Mother May I Have a Cookout

We had a cookout up the canyon. Besides our usual service project of returning rocks to the river, we also engaged in an epic game of Mother-May-I. Dad was "Mother,"

Ivy was completely enchanted by the game.   Mom demonstrated the trickier instructions, like scissors steps and the umbrella twirl. Bryn was her usual competitive self and when instructed to take 12 baby steps forward, proceeded to explain that as a baby she was really quite a big stepper and so won the game. Amelia immediately scorned such a blatant exercise in following authority, and left the game to sit on my lap and suck her thumb in protest.

Girls Night Out at Great Meadows

Calvin and Peter were feeling homebody-ish tonight, so Ivy, Bryn, and I set off for an adventure at the local bird refuge.

She may or may not have swallowed a canary.

She had run ahead before I had a chance to warn her of the dangers of approaching geese, especially ones with offspring. Luckily, this ended with little more than hissing.

Rehabitation of Shelly, the Painted Turtle- Now with functional video

I joined Calvin and his class for a beach field trip up in Marblehead. I was in charge of the tide pool station, and as I was collecting creatures for the children to look at, I found a painted turtle struggling in the harbor.

A quick google search confirmed that painted turtles require a fresh water habitat, so after spending the morning as our star tide pool [guest] specimen, I brought it home to relocate it to a pond.

The kids took right to "her," and Calvin named her Shelly. She's missing a leg, but makes up for her lost limb with spunk and determination, and was constantly trying to swim through the plastic holding bin we had her in.

Here's the release video:


Calvin was pretty upset afterward, and went through all the stages of grief. He worried about things like her being lonely, never having a family, being eaten by predators, and getting lost. He's settled into acceptance and knows that we can go visit her pond and try to catch a glimpse of her in her new life.

Some Kids who Love their Dad

At dinner they went around the table and each told one reason why they liked him:

• Ivy: because he's sometimes silly and sometimes not (it was unclear if she preferred one over the other). But also she made sure to clarify that she likes me more than him.
• Bryn: because he always puts their needs before his own. 
• Calvin: because he introduced them to Candy Box.

Crazy Hair Day

Colonial Bryn

A-Doh-Bay

Calvin built an adobe house for his 1st grade structure project. Some of his favorite parts of the project:

• Taping off the windows and doors and finding them again once everything was dry
• Mudding the outside with leftover putty and putty knives
• Texturizing with sandpaper
• Using the heavy duty titanium loppers to trim the dowels for the roof beams
• Drilling holes to for the roof beams with an electric drill
• Spray painting
• Contracting out 3/4 of the landscaping (to Bryn)

Queen Isabella would be proud

Here's a throwback video I put together with my new video editing software (Premiere Elements)- Bryn was 6 when this was recorded.

The Battle Road

We went for a walk on the Battle Road in Lexington before the rain started. Many silly pictures were taken. There were tears of joy and tantrums. The British would have been scared.

The Ballad of the Dead Bird at the Church Outside