No Work / No School Friday

Well, it's been a while since my last update. Guess I just kinda lost interest there for a bit. Today, Henry and I are home on a no school day so it's a good day to take a day off and spend some quality time just being our wee family.
Updates of late...
Henry has put in the first few weeks of school, he is thriving after a bit of a personality issue with one of his teachers. Kristin and I were ready to dive in and get some face time w/ the teacher but Henry has now asked that we wait until the scheduled conferences in a couple weeks anyway. He is doing better and seems to a be a bit more engaged and that's all I want. Both Kristin and I understand that the teacher cannot teach to each individual student but certainly can work a lot of different techniques into the lesson plan in order to engage a lot of different individuals and their learning styles. I'm not a teacher and I don't know best how to handle these challenges but I do know that most students (like me) always do better if they are actively engaged and challenged which is where the problem seemed to lie; Henry was being taught to (taught WHAT to learn, rather than HOW to learn) thather than being taught. We'll still discuss this with his teacher over conferences and feel it's still very important and valid to get this to this relatively new teacher.
Henry's school fundraiser is going along nicely, he has done well but needs to get out and spend some more time this weekend in the neighborhood as last year he found great success with our friends in the area.
Work for me is good, just had my yearly performance review and came out of that OK. I have a few things to work on and I knew what these were going into it and with a bit more focus I feel I can really excel. I kinda lost track of things workwise and lost my focus for a while and I will work on getting that back now. There is a great deal of opportunity and I need to reach out and take it. I'm just about to my 13th anniversary here and still can't really get too excited about the prospect of moving on or doing anything too different as I still what I do just about every day.
Nothing too new on the food front, I did try using the guanciale with fried fresh corn w/ onions, garlic and jalapenos but it adds such an earthy note to the dish I'm not quite sure where to use it again. Probably with something really hearty such as a lamb or pork ragu w/ gnocchi or polenta. I'm sure I'll figure out something. I did open a 96 Silver Oak Alexander Valley last weekend and had it with a oven roated parmesan chicken breast, steamed broccoli and a nice pilaf, killing the remainder of the bottle Monday night with a sublime burger with bacon, Maytag blue cheese and Mama Lil's peppers and salt & vinegar potatoe crisps. Had to wonder what the great unwashed were up to at that point, I must admit but sometimes I just need to spoil myself. Sometime this weekend Henry and I will be baking a batch of King Rufus' Doggie Biscuits for Butch, Henry loves to make them and Butch loves to eat them. Tomorrow we are attending a world record attempt for largest cinnamon roll in a nearby town, Mill Creek. The bakery is hoping to bring out a roll topping 250 pounds!!! I must admit it sounds pretty wild and Henry is pretty excited about it as it sounds just crazy enough to interest a 7 year old. Hopefully we can get there soon enough for at least Henry to get a taste of this biggest in the world thing anyway.
Not much else so I'll sign off for now but here's a couple of pretty recent pictures of Henry just for fun: