Visiting Spain

Since our Texas trip still hasn't worked out, here a picture of the kids in Spain, where Erik's travel bug is.

Yes, it's done by the same person who made Be-ah's page. So nice of him! Talking about travel bugs. Tara's BunBun II is in Peru! Our second international travel bug!

Went geocaching today, did a bunch of urban caches in Manchester, NH. What a clever hides! It's amazing how hard it can be to find a film canister in an urban setting. It was frigidly cold, so we ended up using the van to do a longer multi cache. It would have been a nice walk if the temperature had been thirty degrees higher than it was today. Brrrr!

The kids were in awe about all the tall buildings. We went into the City Hall Plaza, which was nice and warm, but they didn't allow visitors to go up to the top floor. That was a small disappointment, but at least they had the revolving door as a neat new discovery. I guess we don't get out much. Last month in Burlington, VT, the highlight was the escalators, this time it was the tall buildings and the revolving door :-)

Travel Bug Fun!

Erik's travel bug, Be-ah, a little helicopter made it to Spain. Erik gave it the mission to travel around the world and it sure is doing that now! Not only that, but the finders made a web page for it (click here) where it looks like Be-ah is flying around in Marbella, Spain. My kids were totally amazed by that. Their reactions:
Erik 'How did they make it fly????'
Kate 'Is that really Erik's Be-ah? Where is the travel bug dog tag?'
Jane 'I think they scanned it on the page'
Tara 'I know it! They took a real helicopter and painted it in the colors of Be-ah!'
Tim 'I think they did it on the computer
Cees 'I know how they did it! They used very thin strings.'

So much fun to hear all those theories, especially the one where they took a real helicopter and painted it as a travelbug :-)

One of Tara's travel bugs is in Virginia now, and on its way to the Amazon! If that works out, it will be our second out of country travel bug. Who needs school if you can do geography by geocaching? ;-)

Went to the go club again today, and actually managed to win a game. I have been on a losing streak lately, so this was nice. I guess all the studying is bad for my play, I try out new things, and they don't always work out. Oh well.

My big activity for the day was cleaning out the fridge. It's amazing the number of science experiments which were hiding in there. I hadn't dared to even open one of the vegetable drawers for months! You don't want to know how it looked in there, unlike my kids, who were all looking at it with very keen interest.

Revival

Happy to announce that I dug up Robert from the back of the fridge, and managed to revive him. Just in case you wonder about me now, I'll tell you that Robert is my sourdough starter. He has lived with us for a few years now, and I still haven't been able to kill him, although I have tried at times. This time, he had been ignored since before Sylvia's birth, and I had been kind of avoiding the whole issue by just not looking at his container, figuring that there might be too many gross science experiments growing in there.

But lo and behold, he was totally fine, if a bit sluggish. I used him for sourdough pancakes, and they came out perfectly. He is at my counter now, with fresh flour and water, ready to make sourdough bread soon.

I was very organized today, and even made barley stew in the crockpot before we went to hide a cache. Yes, I feel that I am starting to get my life under control again. At least certain aspects of it.

Last night we had nine kids, tonight we have only four. Amazing how the number of kids keeps fluctuating. The house is amazingly quiet, although that could also be because all those kids are asleep :-)

Fudge Drops

Have been wanting to make those for a week or so, and now I finally did! Not in time for this morning's homeschool club, but hey, that means there is more for our family :-) We have more kids anyway, having two extra kids here for a sleepover. So I am sure the drops will get eaten somehow.

This is not only about fudge drops, but it is also about actually being organized enough to get them baked. As opposed to planning to bake, but life getting in the way. It really is time to get pregnant again, to throw off my back on track life :-)

Had a fun homeschool club meeting, the kids had organized a valentine's day party. Any excuse for a party :-) There were all kinds of entertaining activities, yummy treats (too much sugar :-) and a magic show. A good time was had by all.

The snow wasn't too bad, just a lot and very heavy, but we got ourselves dug out in just a few hours. We have had worse storms than this.

