pictures from my camera. So we can now pick up with the rest of spring break. When we last left our intrepid explorers, they were slogging through the zoo with 100,000 of their closest friends.

On leaving the zoo, we had to cross the Schuylkill River to get back to our van, and we had the chance to snap a couple of pictures of the city skyline and the crew teams rowing on the river:

On our way home from the zoo, we stopped for water ice, that classic Philadelphia treat with the baffling name:

Tomorrow: Besuboru!

Wayback Machine: Sum-sum-summertime

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Yeah, it's only the middle of April. But we're having such a warm and sunny month that it's easy to forget we're not in the middle of June.

While I'm working on our latest technical glitch, I thought we could take a look back at our beach trip in the summer of 2007. In particular, we spent one evening on the boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey with practically the entire extended family. Here are two of my uncles:

My mom and my little sis:

And a very nice photo of my folks:

Going to the boardwalk is all about the rides:

And of course, it's also about the cotton candy:

Hope to be back soon with some fresh pictures. In the meantime, have a fun day!

Wayback Machine: February 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:48:00 +0000

We're having some technical trouble this week - your correspondent managed to lose the cable that connects the camera to the computer. Sigh. While I keep searching, here's a look back at a night of sledding back in February of last year:

Since I've started keeping this blog, it has amazed me how quickly we come out of sledding and run headlong into spring.

Interlude: Saturday breakfast

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:24:00 +0000

As the resident early risers in the house, Anna and I often go out to breakfast together on Saturday mornings. This past Saturday we decided to head to Whole Foods, which has some decent bagels and a yummy hot breakfast bar.

Anna went for a poppy seed bagel this time, reflecting the influence of Chelsea's mom Mary on her taste in bagels... poppy seed is Mary's favorite:

In typical Anna fashion, she was actually trying to avoid getting her picture taken, which is why she was holding the bagel in front of her for the last picture:

Eventually I got her, though:

That girl is a funny duck. You may notice that she's wearing her pajamas. That was her choice, but when we ran a couple of errands after Whole Foods, she kept saying to me, "Are there going to be a lot of people in this place?" I guess she started feeling self-conscious about her attire.

The kids who stare at goats

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:11:00 +0000

On Friday we took the girls to the zoo. (Nick went to a friend's house for the day.) We went with two other families, and we were all eager to take advantage of the gorgeous weather - sunny and warm, with high temps around 80F/26C.

Unfortunately, everybody else in Philadelphia had the same idea.

It took us about 30 minutes to get from the MLK Drive (West River Drive) up to the traffic light in front of the zoo, a distance of maybe 1500 feet (500m). Our usual parking spots were completely jam packed, so we ended up parking in a makeshift lot in Fairmount Park, across the river from the zoo.

Once inside the zoo, we had a good idea - we started by heading down the left side path from the entrance, instead of going to the right as almost everyone else normally does. That gave us a few hours of moderate crowds instead of body-to-body crowds, but the place was just packed all around.

Here's Chelsea with our friend Nicole:

When we started down the left side path, one of the first things we reached was Bear Country. It's weird seeing a polar bear on green grass... it's as if the zoo decided to do an exhibit based on the TV show Lost.

The zoo is readying a Lego-themed set of exhibits, so in several places around the property there are life size Lego versions of animals:

Smile and wave, boys... smile and wave.

Anna, who is crazy about animals, really enjoyed herself throughout. At the start of first grade this year, each of the kids wrote down something that they hoped to learn about this year. Anna wrote, "I hope to learn about animals."

Miss Maria is also a friend of nature:

We got to go in the new aviary, which opened last summer. It's a great addition to the zoo, beautifully done, though in truth we were starting to get a little warm and tired by the time we got there.

One of our last stops of the day was the Treehouse, an old favorite. I remember climbing on these eggs when I was a kid:

We started wilting in the heat during the afternoon, and missed out on the big cat exhibit. But it was a great day all around, and we want to thank the 200,000 residents of the Delaware Valley who came out to enjoy the day at the zoo with us.

