Category Archives: Kids

2025, animals, Farming Update, Food, gardening, Kids, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized

Maple-ing. The Ambiance.

42 Comments

Although I probably won’t go down again to boil sap, I truly enjoyed the experience.  Part of it was learning all about the process, but a lot was also the ambiance.  Not in any particular order…

The weather was just about perfect.  It started about bright and sunny (I put on sunscreen) and even when it clouded up in the afternoon, the temperature seemed just right for boiling.  Not cold enough that you really felt it but not warm enough that the work made us sweat.  There was a short rain shower after dark, but when it cleared up, the stars in the night sky were amazing.  As a city gal, I never see stars like that.

Before dinner we had tea but instead of plain old boiling water, we used the boiling sap.  Very sweet tea but wonderful drinking it outside.

There was good company while we were working.  Astrid is a big dog with a big deep bark but a big softie; after dark we heard coyotes and while Astrid worked hard to convince us that she was a guard dog, she didn’t move more than 20 feet from us.  Whiskey looks like a cat, but he is really a dog.  He comes when he is called, hangs around most of the day for petting and doesn’t seem to think the rain matters at all.

My godson doesn’t actually “farm” but is embracing country lifestyle.  He was happy to tell me about all the classes he has taken at the local folk school (bee keeping, chain saw safety, how to “manage” chickens, syrup making and to show me all the improvements he’s made to the house and outbuildings. He has some animals: chickens and a mean rooster (I have bruises to prove it) and also a small herd of goats.  He has just acquired a male, so perhaps there will be kids and milk in the future.  I shared with him the wonderful soaps that Barb made when she had goats.

He is also a terrific cook and by the time he went in to make dinner, I had a handle on the boiling so didn’t need to panic.  Several of the borscht ingredients come from their garden and it was delicious.  Just soup and toasted baguettes.  Yummy.

Children.  He has three kids – 7, 5 and 3.  I got to play Legos with the youngest.  Lots of racing “vehicles” and crashing.  The 5-year old was obsessed with arithmetic so we did a ton of “what is ten plus ten” and other combinations.  He hasn’t worked on subtraction yet, so we did some “what is three minus two”, using fingers.  There was a very lively conversation after the 7-year old got home from school concerning the weight of the earth and how you would weigh it.  He’s got a lot on the ball for seven and there was gravity walls/barriers and gravity robot discussion.  My godson brought up the planet-building spheres from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, to which I replied that the weight of the earth is clearly 42.  The 7-year old didn’t get this joke but god son did!

It was just a wonderful trip, even if you don’t count the maple syrup (and a bonus small bottle of their black walnut syrup which I’ve had before and it fabulous).  I can’t imagine how it could have been better!

When was the last time you just really enjoyed something?

2025, books, Fantasy, Kids, Uncategorized

Blond Book Party

38 Comments

Stopped by the library Saturday morning to return one item and pick up another.  At the return slot, I waited between two little blond girls, excitedly putting books onto the conveyer belt that takes them into the library. 

As I entered the library, a little blond girl was leaving with her mom and a massive pile of books.  Inside, there was another little blond toddler; she was helping her dad swipe books at the check-out station. 

After I grabbed my book and was heading out, two families came toward the library, each from opposite directions.  Each family had two little blond girls who seemed excited to be going to the library.

It was clearly a little blond party.  I was going to feel out of place until I remembered that when I was that age, I was blond as well – a little towhead in fact.

What kind of party would you like to attend at your local library? 

2025, Family, Gatherings, Kids, Movies, Uncategorized

What’s In A Name

51 Comments

A couple of Sundays ago, Husband and I arrived at church to play bells with the hand bell choir and found, upon reading the bulletin, that there was to be a baptism. That wasn’t at all unusual, but what was unusual was the name the parents chose for their son. Yes, we were to participate in the baptism of a little boy who had been named “Tarzan”.

Of all the names to hang on someone, Tarzan isn’t one that immediately pops into my mind. We have had some unusual names for baptisms lately, like Coven, pronounced like cove and not like the name for a group of witches. Tarzan, however, really takes the cake. What would you call him for short? Zan? Tarzy? Tartar? Zanzan?

I really can’t imagine what could have led people to choose that name, and I can foresee a rough time for the child once he starts school. We didn’t get to see little Tarzan as the family all had the flu and they cancelled and haven’t rescheduled the baptism.

What are some unusual names that you have run across? If you had to change your name, what would you change it to?

2025, Family, Health, Kids, Medicine, Uncategorized

Self Care

42 Comments

Aside from a mild bout of diverticulitis when we were in Brookings, I felt pretty good during the visit. Everyone else seemed to feel pretty good, too.

Grandson went home from school on Wednesday with a fever that had spiked to 102° by yesterday afternoon. Daughter-in-Law was also home with a fever, and Son was at home taking care of both of them.

Yesterday Husband started feeling puny, as the say out here, with fatigue and a a low grade fever, so he took a nap and decided to not go into the office in the afternoon. He chose not to take any Tylenol so as to give his immune system time to heat up and fight off whatever was plaguing him. By evening he felt better.

