Elliot Thomas Quong-Charles

This month we all traveled to Fall River, MA to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the opening of the Eagle Restaurant where my maternal grandfather was one of the orginal owners and chefs!  In its heyday the Eagle was one of the fanciest places to eat in the area.  People would travel from Boston and New York City just to dine there.  My grandfather and his business partners commissioned the architect to design the interior to resemble the Old Fall River Line of steam ships, complete with a dancefloor and stage where live music was played.  Old friends of my mom’s and members of our family came from near and far to participate in the celebration.  Elliot danced the night away (he stripped down to just his pants quite early on), and even joined in the conga line.

Thomas created a gallery for my mom with photos from the evening, links to articles in the Fall River Heral News about my family’s legacy and the new Eagle, and video of a sing-a-long to “On the Old Fall River Line”.  There are lots of awesome photos of Elliot from that night there, as well as a whole lot of photos of prominent Fall River residents (whom we don’t know) who took part in the celebration.

Below are some more photos from the rest of the weekend, including a trip to the New England Aquarium, which was a favorite of mine as a kid.   We watched “Finding Nemo” recently and Elliot has since been pre-occupied with divers and whether or not they are bad for stealing fish off of the reef (which is what happens to Nemo).  We were very lucky to be there in time to watch the divers enter the giant cylindrical tank and feed all the fish.  Elliot’s been playing “diver” ever since and being very specific about whether he’s a “Feeder Diver” or a “Stealer Diver.”

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Elliot and his friend Tavi are BFFs for sure.   They always ask to play with each other, and get along really well.  They were also only born 5 hours apart, although you wouldn’t know it when you see them next to each other, Elliot kind of dwarfs Tavi. Plus, this year they are having a joint 3rd birthday party.

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Now that Elliot is at an age where Halloween has some meaning for him, it’s becoming really fun for all of us.  After a lot of indecision on Elliot’s part about what to wear (pirate, parrott, ghost, cookie, and m&m were all candidates), mama gave in and bought a cheap-o skeleton costume at CVS.  While I really wanted to make him something homemade, I realized that the likelyhood of him not wanting to wear anything at all was very high, and putting too much energy into the project was not worth it.  Luckily, he was really into being a skeleton….and a precious skeleton he was!

For the third year in a row now we have spent the early part of Halloween evening with our friend Emil who was born on Halloween in 2006.  We got Elliot all dressed up and did our best as lame-o parents to get in the spirit as well.  Once we were all in the car Elliot fell asleep during the ten minute drive to Emil’s house!  Luckily he awoke in time to partake in the pinata, an awesome dinosaur cake, and most importantly, the Bounce House!  For those of you who don’t know it, there is broad consensus among those ages two to twelve that a bounce house is key to an excellent birthday party.

After over-staying our welcome at Emil’s we headed over to our friend Deb Lykin’s house in Travis Heights.  Deb photographs trick or treaters in her neighborhood and makes prints of the photos for their parents.  You may remember Deb’s photos from last year were featured in Austin People’s Gallery at City Hall and Elliot debuted as a giraffe.  Although he was a little more reluctact this year, Elliot eventually stood in front the camera and made his scary faces.  Bribing him with Nerds (which he ate one-by-one) helped a lot.

Travis Heights is one of the Austin neighborhoods that gets really into Halloween.  Many of the residents there dress up their houses and create an experience for trick or treaters.  We hit up the best ones where we could hang out in makeshift graveyards, pick candy out of smoking cauldrons, and navigate around oversized glowing spiders in their webs.  Elliot got the knack of saying “Trick or Treat!” and also politely thanking the people giving him treats.  Once his little bucket was filled up we packed it in and drove home with Elliot waving a glow stick in the back seat and recounting to us with delight all the scary, creepy things he saw that night.

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