Not only did I make fudge drops today, but I also got dinner made for 9 kids and 2 adults. Hmmmm, maybe I am ready for twins instead of just one baby :-)

Papa!

We have been doing some baby signs with Sylvia, but I hadn't been sure yet whether she was using them yet. But yesterday, she very clearly made the papa sign when we were talking about him. Not perfectly, but still very clear what she meant. I just love watching her develop and grow and do cool things like that. She is really able to communicate more and more.

Life has been hectic, as usual. Between geocaching, the go shodan challenge, cooking, baking, cleaning, grocery shopping, decluttering, and homeschooling, there just isn't much time left for writing.

We are being hit by a major snow storm, blech! I got myself stuck on our street today, the car just refused to go up in all that slush. That was after going to the dentist for the umpteenth time, not a good day. Now Sylvia has a fever, and I never got to bake the cookies for the homeschool club tomorrow, and we are supposed to get 12 to 20 inches of snow. Very heavy, very wet snow. But I got split pea soup made, and baked yummy whole wheat bread.

Snow Shoes

Last Friday, I got myself a pair of snow shoes! I spent half an hour in the store, staring at all the different options, checked out another store, came back, and stared some more. So I went and found myself the 'resident snow shoe expert', who pointed out a pair and told me how easy they were to put on. He should have stopped there, but instead went on and demonstrated it to me on his own shoes. For at least five minutes, if not longer, he was standing there, struggling to put the darned shoes on, all the while explaining how easy it was. I told him that I could just see myself doing this with my baby in the sling.

He claimed it was because he was male and those were women's snow shoes... I asked whether he really was the expert? I ended up buying a different type of snow shoe for some reason :-) Spent more money than I had planned, but now have a pair of mountaineering snow shoes, with optional 8 inch tails. And I saved more money by buying the expensive ones, since they were all 20% off. So I would have saved less with the cheap snow shoes.

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to try them out, looking for an almost local cache. As in we had to drive less than an hour, which is pretty local, right?

One observation is that they are BIG! I immediately tripped over my own feet. It's not too bad to just walk, it was the manoeuvring around the car that was the pits. I had ski poles to help me stabilize, and I am so glad I used those. Otherwise I would have found myself flat on my fanny a few times I think.

It was a very beautiful pond, with people walking, sledding, cross country skiiing, and using snow mobiles on it. We would have had to walk around the pond for a bit, but now we could just walk over it. That was fun. The only thing less fun was that Sylvia insisted on no hat. And I kept dropping things. I did not enjoy picking up pole, after pole, after pole, hat, after hat, after hat, glove, after glove, after glove, and so on.

Sylvia 's hands were totally blue... That worried me for a few seconds, till I realized that she had eaten blueberries.

When I was starting to get really desperate, thinking we would NEVER find this cache, the batteries in my GPS ran out. Did I mention that I had forgotten to bring new ones? Luckily my friend had some new ones with her. Phew.

After all that, we didn't find the cache. Too much fluffy snow hiding all the hiding spots. We did enjoy seeing lots of beaver activity though. I didn't care much, it was too perfect of a day to care about not finding a cache. So much better than being stuck inside.

Cees is really pushing me to start getting ready for our caching trip to Texas. My lack of organizational skills has really held me back in planning for it. I would love to go, but I am so overwhelmed with the whole planning thing. So he is planning it now. Figuring out how much we can drive on a day. Finding fun things to do on the way. He even offered that he would help to clean out the van, since there is too much stuff in it to go on a long road trip now.

We'll camp once we are in warmer states. And on the way down, I am hoping that I can ask people for some floor space where we can camp out. But I am still so overwhelmed by the whole planning aspect of it. Strangely enough, the idea of the trip itself is not overwhelming at all, maybe because it's still so up in the air.

Caching Through The Snow

The kids were suffering from too much cabin fever, so today, I thought it would be good to take them all out geocaching. We searched for and found 14 mittens, 8 hats, 14 boots, 11 pairs of pants, 5 warm coats, and a bunch of assorted other stuff. And off we went.

