Springing into Saturday

With the first beautiful weekend of the spring season, we still found ourselves indoors much to often. The snow is on its way out, but the revealing yard is one step above a 'sippi hole' and much of Saturday was filled with domestic chores such as hair cuts and oil changes. The girls did sneak out for a while and did their part to stimulate the economy with the purchase of some new summer dresses. Merrick chose to nap instead and I burned the large amounts of branches that fell during the high winds of last week. We did get a brief walk in and the kids took turns pulling each other in the wagon. Sophia tried to get out of the wagon after Merrick had pulled her only a few feet, he quickly hollered at her "no fair" so she politely sat back down so that he could get his fair share of pulling her. I was ok with not being given my fair share of pulling either one of them.
Merrick did spend some time exercising his Y-chromosome and turn a benign object into a gun. He was able to turn Sophia's scrunchies into projectiles and 'shoot rubber bands at the stars"
Merrick also spent about fifteen minutes emptying a bottle of antibiotic hand soap into the toilet, mixing it up into the expected lather and then washing the bathroom floor and walls with toilet paper. Obviously there was a mess to clean up. This situation left us as parents, (albeit initially inattentive) with the question of how do you clean a kid that has just been playing in the toilet with antibacterial soap--he should by the nature of his actions be cleaned, right? Being unsure of proper parental protocol, we figured our bases would be covered if we just gave him a bath. Between his morning bath, and now his mid day bath and figuring in his four changes of wet cloths from being outside for any duration longer than 30 seconds--he was pretty much wet all day long.

Hockey no More (or Ending with a Bang)

This was Sophia's last week of Hockey and possibly last time playing as she doesn't think she will do it again next year. Her apathy towards the sport could be an issue of timing (Sunday nights) program design or maybe (aghast) she really doesn't enjoy it. She does have fun when she out there playing and has enjoyed getting all the snow on her skates, to throw at me later, and asking me to feel how sweaty her head gets. At any rate she ended with a bang. She was making great passes and even knocked over a couple of kids--it was just drills and there wasn't supposed to be any contact but I was impressed with her balance. She also so made a nice goal, when the keeper came out and gave a standard crappie flop in front of the net, Sophia just lifted the puck over him and scored--I thought it was a good show of patience. She was also asked by the coach to demonstrate here skating to the rest of the kids and had every other kid watching her. Merrick on the other hand will miss hockey and the zamboni. He only sat still on my lap when he was attentively watching the zamboni doors for the ice beast to come out. The was alternated by him hollaring for the zamboni or foraging. He did score a couple of 'bleacher fritos' A bleacher frito covers a wide range of objects, but all definitions include "previously dropped, potentially edible object that is found." This time I think he even found an actual frito, I would be remis to not mention that he apparently filled up on bleacher fritos as he ate nothing for supper when we got home.

From FEMA to Family

The family had a much anticipated albeit indoor movie night on Friday. Complete with a futon nest, popcorn and rootbeer that settled mightily in bellies already filled from a junk-food supper. Saturday the snow pounded down adding and an additional five inches over the day and some pretty good drifts. The kids pretty much laid around the house, our FEMA project and watched a cartoon marathon complete with sponge-bob (I refuse to treat this as a proper noun) and Arthur et. al. We did rouse everyone in time to make a 7pm Gamblers game which came down to the final shot in a shoot-out. The game set two records one for the number of teddy bears tossed onto the ice (6,021) and another for attendance about 6700 people. The teddy bears are donated to the pediatrics ward of a local hospitable. The people attending, I presume returned to their respective houses. Sunday necessitated a massive clean up effort after two days of ignoring said task. Lisa's inlaws came over in the afternoon and we headed out to the Sophia's Sunday night hockey practice. She skated well and tallied up 24 goals, apparently a three generation audience suited her. Merrick did his part to hollar everytime a puck smacked the glass. This post is again sans photos after pushing the USB port all the way into our camera body.

Sweat and Smarts

As a long awaited break in the frigid temperatures broke this weekend we were pleased to welcome in warm breezes and high suns on Saturday Morning. We were the first ones on the sledding hill on Saturday morning. Apparently the rest of the world felt that the best sledding wasn't during the eight o'clock hour. The hill was really fast after a relatively dry month that saw little snow making for an ice slicked slope. Sophia was happy to race Merrick and I, and really enjoyed steering her sled at us so that I would have to jump over her. Merrick loves hitting the jumps and has no patience for waiting until the sled has slowed down before demanding that we go again. Of course in his world it is still possible to sled down and up the hill. After a quick lunch and a brief nap we headed out for a short hike. The hike included a climb up a pretty significant hill which afford a nice view of a wildlife sanctuary and some windy perches upon Aldo Leopold benches. We called it a hike although to everyone else we were likely just the strange family walking around the municipal compost dump. Sunday Morning we opted to augment our athletic outings with something a little more refined and headed downtown to check out all of the ice and snow sculptures from the previous evening Winterfest activities. The kids thought these were really cool, literally. I did not feel bad about them touching the works of art either. These snow and ice sculptures did make my backyard snow tunnels seem a little...well lacking. From the Sculptures we headed straight to the outdoor rink. The ice was really in great condition--as expected given the cold temperatures and lack of snow of the previous weeks. Merrick opted for boots rather than his skates and Sophia was mostly content to just skate sans stick. It really felt good for me to knock a puck around on the ice and shoot at an actual net. Merrick and I passed the puck for quite a while and he was ready to stay on the ice all day. And Sophia got plenty of puck time at her practice on Sunday evening, managing to find time between scoring goals to come over to the glass to double check that I was keeping a proper tally.