Happy weekend!

Ralph Stover

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:43:00 +0000

After we'd had our fill of banging on magical rocks, we drove a few miles down the river to Ralph Stover State Park, where we could do some hiking along a creek in a valley.

Amazingly, there were some whitewater kayakers out for a paddle:

The kids skipped rocks... waiting, of course, for the kayakers to pass first:

We took a creekside family self-portrait:

And no photo op would be complete without a shot of the Three Musketeers together:

Next it was time to hit the playground:

As is often the case, Maria had the best and most stylish technique:

Near the playground we found a big climbing log suspended over a little branch of the creek:

To get this very sweet picture of the Three Musketeers sitting together on the log, I had to bribe them with a promise that I would dunk my head in the creek:

Chelsea has pictures of the dunking, but I'm not posting them.

To wrap up the day, we drove a little bit more to the top of a ridge overlooking a creek, where there are several scenic lookouts. The pictures don't really do justice to the view from up there, alas, but we snapped some nice pictures of the family:

When we got home for the evening, we found that the day's weather had caused our trees to bloom:

Amazingly, the weather was only getting better from there.

Tomorrow: At the Zoo... along with everyone else in Philly.

Ringing Rocks

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:20:00 +0000

On April Fools Day, we headed out for a day of hiking and banging on rocks.

Really.

There is a boulder field about 40 minutes away from us called Ringing Rocks Park. Many years ago, someone discovered that these rocks have a special property - if you bang on them with a hammer or another rock, they don't sound like rocks. They sound like pipes. What's even cooler is that nobody is exactly sure why this particular boulder field works this way. Not every rock in the field is capable of ringing - only about a third of them, apparently, can perform. And when scientists have removed those rocks from the field for analysis, they lose their ability to ring.

Spooky!

We set out in the trusty minivan and had a picnic lunch at the park:

Then it was time to get out there:

We banged on the rocks for a while, then chased each other around the boulder field. The weather was warm and sunny, and we had the place virtually to ourselves.

Tomorrow: Ralph Stover. (A park, not a person. Well, I guess he was a person at some point. But he's a park now.)

Teenager on the loose

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:20:00 +0000

Somebody in our house - I'm not naming names - turned 13 last week, meaning that your faithful correspondent is now the parent of a teenager.

Wow. I feel older just writing that.

Birthday boy decided to celebrate with cake and dinner at Jason's Deli, a restaurant around the corner from us.

Here's the (not yet) hulking teenager and his proud parents:

He took photos with a few other characters, too:

Then it was time to open a few gifts:

A good time was had by all.

This was the start of my spring break, and it was more like the middle of the kids' break - they had started their break the prior Thursday, and only went back to school this morning.

Before dinner, we had gone to play laser tag - Nick, the girls, and I had gone. We don't have any pictures, but we had a pretty good time. It was Anna's first time playing, and it turned out that her relatively small size was an advantage. She could duck behind things to avoid being tagged.

Tomorrow: Ringing Rocks!

Take us out to the ball game

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:25:00 +0000

Nick and I are taking some of our guy friends to a baseball game this weekend, and it looks like we couldn't have chosen a better time to do it. We were out to the ballpark the first weekend of last season, too:

Last year it was 60F/15C and very windy. This year, I think we're in for some amazing weather.

I'm taking a few days off for spring break, so we'll pick up again on Tuesday. Happy Easter and Passover!

First flower planting of the season

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:58:00 +0000

Maria and one of her friends decided that they wanted to start a new flower garden outside our house. There's not much they can plant yet - still a risk of frosts and freezes for a few more weeks - but they were able to plant some pansies:

Maria says she wants to take pictures of them every week throughout the season so we can see how they grow. We'll see if we remember to do that....

