A Day for Play

It was 61 degrees Fahrenheit this afternoon, and the final leavings of the nasty snow from January finally vanished from our backyard. We molted our winter jackets and unfolded our wings in the relatively warm tropical air.

Ivy sat in the sand pile for hours scooping sand into and out of a bucket, and kept looking up with a smirk like she just couldn't believe her good luck that she was getting away with something as dastardly as playing with dirt.


Bryn visited and fed all of her pet rocks (her big rocks eat a steady diet of small rocks). You'll be glad to know that Sally the hippo, the Birdhead, and Craggy Peak all survived the winter unscathed.



Calvin hopped around swinging sticks, flinging mud, and scattering rock food all about with gleeful abandon. And in the midst of one of his tree climbings, I happened to snap one of the money shots that will be hanging on my wall shortly.

Of course I just as joyfully sat in the dirt and the sun and played with my toys (my camera and my lens from Christmas).

The older kids put themselves to bed tonight. Welcome warm weather, come back anytime!

All Around the Sugar Bush

I joined Bryn and her 1st grade class on a field trip to a local farm for maple sugaring. Here are some fun facts I learned about maple sugaring:
-the grove of maple trees being tapped is called the "sugar bush"
-it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. A family of 5 can produce enough syrup for their needs with 3-4 large maples and maples need to be at least 40 years old before tapping (I've got my eye on the maples across the street)
-Native Americans made maple sugar by burning bowl-shaped hollows into logs, pouring sap in, and sticking hot rocks in the basin to evaporate the water out of the sap
-the evaporator steam is one of the most heavenly smells ever
-if you cut a shallow trough around the entire circumference of a tree, it will probably die of starvation
-Nine 7 year-olds will cover themselves with sap from a tree tap in about 10 seconds flat

I'm craving pancakes.

Job Aspirations

Bryn announced in the car on the way home from piano lessons today that she has a new job in sight for herself. Naturally, POTUS is still on the docket, and veterinarian has been in the works for a while, but she's decided to further branch out vocationally.

Essentially, she wants to be a Dr. Frankenstein for animals. She's planning to work as a veterinarian for a few years, to gain a deep understanding of the inner workings of animals, and then move on to being an "animal scientist" that builds new animals.

Her first creation will be a flying unicorn. She even detailed the plan:
1. Take a horse, make it white (if necessary)
2. Find a stick on the ground
3. Drill a small hole in the horse's head
4. Attach said stick with glue and stuff
5. Procure a dead chicken and cut it's wings off
6. Paint them white and make them bigger with a rolling pin
7. Sew the wings onto the horse

Voila! One flying unicorn.

She also mentioned creating a dragon and Sphinx (she will dig up a dead person and use their head for the Sphinx). She laughingly said of her job, "It'll be sort of like I'm an animal torturer, except they'll mostly be dead or numb."

I don't know whether to be deeply disturbed or just enjoy her creativity (of course I favor the latter).

Idioms: Piece of Cake

We talked about idioms for family home evening. And, of course, made a movie for the activity:

Wiggles, Be Gone!

Calvin's preschool group took a field trip to the Children's Museum today. One of my favorite parts of the day occurred on the way there when Calvin made a remark about the "Eiffel" bridge to his little friend Julianna (the Zakim bridge). Calvin liked the waterfalls we passed on the walk into the museum, created by the warm day melting the snow down the rain gutters in rushing torrents. Ivy enjoyed all the ball offerings to be had inside the museum.

BFF Cousins

We are privileged to spend a few days a week with my charming niece Squiggles. Ivy has been thrilled with this arrangement from the start and has always (okay, mostly) been good to share her things and her "ma-mom" with her cousin, but today she took her helpfulness to a new level...

Peter (off to school)

He always looks so dashing.

A Year without Candy and Sugared Drinks

Today is the end of a one year experiment in which I stopped eating candy and drinks with added sugar (naturally occurring fruit sugars in 100% juice were okay).

I stopped eating candy because I realized that I'm a compulsive candy eater (I see it, I eat it). And I decided to kick off drinks with added sugar just for fun. I don't even like soda all that much, so this wasn't hard.

Observations/results:

* I don't like candy as much as I thought I did. In fact, it's mostly disgusting with few exceptions. I'm going to keep avoiding it.

* I consider drinks with added sugar (especially soda) an evil in our society perpetuated by big food manufacturers, and will continue avoiding them like the plague of humanity that they are. Except chocolate milk and hot chocolate. Wow, I didn't think that one through before vowing them off. I'm going to have a frothy cold drink of chocolate milk tomorrow.

* Even chocolate, which I thought I've been missing, is really not that good. I bought a small box of Lindt chocolates tonight to celebrate the end, and was quite disappointed. So I think I'll keep eschewing chocolate unless it's really fabulous made-fresh keep-it-in-the-fridge-or-it-will-spoil to-die for chocolate.

* My teeth still get cavities. But maybe they all would have fallen out this year if not for my hiatus.

* It was very easy to avoid candy and sugared drinks once I made the goal. It's not like all sweets were off the table, which would have been a different story. Perhaps one I'll tell in a year or two when I get brave enough to try a year with (ominous duh duh duh) cookies.

+5 points for the Johnsons

Who correctly described the icicle phenomenon in the previous post:

"They started growing straight down, but then because of the weight (or some other perturbation), the branch they are growing on was bent, and the icicles got pointed a different direction (and you can see that now they are continuing to grow straight down)."

Water Flows Downward

But icicles don't always end up vertical. 5 points if you can explain the shape of the icicles in the second photo.