Thus far I have not started to feel “puny”, but I plan to engage in my self care, which is to stay at home, cook, sleep late, and not leave the house until Sunday morning when we sing at the 9:00 church service and play bells at 3:00 at the local If Music Be The Food Of Love concert at our church to raise money and donations to the food pantry.

What is your self care when you start to feel “puny”. What are your euphemisms for illness? What major childhood illnesses did you have?

2025, Family, History, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Remnants

43 Comments

My mother and her four paternal aunts (Lena, Meta, Bertha, and Greta) spent a great deal of time in the mid-1930’s filling my mother’s Hope Chest with patchwork quilts they sewed. They used cloth scraps from their own and others’ unneeded clothing as well as larger pieces for backing. Mom never really used them and just kept them in her cedar chest.

I started using them after Husband and I married. There were four of them. One is still in tremendous shape and we have it on a bed in the basement. The quilts worked best as blankets under the bedspread as they are all sized for double beds. Two of the quilts disintegrated after about 10 years. I decided to preserve the third one and patched it as best I could and put on a new backing. I hung it on the wall in my work office for many years until time and gravity started it to sag and tear at the seams.

It has been in a cabinet in my new office until I started to clean and get rid of stuff preparatory to my retirement. I took the quilt out to our van and left it there to be used as part of winter survival gear

Husband brought it into our son’s house when we were visiting there last week, and our grandson insisted that we put it on his bed, and he slept under it every night we were in Brookings. Mind you, it hadn’t been laundered in 25 years, and was probably full of dust, but grandson loved it and wasn’t happy when we took it home. I told him I wanted to patch it better and we would bring it back to him at our next visit. It dawned on me that the quilt is about 90 years old. My mother and her aunts would be pleased some of their handwork is still being used and loved.

What precious things do you have that have been handed down? What do you want to hand down for future generations? What do you think are essentials for “Hope Chests” these days?

2025, Automotive, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Playing Chicken

19 Comments

Most Wednesdays I leave the house very early to hit my favorite donut place.  When I left yesterday, YA said she was going to the gym before work and would probably be gone before I got back. 

I was thinking about that when I pulled into my driveway and saw that she was starting to back out of the garage.  She didn’t notice me right away (I was on the hill part of the driveway so my lights were pointing higher than her car) so she didn’t wait for me to pull into the garage next to her so I just sat and waited.

What you need to know is that YA and I have different strategies for dealing with our long driveway.  I almost always just back all the way down to the street.  YA does several little turns at the top of our driveway so that she is driving out headfirst.  Both techniques have their pluses and minuses.  But it meant that by the time she had turned herself around at the top, there would be room for me to get by and into the garage.

Went exactly as I had expected but while I was waiting it did make me think about “playing chicken”.  I’m not a big playing chicken kind of gal but it does feature in a movie I’ve watched too many times:

Have you ever been in a submarine?  Do you have a favorite submarine movie?

2025, Family, Health, History, Kids, Uncategorized

Running In the Family

24 Comments

When our daughter was in college, it never failed that every time she came home at the end of a semester she would spend at least a day lying on the sofa with a low grade fever. I attributed it to her body’s reaction to the stress of finals and assignments.

Last Saturday after my last full time day of work, I was felled both by a flare up of sciatica and a low grade fever that has lasted all this week. Hmm? Could daughter and I have similar reactions to stress? I think so. She probably inherited it from me.

Both our children teasingly blame me for their propensity to Generalized Anxiety Disorder. From their father they inherited flat feet. I have lumbar scoliosis like my maternal grandmother. So does one of my cousins. I did not inherit my father’s athleticism, but I did his musicality. Goodness only knows where I got A- blood type. I did not inherit my maternal grandmother’s ability to do complex math in her head. Our grandson seems to have that ability, and is proud to tell me that in Grade 1 he can do algebra in his head and is in an enrichment Math program. It is hard at times to know what is nurture and what is nature, but however our forebears hand things down to us, it can make our lives interesting.

What did you inherit or wish you had or hadn’t had inherited from your forebears? Ever read Running In The Family by Michael Ondaatje?

2025, Kids, pets, Uncategorized

Birthday Balloons

11 Comments

YA doesn’t like a big fuss made about her birthday.  This year she did request a birthday breakfast at one of her favorite places – The Lowbrow – but that was it.

This is hard for me as I love making a fuss.  In my old job, everybody was in charge of someone else’s birthday.  Card and treat.  For the last several years of my employment, I had Norma’s birthday.  Norma loved having a fuss made over her almost as much as I loved making a fuss; we were a match made in heaven.  I miss those days.

Anyway, YA doesn’t ever want a gathering, a cake, a fuss.  About five years ago I made a banner that I hung up in the dining room and then I added balloons for her age.  She allowed this so that’s my go-to these days…. I hang up the banner and put up the balloons.

I figured out that year that I could extend the festivities a bit by celebrating the dog.  YA is 20 years older than Guinevere so all I had to do was take down the “2” balloon, leaving the “5” balloon up for the dog.  It’s the only fuss that Guinevere gets; she doesn’t even like the balloon.  If you take it down to show it to her, she runs out of the room. 