Almost missed the right road, but found it after turning around. Parked the van, and found out that Kate and Erik had fallen asleep. Both were not thrilled to be woken up.

Snow mobiles had made it a nice, easy walking trail, but we still had much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the cold and the snow. Even more when we had to get into the deep snow to find the cache. It would have been an easy find if there hadn't been two feet of snow on top of everything. And I forgot my trusted ski poles. Still was pretty easy, but the screaming level was increasing. It was a book cache, so we traded some books, and then kind of covered up the cache again. It would be a lot easier if we actually had been able to find sticks / leaves / bark or whatever, as opposed to snow flakes and snow flakes.

Oh we tried a virtual after this cache, but there was a 5 feet wall of snow in front of the monument, and I decided that I would do that one another day instead. So we got some hot chocolate and went home instead. After spending all that whining and hiking energy, it's amazing how much better the atmosphere in the house is.

Sylvia is not only cruising, but I have caught her a few times, standing by herself, without holding on. Not for long yet, but I still think she is way too young to even contemplate trying it!

Clean Kitchen!

The unthinkable has happened! I cleaned my kitchen. Mostly because I was stuck inside after this snow storm, but hey, it doesn't matter why it happened, right? OK, actually I also cleaned it because it was starting to get bad, even to my admittedly loose standards. It's a joy to be in such a sparkly kitchen, maybe I'll even get around to more cooking and baking than I have been doing lately.

The snow storm did hit us, but we only got about 12 inches or so, as opposed to South of us, where they got a tad more. Yesterday, it even was sunny, although bitterly cold. We got our driveway unburied, and dug out the cars. Dh's car is leaking coolant, so it's going to the shop today. Not looking forward to hearing how much that is going to cost us.

Sylvia has two more teeth! She now has the two bottom middle ones, and the two top outside incisors. She looks like a little Dracula :-)

I am still working hard on getting to 1st dan, it's going way too slowly to my taste. Maybe I am more of an instant gratification person? And yes, I am still 16k at the go server, really need to get that back to 15k soon!

Winter!

This morning, I woke up to -28 C and wind chill warnings. It was so cold! I didn't really want to get out of bed, but Sylvia kept bopping me on the head with toys and trying to take away my book, so at some point I gave in.

Finally went to my favorite grocery store and spent way too much money. That was after discovering a few green coolant puddles underneath dh's car, so I am sure we will spend even more money soon. But at least we are all set for the snow storm that is upon us now. We are supposed to get 6 to 12 inches, way too much for me! How will I be able to go caching tomorrow????

Glad that I went caching today at least, it was fun being out in the woods, even if it was a bit frigid. Chickadees were chirping, we saw lots of interesting tracks, I didn't really mind the cold. Although I do admit that just a few degrees higher would have been nice. It started snowing when we found the cache. It won't stop till tomorrow afternoon. Good that we brought hot tea to drink when we were back in the car.

Sadness and Happiness

Two years ago, I had my late miscarriage. I have been thinking about that a lot the last few days. I wish I could have met that baby. Or maybe I am meeting that baby, Sylvia would have been the kind of person who would just keep trying until I got it right. I will never know, but will always have a sad spot in my heart about all the miscarriages.

The sadness is tempered by my current happiness though. Sitting here, writing in my blog, holding the sleeping baby I love so much. Her warm and sweet body cuddled against me. She doesn't want to be put down, neither do I want to put her down. Such a wonderful treasure.

This happy baby was even happier yesterday, when we were visiting a friend, and she discovered that there was a special bowl of food for her on the floor. She immediately started eating, while the rightful owner of the bowl watched her in dismay. Yes, she got into the cat food... And she was very proud about it too. Sitting next to it, gleefully stuffing pieces of cat food in her mouth... At least it was the dry kind of cat food, but I still took her away from her find.

Life is good, the only minus I can think of right now is that my ranking at the go server dropped back to 16k. Guess I have to practice some more. Or I will never make it to first dan.