Vegetables: How many Spergers are out there?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:48:00 +0000

Via the marvelous James Fallows, the US Census publishes a fascinating spreadsheet of frequently occurring names in US households. The top ten contains a few usual suspects and perhaps a few surprises:

1. Smith
2. Johnson
3. Williams
4. Brown
5. Jones
6. Miller
7. Davis
8. Garcia
9. Rodriguez
10. Wilson

I wouldn't have thought of Davis or Wilson. Garcia and Rodriguez - I might have guessed Martinez (11) or Hernandez (15) would place higher, but I'll admit that I don't know Hispanic ethnography/geneaology well enough to make an informed prediction. There are six Hispanic surnames in the top 25, and not for nothing does salsa outsell ketchup in the US.

(Important note: This is not a political statement on my part, especially not about legal or illegal immigration.)

Anyway, here on Sperger.com we have one interest only, and that's the promotion and greater glory of Spergers everywhere. Here are the top ranking surnames that contain "sperger" in them, and then of course, Sperger itself. The numbers in parentheses after each name indicate how many US households claim the given name as their surname:

33,955. Gindlesperger (633 households)
44,529. Hopfensperger (455)
47,435. Leibensperger (421)
50,652. Raffensperger (388)
62,682. Kochensperger (299)
71,893. Hunsperger (253)
74,957. Adelsperger (240)

And so on, until:

123,977. Sperger (129 households)

Some extended family names in the Sperger tribe that occur much more frequently:

34. King (438,000 households)
157. Hunt (152,000)
5,160. Gammon (6,238)
19,188. Convery (1,300)
25,956. Marnell (889)
49,538. Seydel (399)

One conclusion from all this is obvious: Those who marry into the Sperger family clearly become part of something more unique than where they started. Those of us who are Spergers by birth knew this already. Even so, it's nice to have hard data.

If you are fortunate enough to be part of a Sperger household, and you use Facebook, I invite you to join the group The Very Extended Sperger Family. Share in the tradition of excellence.

Also: Gindlesperger? Gindlesperger? That's the most popular Sperger-related name in the US?!? Baffling. Even more baffling is that it turns out they have an association to keep track of their US genealogy. I guess when you have 633 households contributing, you can afford to get fancy.

Well, we have an international music contest named for us. Take that, Gindlespergers.

The many faces of a Maria monster

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:25:00 +0000

We were over at Chelsea's preschool this past weekend for a little bit while she did some pictures of Nick, so the kids and I were kicking around the school and the playground while Chelsea worked on other stuff. Maria was having a little bit of a hard day, but we eventually coaxed some smiles and silly faces out of her:

Nick and Anna did what they do best... entertaining themselves and each other on the playground:

They even got me in on the fun:

Notice we're all wearing cold-weather gear... that won't last for long this week. We have a big rain storm moving through, and then it's supposed to get progressively warmer this week. By Saturday, we may have temperatures above 80F/27C. (If you prefer Kelvin: 300K. Doesn't that sound really hot?) Anyway, it's going to be time for shorts and sandals around here. Time to build up the freckle inventory again!

Time to camp again

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:49:00 +0000

With the sudden rush of warm weather we've had in Philly these last two weeks, our thoughts are naturally turning to summertime. I've been saying for the last two years that I want to do more camping - in 2007 we got out four times, but in 2008 and 2009 we only went once each year. I'm determined this year.

On my way home from work these days, I can see the trees and the ground just starting to take on the green fuzz of spring. Won't be long now.

My neighbor, The Mayor

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:08:00 +0000

Yesterday I mentioned that my neighbor and I were planning to till our gardens. What I hadn't mentioned was that we were planning to do it Friday after work. But when I got home from work last night, I saw the he had gone ahead and rented the tiller, done his... and done mine.

Great neighbor!

We jokingly call him The Mayor, because he's so well tuned in to the goings-on of the neighborhood. I almost wish I could vote for him in something - it's the least I can do to say thanks. (Well, that and a case of beer.)

Wayback Machine: Garden time again

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:29:00 +0000

Sometime this week or next, my neighbor and I will be tilling our gardens to start getting them ready for the growing season. We're going to make our garden a bit bigger this year, to accommodate a few more types of vegetables, and also to see if we can grow some herbs, like basil and rosemary, for use in the kitchen.

