Peek Preview of Our New Pond

 

Life

All the photos in this post are courtesy of Dawn.

Yes, I know, I have not been posting. Instead I have been having *gasp* a LIFE! Did I mention lately how much I love spring?

Rachel and her girls left on Monday, and on Tuesday the house felt soooooooo empty! I spent some time feeling sorry for myself about her departure and other stuff, but decided to get over it.

 

This week Giant was on vacation. He was spending some time at the trainer so that Dawn can do sleepovers at other people's houses, since it was school vacation. It also gives the trainer an opportunity to work with him and see what his weak and strong points are. I am sure he is having a great time playing with her dogs, and Dawn enjoyed having more time 'off', but we are very ready for him to come home tomorrow!

On Thursday I got to eat at my very favorite Korean restaurant, although I didn't quite use much Korean beyond 'thank you'. Hey, it's a start! We had good food anyway. I love that restaurant. I got bibimbap, and they made it vegetarian for me, even if the menu only stated meat choices.

 

This weekend, I had a swordsmanship workshop. Part of my aiki budoin studies is iaido, and this weekend we had a sensei over to teach us many katas. Friday afternoon, I told my friend about the workshop, and she looked at my pink 'Peace on Earth' t-shirt, and mentioned 'You are going to work with swords in that t-shirt? Awesome!'

I also still have pink painted nails, which was quite amusing to me, since I almost never paint my nails, and the swordmanship workshop felt like a funny time to do so.

 

During lunch we happened upon the 'Woodsmen's Weekend' at the green, and stared in disbelief at people chopping wood on which they were standing. It was a somewhat weird experience, but it was nice to sit in the sun (87 F, 30 C yesterday!) and drool over the cool looking dogs around the green.

Saturday night, I spent with friends, eating sublime King Arthur desserts and talking about microbes and ice cream. This motivated me to take a bunch of kids and other friends out today to visit the Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory and have a factory tour. Yes, the tour does include free ice cream.

 

Our pond has many frog eggs, and we are looking forward to tons of tadpoles. Last summer Dawn and Jane dug a new pond, which we are getting ready to roll. We are just waiting 10 more days and fish can start living in it. I love ponds! I love spring! I love life!

History Lesson II

Friends.

 

Replica of the original cabin?

 

The granite obelisk.

 

All the stones used for this pathway are local Vermont stones. I love the different colours, and I love how Jane focused on the stones to give a different viewpoint.

 

History Lesson

We visited the birth place of Joseph Smith.

 

He was the founder of the Mormon religion.

 

Good history lesson for the kids.

 

Jane made the flower pictures, did I mention how I love spring?

 

Stupid Van!

 

Life is TONS more inconvenient if you have a 'normal size' rental car instead of a van. Just sayin'

Boney Bliss

 

Natural Blonde

This happens when you invite Rachel over into your house. I soooooooooooo totally blame her!

 

I ended up with painted toe nails even. Luckily it didn't interfere too much with my geocaching.

 

Front view 'Found the cache!'

 

Back view 'Found the cache!'

 

Good Friends and Good Food

Last night we had a nice stir fry and rice. At least it was nice for the kids who actually DO eat vegetables. And after dinner one of the kids threw up all over the kitchen floor, but I am not blaming the stir fry for that.

 

Thursday night, we had a pasta dinner, with an awesome tomato sauce, including tomatoes from our own garden. (Yes, last year's, from the freezer, since my current garden is not yet past the 'I should do something about this!' phase)

 

Socks keeps hoping that maybe someday he can catch this mouse, and till then, he will just sleep on top of the mouse cage.

 

We also had outdoors food, since going to the park can't be done without junk food for snacks.

 

Girls Night In

Guess who's visiting? It is Rachel and Gaggle of Girls! Since we had all those girls (her three, and my four, an extra one, Rachel, and me) we decided to celebrate by having a Girls Night In.

 

Hair was being curled. (Do I count as a cool mom by getting my teens a curling iron?) Hair was being dyed.

 

Nails were being painted. Even one of the boys joined into that, although I am not going to tell which one.

 

And of course there was ice cream. How can one have a good girls night without ice cream? We graciously allowed the boys to have some ice cream too. We are nice like that.

 

Deer and Happiness

Today, I visited a friend's house, and saw some of my favorite animals in the fields.

 

This kind of view is good for the soul. Did I mention how I love Vermont?

 

There were many signs of deer, I will spare you the pictures of the deer scat, but will share this foot print. Some day I will learn to read tracks beyond deer and moose tracks. When I grow up maybe.

 

Even although there is tons of stuff going on in my life, it is days like this which makes me aware how blessed and happy I am.

 

Quote of the Day

Rachel 'Tomorrow we will go to the thrift store to find some clothes.'
LG 'Maybe we can get clothes at the dollar store.'
Rachel 'The dollar store doesn't really have clothes.'
Sylvia 'Oh? They only have money?'

 

Maybe I should explain some day to her what a dollar store is? ^^

Blast from the Past

I love the way Jane is leaning out of her swan boat.

 

Notice the huge cloth diapering butt. Did I mention how cute she used to be?

 

Four smiling very blonde, very Dutch kids. Wait, they are American. No, they are Dutch! Remind me to post about Kate's identity crisis soon.

 

Two boys, still Dutch, but that will change in a few years. Wait, they still are Dutch. And yes, they are flying in wooden shoes. Huge wooden shoes, because that is what all Dutch wear.

 

Every Cloud Has a Pink Lining

 

Camouflage

 

Summer Is Approaching!

 

Sylvia sure has grown since summer 2004!

 

Happy Easter V

Usually we colour code our Easter eggs, so that every child has his or her own colour to search for. This simplifies things by making it easier to hide age appropriately. Cees tends to be able to reach higher places than Sylvia does.

 

This year, we had only six differently colours though, and we had nine kids. What to do? I did what every manager does best. I delegated. 'Girls, you gals figure out how to make sure everyone knows which eggs are theirs.'

 

They solved it brilliantly by using a sharpie to put a number on the eggs. Every one had his own age on the eggs. By some weird coincidence all nine kids were different ages, so it worked out beautifully. Problem solved!

 

Most eggs were found , but there still are a few missing. Only six though. Not bad after hiding 144 eggs. I am sure they will show up some day.

 

Hope your Easter was as much fun as mine!

Happy Easter IV

Time to hunt for eggs. I mean, the plastic eggs which you fill with candy. You know, the ones you see EVERYWHERE the weeks before Easter. But every time you see them, there is this wonderful excuse why you don't have to pick them up just now yet.

 

Until it's the day before Easter. And you go to go club at Borders. And plan to pick up said plastic eggs at the Pricechopper right afterwards. Only, they were sold out. Maybe the Dollar Store would have some? Nope.

 

Can I admit that I went into the nearby Walmart to see whether they still had them? I mean, they have EVERYTHING, no? I was both relieved and disappointed when Walmart was out of eggs too.

 

I was starting to panic. Would I have to disappoint my children? Tell them that this year they would be deprived of the annual Easter egg hunting fun because their mom was not very organized? Would I have to put the candy in ziploc bags instead, write 'This is a plastic egg.' on the bag, and hide those instead? Could I tell the kids the calendar was wrong and Easter wasn't till next week? Not that that would give me plastic eggs, but hey, I would have another week to procrastinate!

 

Another store, another lack of plastic eggs.

But then, in the fifth store, I FINALLY found the darned eggs. I bought 144 right away, and life was good again. My children would not be deprived of their rightful Easter egg hunt!

Happy Easter III

A few days ago I actually had visited the thrift store and gotten myself a stack of Easter baskets. Which were priced down to fifty cents a piece. Maybe I AM organized after all! (stop laughing!)

 

We discussed hiding the eggs outside or inside. Dawn looked at the lack of snow, and said 'Let's do outside! The weather is so nice!'

 

This lasted till she took a few steps outside, and got hit by this frigging strong and freezing wind, which brought the temp down to the twenties (below zero Celsius). She gasped and changed her mind.

 

'OK, let's hide eggs indoors instead!'

 

And so we did.

Happy Easter II

There was much egg dying fun, and we will be forced to eat coloured eggs for weeks and weeks.

 

We had lots of good food to sustain us during our creativity.

 

And many of the eggs got eaten too. We only might have like fifty left I guess.

 

Yes, her hands are blue.

 

And no, washing them did not work particularly well.

Jane and The Joy of Curling Irons

Jane has discovered a drawback of living with an older sister and having older friends.

 

The friends come to visit and will bring over a curling iron to take care of your hair!

 

Even although Jane couldn't care less, and only cooperated by being fed lots of junk food, they all agreed that curls look good on Jane.

 

They have told her to grow her hair longer already so they can have more hair style fun ^^

Happy Easter I

How can it be so early in the year, and Easter already? I started the day by hard boiling eggs. And then hard boiling more eggs. Did I mention I hard boiled a few eggs?

 

I also started the day by losing the older girls, who were sleeping somewhere, but I had NO idea where in the house, and I managed to look in all the wrong places first before finding where they did. Do you know how embarrassing it is when a visitor's grandmother calls and asks to speak to her grand daughter and you go like 'Hum... not here. Not here either. Oh, I thought they would be here for sure. I swear they are somewhere, really!'

 

Anyway, I found the girls and evidence of ice cream parties, and all was well again.

 

Then I boiled more eggs and waited for more kids to wake up and start Easter preparations. Yes, thank you, we prepare for Easter on Easter morning, that is what all the cool kids too. Organizational skills are for losers!

 

Impatiently waiting till the eggs cooled down, and it was time to dye!

Saturday Night Jam Session

Sometimes we don't care about what time it is, we just want to celebrate Saturday.

 

What better way to do it than with an impromptu jam session?

 

Even the cats joined in.

 

Our house is never boring ^^

 

Lazy Sunday

 

Darkness

The kittens are enjoying spring just as much as the other members of the family. Darkness found this spot in our front yard where there is sand to roll in!

 

So much warmer than snow! Given the choice between sand heated by the sun, and snow, I know I would choose the same one as Darkness did.

Late March Backyard Pictures

March 28, my daffodils are starting to grow. I love the way they peek through the snow.

 

Last year Dawn and Jane dug this pond, but we never got around to putting pond plastic in it to hold the water. Will the water stay in there when the ground thaws? Or will we have to actually put in the plastic to make it a real pond. Looking forward to seeing what happens with it. For now, Giant loves it as a quick and easy swimming pool.

 

The colour of the sky in this time of the year is just awesome. The trees still leafless, but it won't be long before we'll see the first blossoms on this plum tree.

 

It is a time for reflection and for new plans and new growth.

 

I love spring!

Cake and Marshmallows

Did you know you can microwave marshmallows, and it makes an awesome big mess?

 

It is a great treat to have while you are waiting for your cake to be ready.

 

My kids really have been into baking cakes all the time, to celebrate celebrations like 'Happy Saturday!'

 

As I have mentioned, we accept any excuse to eat cake and marshmallows.

 

Life is good!

Enjoying Spring

Did I mention how happy I am that spring has arrived? Over the last few weeks, we spent quite some time at the park.

 

I put away my winter boots and am wearing flipflops or am barefoot whenever I can.

 

If I ever am going to be organized, I might even put away all our snow suits!

 

That sure would give us a surprise spring snow storm though, so maybe I shouldn't yet.

 

Yes, that is my excuse for not taking action on that yet, and I'll stick with it. I'd rather be outside anyway.

Geocaching IV

To show that spring in New England does not always mean 'no snow'. Those pictures were taken March 27, about two weeks ago. This was on our way back home, when we decided we should find just a few more geocaches, since they were 'right on our way'.

 

Easy cache, it said. Even a child can find it, it said. Should not take any time at all... Almost a park and grab. We as experienced and smart geocachers knew that this was going to take us only a moment to claim the find.

 

We trudged through the snow. You know, the kind of snow where you take a step and suddenly your whole leg disppears into the whiteness. The kind of snow which makes you wonder how you are EVER going to find a cache under a rock with this much snow still around. But hey, we are GOOD at this, of course we should find it. I refused to accept a DNF (Did Not Find) on an easy cache like this.

 

Don't fall in the river, it said. We didn't, but there were some close calls, and after many hours of searching, we STILL hadn't found the darned cache. I decided that some days one should just accept one's limitations and pretend this never happened. So much for finding some easy caches on the way home.