Either Fabric or Fins

Well the planets, moons, sunspots finally aligned and Sophia and I were able to get out to make use of her new christmas present, a blaze orange tip-up. Last year when we went out ice fishing people were catching fish on tip ups and ever since then she has been asking to "Fish with flags." Her grandparents came through on the big holiday and Saturday was the first outing. We emptied some cookie dough out of a bucket in the fridge to use as a minnow bucket, picked up some minnows on the way out of town and made the big drive 15 minutes from the house to find a frozen slab of ice. Sophia was very excited once I drilled through the roughly 14 inches of ice with the hand auger and she able to get her tip up set. We had practice setting the tip up in the kitchen and even more enjoyable for her was to practice running from the living room to the kitchen when I made her flag pop. This by the way was easily 45 minutes of entertainment the previous weekend. With her tip up set she figured I should get another hole drilled for her so she could jig too. She had picked out a rabbit hair zonker from my fly box and wanted to give that a try. By the time I had three holes drilled and plunked a line in myself it was hot chocolate time. The sun was bright and there was no wind so the 8-10 degree temperatures were quite comfortable. As the day wore on Sophia made a couple of trips to the 'neighbors' to see the fish (bass) that they were catching and took some breaks to go wander the ice. At one point she came back to me and said "Dad, I am brave and true, but is this mostly ice?" My thought was "brave and true" are you writing a literary epic? Unfortunately she didn't hook anything on the tip up but got very proficient at clearing the holes of ice and easily talked more than every other person on the ice combined. Merrick was too young for this trip and he was home napping and then off to hunt textiles with mom, I think fabrics tend to herd up this time of year. As is usually the case she is ready to go home long after I am, and I think she was willing to wait until she caught a fish on her tip up. Once the sun went down (quickly followed by the temperature) I was able to convince her that it was time to take her chocolate laden mitten and the rest of her home. Where after filling her belly with a ham dinner that Lisa had been cooking in our absence her eyes got pretty heavy.

Long days and longer days

With the end of 08 finding us outside so often, 09 is beginning to look a lot like my living room. There was holiday travel and even a couple of short hikes and some driveway hockey, but as the days have gotten longer they have really gotten longer. We are looking forward to a return to routine. We did get the Christmas tree moved outside and Sophia strung popcorn, in a race against Merrick's hand to mouth helpfulness, to place on the tree. The tree hangs out in the backyard with it popcorn garland to serve both as food and shelter for the birds until spring. With the nesting birds the tree will slowly be turned into smore's fuel during the summer nights. The weather has been less than cooperative with high winds bringing low wind chills or as is the case today-rain. Partially weather and partially other inconveniences have required our initial ice fishing outing, but we are hoping to rectify that situation next week. Sophia and I did get all the gear in order and ready to go. The rain does mean that the "zamboni" has come to the back yard rink. I suspect the fresh ice will find us in the mood for an afternoon game today. Merrick finally got his shovel. The single kid shovel has been a source of quarreling for a number of weeks. With his new implement he is a shoveling fiend and borderline obsessive about it. He can easily spend an hour just pushing snow around and throughing it into the air, which generally lands on his own head. Sophia and I hit the indoor ice on Friday for some open skating and our races quickly devolved from just a mere head start to her requiring me to go to the blue line, then back to the goal line then race to the other end for the finish line--she independently discovered the lightening drill at age 5. We have also spent some time on the water slides at the YMCA and indoor activity but it was as close as I was allowed to having the kids join the Polar Bear club.

Smell that?.....Smells Like Canada

The weekend was a lot of time spent indoors, like everyone else we had a lot of snow and nasty-cold winds. We did play in the backyard a little bit on Saturday. Played some field hockey on the tundra, no actual ice but the shoveled off grass works pretty well for boot hockey and tennis balls. There was enough snow to also break out the snow shoes for a romp around the back yard. Sophia's snow shoes fit her well and we found out that Sophia's snow shoes don't fit Merrick that well--however he was convinced that he was uber cool when he had them on--even if he didn't say as much. Sunday started off by feeding DVD's into the TV like Ritalin at an elementary school but then ended with some ice time for both kids. While it is Sophia's practice, Merrick too brings his stick and helmet, and loves to crash into the glass. This weekend was no different, although he seemed to get more compliments on his helmet this time than normal. Trucking two kids across a desolate parking lot to go to a Sunday night hockey practice did indeed seem very Canadian.
Sophia (orange #3) doesn't have an actual team but as the one picture shows apparently the yellow team used a textbook strategy of mini-mites--skate towards the net and then slide at the goalie (Sophia was the goal tender). They rotated her out of net and she is really skating well and even had a nice backhand goal. The day ended much as it had started with TV on, although the evening was permeated by the temperature induced requirement of the chicken noodle soup--with homemade noodles