Here's a look back at the start of our efforts last year... note that just over the weekend, the grass started turning that iridescent green you see in the pictures. We love springtime!

And here's a quick look at the bounty our garden was yielding by July:

Make your reservations now for a salad dinner at our place this summer.

American Girl Fashion Show

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:57:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, Maria and Anna appeared in the American Girl Fashion Show, an event held every year to benefit local kids' charities. Here are a few pictures of our girls in costume at rehearsals:

Maria has been doing this show for several years, and she's now so tall that she has probably outgrown the show. We think this will be her last year. Anna is in her second year, and has a few more years ahead of her as long as she's still interested.

A few more Washington pics

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:11:00 +0000

All right, I worked out our technical problems with the digital camera, and I was able to retrieve the rest of our photos.

There were some sharp restrictions on photography in the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit, but they had a replica warrior at the exit who was available for group pictures:

I also snapped a flash-free picture of one of the figures in the exhibit... fortunately they were very well lit:

This is another iconic figure... a C-3PO costume from the original Star Wars trilogy, on display at the American History Museum:

Here we are out for a walk on the soggy National Mall:

There's nothing soggy about Philadelphia this weekend, so to all of you on the East Coast, enjoy the fabulous weekend! We certainly earned it this winter.

How quickly it passes...

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:10:00 +0000

Just a few weeks ago, my driveway looked like this:

With more than a week of above-average temperatures, it's all gone now. The last of our February snow mountains disappeared last week, and now, the snow is basically gone everywhere.

We still have some stacked up against the side of our parking garage at work, where they dumped all of the snow they cleared out of the garage. I think that snow is going to be with us until July.

Weekend in DC

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:09:00 +0000

I had a conference in Washington last week, and Chelsea came down at the tail end of the conference so we could spend a little kid-free time together in the nation's capital. I'm having a little bit of trouble getting all of our pictures off the camera, so these updates may take a couple days to finish out.

Friday evening we went to the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit at the National Geographic Museum, and it was amazing. The story: In the 1970s some farmers in rural China accidentally discovered an underground warren full of terra cotta statues. These statues comprised an army - some 7,000 in all, of which only 1,000 have been excavated so far. They were made to guard the tomb of the first Qin emperor, around 200 BC.

In the traveling exhibit now in DC, they have maybe a dozen of the life-size statues, which not only include warriors, but also horses, strongmen, musicians, and acrobats. It's as if the entire court of the emperor was rendered in terra cotta. Finding the statues has been a huge boon for the field of archaeology. The statues are so detailed that they have provided valuable clues on how materials were created and used in that time, data that are not otherwise available because organic materials have decayed over the centuries.

Until I can upload my pictures, you can see an amazing gallery of images here.

Saturday we met up with our college friend Bethany and toured the Smithsonian museums. Here are the ladies at the entrance to the freshly-renovated American history museum:

One of the highlights in the museum for us was Julia Child's kitchen, which has been relocated in its entirety from the Childs' former home in Massachusetts:

It's not nearly as big a room as you would imagine, though I think it is probably about 50% larger than our kitchen at home.

We also went to the National Museum of the American Indian, which was fascinating, though we only had about an hour to spend there before closing:

We took Amtrak back from DC that evening, so it was a pretty brief visit - less than 48 hours in town for Chelsea, and slightly longer for me because of the conference.

I'll work on recovering more of the photos in the next few days.

Girls' room update: Painting right along

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:43:00 +0000

We're well under way with the wall paint in the girls' room, and I wanted to share a quick preview. Most of the walls are going to be a light blue, shown here:

One wall is getting an accent color - a deep red:

So when we're all done in here, it will be blue walls, red accent wall, gold ceiling. Fancy!

The music man

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:58:00 +0000

Nick is our resident musician - so far in his young career he has played viola, piano, and trumpet, the last of which he took up when he started middle school last year. He's also teaching himself how to play guitar right now.

We attended Nick's winter concert several weeks back:

He plays in the 7th grade concert band, and he's also playing in the all-volunteer jazz band.