Thursday, June 30, 2011

Berrily a Bear




Great weather, great morning. We set out pretty early to get a jump on the berry picking season. Barefoot in the straw and dust we hit the field with empty buckets and high expectations. The kids pick berries at the speed we have come to expect from young Americans, but nevertheless, we eventually filled the three ice cream pails that we took with us. Sophia even found a large heart shaped berry and fortunately I found a similar one later to stave off the eventual fight. Cleaned and froze up about 9 bags worth, that taste even better on a snowy February afternoon. From the berry patch we headed straight to the Zoo. We were among the first dozen people into the zoo and the petting area of the zoo was alive with the bleats of hungry kids screaming for our food bags. Sophia and Merrick rustling the paper bag of food made the sheep and goats come running with Pavlovian expectations. We wandered around the zoo for a couple of hours even stopping at the new concession stand for a drink. Merrick was getting tired and wanted me to carry him. When I told him no he just smiled really large and asked me for a hug. Once he latched on it was tough to put him down. Plenty of otters, peacocks and even a baby red panda, but the bears were holed up somewhere awaiting their new exhibit. No bears but we did see an impressive display of a defecating tortoise--evolution should have given them a better solution. We headed home for lunch and some backyard pool and slip-n-slide action. Found some time to pick the rhubarb and make a rhubarb crisp. Not wanting to heat up the house, we baked the crisp on the outdoor grill and it turned out pretty good.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Gypsy Village





Part of Americana to not only elect but also look forward towards living in refugee compounds. We of course call them campgrounds and encourage food to be eaten with dirty hands and give up on the notion of a clean cheek to kiss on. By the second day the idea of bare feet and pit toilets doesn't even slow a person down. We headed out to Council Grounds last weekend for the inaugural camping trip of the season. We meet the Clan Bryan in the granite woods and they brought the gorgeous weather. We had three beautiful days with dappled sunlight filtering through tall maples. We did have to make a trip back into town for some forgotten supplies, namely chairs and bug spray (rookie mistake) but otherwise we just wandered around the woods for the weekend. The Pine River runs through the grounds and with the seemingly 3 straight weeks of rain, it was a torrent. The oldest boys tried their hands at fishing, but the added volume made the fish even harder to find. The rest of us spent a lot of time hanging out at the beach. There were plenty of sandcastles, rock collections and general holes that needed digging to occupy much of an afternoon. The youngest Bryan, a reptile sort of child, would run into the cold water only to run back out and lay in the hot sand and cover himself up to regain body temperature. We did find some time to continue to celebrate Sophia's birthday week (no almost a 9 day season) with birthday watermelon, complete with 8 candles. Great hiking trails and we spent the mornings with coffee and barefooted hikes through the woods. Even started a new game of 'Statue' as some of the trails used existing campground roads. The kids would strike statue poses along the shoulder whenever a car came by. This kept them safe and us adults entertained. All the kids were so well behaved that I even opted for an extra day and took the campsite until Monday. They stayed busy building entire "cities" in the woods and riding their bikes. Merrick was very pleased to be able to just ride around the loop all by himself. He also made great progress in his balance, to the point that I pulled his training wells off and we worked on riding without them for one of mornings. Sophia's new frisbee golf set up The evenings were filled with smores and even some mando and guitar work from the uncle. In the end we didn't stay the extra day, it was a major downer when the cousins packed up, and over lunch time tears we decided to pack up as well. It was the right decision, too much of a good thing had left the kids pretty fried. Maybe that is the allure of a gypsy village, you can leave whenever you want.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Just blessed
















A short post for a long week. The week ended with Fathers' day and the kids got me a new chess board. Merrick has been learning checkers and Sophia is quickly approaching a legitimate win in chess. Sophia is quickly approaching her last week of Soccer and potentially your last soccer, she enjoys it but I am sensing that by next year gymnastics may hold priority for her. We spent some time this morning on a serious treasure hunt and a wonderful park and chalked up three more finds to our 'career' totals pushing over the 20 find category. Plenty of park swings and mulch chips after the treasure hunting. The upcoming week has a busy forecast but even that needs to be viewed as a blessing.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The End or the Beginning?




The weekend came and went with gorgeous weather and the question of whether it was the last weekend of the school year or the first weekend of Summer. Either way we did our best to pack it full of edutainment. The kids are working on some academics over the summer, Sophia is working with prealgebra concepts and graphs while Merrick is eagerly working on his letter recognition and phonics. Saturday afternoon Sophia headed over to a friend's house for a sleep over and Merrick and I headed to the river for some quality fishing. It was our first trip out in very long while and we caught 3 fish in about 2 hours: a sheep head, channel catfish and even a carp in the 18-20 pound range. The carp and channel cat were big enough and long enough fights that Merrick was able to get a good feel for fishing. Needless to say he has been asking about every 20 minutes sense then to go fishing again. He did tell me that he was a better fisherman than I was, and when I asked him how many fish he caught he told, "18" so he might be a better "fisherman" than I am. We picked up Sophia about 10 the next morning and her friend came with us for what would become a continued sleepover. It was a good time, we headed over to Pamprin park for a couple of hours. Merrick ran to me to say that Sophia was hurt and when I asked where he point-waved towards the back of the park and told me he was thirsty. Sophia had only bumped her leg but recovered quickly when she realized she could tattle on Merrick for drinking the remaining "pop" from a crushed can on the grass. Yup I recall he said he was thirsty. I made it back to my table/watch post just in time to see HepC/herpes boy chugging from my water bottle. I asked him why he wasn't drinking from his water bottle and he acknowledge that he didn't want to open the backpack. We ended up back home for ice cream, nail polishing , a campfires complete with smores and then pizza and movies and everything else required for a quality sleepover. Merrick even got his way and we went fishing again.