This year, with Guinevere turning 10, I did have to get a “1” balloon to make her age correct.  Seemed a little silly to buy a balloon for the dog, but I did it anyway.   Since I’m not making a big deal about Norma anymore, I guess the dog gets the attention!

Have you ever celebrated a pet’s birthday?  How?

2025, animals, Family, Farming Update, home, Kids, Nature, Weather

I Spy

36 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Every time I went outside this past week I’d say “Hooo Doggie!” like Jed Clampet. It was kinda brisk.

No one was very interested in going outside.   

The chickens were very happy to just hang out in the coop.

The guys working on the tower didn’t come back until Wednesday morning, and then Thursday they had a crane helping them.

Taking daughter into town one morning and I was telling her about a dream I had. (I have a lot of theater and lighting dreams). I was expounding on dream interpretation, when she said, “Okay Dad”. Ah. Point taken. I stopped talking. And I thought she was hanging on my every word.

The bathroom remodeling is in the dusty ‘sanding drywall’ phase. The guys are doing a pretty good job putting up plastic and sealing things, but that dust…it gets everywhere. Kelly taped baffles over the gap at the bottom of the doors, and even that didn’t help. I picked up my computer mouse and there was a dusty outline of that. And that was at the far end of a room with the door closed. Sigh. Part of the deal. This too shall pass. That’s Humphrey peeking through the plastic in the header photo, he’s just wondering when this will finish. Kinda like daughter. The guys know it’s not personal when she comes out of her room and yells, “WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO BE DONE!??” It’s just messing up her routine.

I’m making progress organizing the shop. Construction is basically done, other than adding shelving or cabinets, and I do have to finish installing some screws on the ground row (because I hate getting down on the ground unless I must, I put off installing those screws) and a couple other places I realized I forgot to install screws. I’ve mounted an air hose reel inside, and finished the wall outside, and moved some toolboxes. There’s a couple things I’m not sure I should mount until the electricians are finished. I’ve ordered some fancy dancy lights: A bunch for inside, a couple big ones outside the shop doors, a small one over the walk-in door, and two over the work bench.

Luna the dog. Short for ‘Luna-tic’. When we go outside, she’s so excited to be out doing something, she spends most of the time hopping on her back legs chewing on my hand. We learned a new trick where she bites a big stick, and I can spin her in circles. Well, I myself can’t spin too many circles before I fall over, but she loves it.

Bailey hates to be left out.

And all three dogs love eating the corn I throw out for the chickens. Luna will eat right out of the bucket while I’m dumping it out.

They’re all so weird.

Last week I got seed ordered for spring. This week all the necessary fertilizer and chemicals was confirmed. My goodness, nothing is getting cheaper. $30,000 this week. It’s only money!

Saturday is the Met in HD opera movie. ‘Aida’. It’s a long opera, 3 hour 15 minutes. I’ll be getting the large popcorn. And taking a nap. During the movie I mean. I can’t stand the music, but I enjoy the “production” of it all. 

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE FOOD TO EAT RIGHT OUT OF THE CONTAINER?

2025, Art, Gatherings, Kids

Saturday Crafting

22 Comments

When I was in St. Louis, looking for place close to Nonny’s where I might find an old-fashioned roller shade, I discovered that Fleet Farm was doing a free craft day.  Luckily it was after I got home since driving around in St. Louis after their big snowstorm was not my idea of fun.  Also luckily the craft event was at all the Fleet Farms, not just the St. Louis locations.

I didn’t have anything scheduled for that morning so headed south to the Lakeville Fleet Farm – about 20 minutes in the Saturday morning traffic.  Got there about 10 minutes early so wandered around a bit.  Although I was technically first in line, a family with two young boys was right behind me; I left them go first. 

It was a pretty easy project.  Paint the little jar with modge podge (a kind of craft glue), roll it in fake snowflakes, glue on the two little eyes and carrot nose.  Then twist together two pipe cleaners and pick out two cotton “earmuffs”.  The staff hot glued the pipe cleaners and earmuffs on the cap of the jar.  Then they gave us each a battery operated votive candle for inside the snowglobe.

As a planner at heart, I couldn’t help noticing how I would have done the craft day differently.  I would have put modge podge and snowflakes at each of the tables to prevent the big glut at the beginning.  I would have checked all the glue bottles to make sure the top notch was clipped off so the glue would come out.  And I would have had at least three employees at the hot glue station. 

Of course, these are big complaints… the craft was going as well as could be expected when most of the crafters were five and under.  I was the first one done and I was walking back to my car, two different families stopped me to look at it, as they were on there way in for the event.

I didn’t really need to drive to Lakeville to do this.  By looking at the photo I was pretty sure I actually had all the stuff to make this at home, except for the little votive candle.  But it was a pretty morning, I had a good CD for the drive and got a nice coffee before I headed home.  I used red and green pipe cleaners so it will be part of my Solstice décor in December.  For the time being it’s still sitting on the kitchen counter where I can still admire it every day.

Do you have a relaxing Saturday morning routine?