 

Geocaching III

When we were geocaching in the woods, after at least half an hour of bushwacking through the snow and brush, uphill both ways, barefoot, we were surprised by a pack of very nice dogs, who were walking with their handlers.

 

I think it was a doggie daycare type of situation. One of the human members of the pack was wearing a shirt indicating such.

 

One of the dogs discovered a chipmunk hole and spent quite some time digging for the chipmunk, even although I am sure said chipmunk was looking from the top of the nearby trees and going nah nah nah nah nah nah!

 

The dogs loved me so much, because I had treats for Giant in my pockets. They kept coming up to me and sniffing my pocket. I was sorry we didn't have Giant with us on this particular geocaching trip. But there will be many spring and summer geocaching hikes with Giant, so we'll just have to hope to meet sweet dogs like this again.

 

It feels good to get back into geocaching!

Geocaching II

Even although most of our geocaching gets us out into the woods, some of it happens in an urban environment. Which leads to a totally different set of challenges, trying to deal with so called muggles, people who have no clue about geocaching. You know, those people you want to say to 'Excuse me sir, but you seem to be sitting RIGHT on top of the cache I am trying to find, would you mind moving, please?' But that isn't really socially acceptable I think.

 

So one moves about, pretending to make pictures (everyone makes pictures of random benches, no?) and hoping this person will move already! Pretending to check out the architecture, hoping to put one's fingers on that elusive cache. All this while trying to be inconspicuous. And trying to find the cache before one's parking meter runs out.

 

Anyway, we never found this darned cache, but had a nice chat with a muggle. Which didn't make it more likely for him to move, but at least it passed the time while we were waiting.

 

I got interesting pictures, even if I didn't get to log a find. Someday we'll be back when there are less muggles out and about. Maybe late at night? Searching around town using a flash light would look quite harmless for sure.

 

Geocaching I

This winter, I haven't been geocaching much, but now that the snow finally is melting, I am back into going out caching. It is so nice to be outside without having to wear many layers of clothing. It is so wonderful to be hiking through the woods again.

 

Some of the caches we found were in a park, a typical 'hidden in wall and easy to find' type of cache. Others were in the woods, and we kept trying to find a trail towards those, but eventually gave up and just started bushwacking already.

 

I find lots of grounding and calmness in the woods, helping me to maintain it in my daily life, which has been a bit too interesting lately. It recharges me and makes me a stronger person, and able to face whatever I need to face.

 

Part of our caching that day was based on Narnia. The cache names and images helped to add to the magical atmosphere in the woods, and I am happy that someone decided to hide this Narnia series of caches. There was some nice creativity involved. Hmmm, maybe I should actually LOG my finds of that day ^^. Yeah, I am behind a bit in my logging, but at least I am caching.

 

A lot of the rocks were covered with this type of growth, maybe lichen? If any one knows, please share, they fascinated me.

Happy Spring!

It is that time of the year. Crocuses are blooming. Spring is here! I love the first flowers of mud season.

 

Today we played at a play ground. We explored the river. Kate's shoes got quite wet when slipping in a big puddle. Giant ran around on a baseball field. It is so great to see the sun and have the snow melt.

We All Live in a Yellow Submarine

Sylvia, was singing 'We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine.' She paused for a moment, and wanted me to ask Pat (via im) 'So what colour IS your submarine?'
Patrick: 'black ^^'
She seamlessly transitioned to singing 'We all live in a black submarine, black submarine, black submarine.'

 

She keeps worrying about Pat, asking me 'Patrick can swim, right?' in a worried tone of voice. Patrick assured her that he is a very good swimmer and she doesn't have to worry so much. Sylvia asked 'So when he falls out of his submarine he will be ok? He can just swim back in?'
Patrick: 'yes^^'
Sylvia: 'That is amazing!'

A few minutes later she muses. 'You know mom, it would be funny if his submarine was the colour of the rain. You know, clear blue'. She never changed her song to that colour though, I think she prefers the black submarines for her song.

Quote of the Day

Sylvia 'If some one says you can't swim in the river, I believe them.'

 

'Since I already KNOW I can't swim!'

Irrefutable logic.