No Cards Again This Year

People ask about our photo Christmas cards ... no, you haven't been stricken from our list, we just haven't done one in several years. We did them until they weren't fun any more (2003). Now I try to send a "real" email out to people around the holidays, but I don't know that I will even get around to that this year. Here are a few from Christmases Past.

2000: My favorite because G was so excited to dress up like presents since it was her idea

1998: Our best concept, perfectly executed by our 2-year-old

1989: My favorite pre-G card because my aptly named Argos sat like a good puppy through the whole shoot

1993: Card on the left was mailed to the bulk of the list; card on the right was sent to a few who would appreciate the humor

Merrily on High

The 7th & 8th grade Band, Choir & Orchestra Christmas concert was last night. The happy surprise was it was entertaining and just a tad over an hour. The 7th grade trombone section rocked (especially on "A Cambridge Carol")!

Long Night Moon

4:08 p.m. on 12.11

Update:

6:52 a.m. on 12.12

Cookie Walk

For the past 10 years, on the first Saturday in December, G and I have headed out at 7:45 a.m. to a local Catholic church so we can be some of the first people to go through their annual Cookie Walk. We've braved bad weather in the past, but this year the roads were still covered with two to four inches of snow we got over night. (Anyone who knows me knows how much I love to drive, let alone in snow, so this gives you an idea of how dedicated we are to this tradition!) There are tables and tables of every kind of cookie you can think of -- they give you a container and a plastic glove and let you pick what you want. G's favorite are the Chocolate Crinkles and mine are the Cherry Chocolate Chip Cookies, and we get multiple versions of them. We came back with just under six pounds of cookies. We're taking bets on how long you think these will last!

Food Drive

From Thursday's local paper

Parting Shot

The last thing we do before we leave my folks' house is take a picture of them with G. This one from Thanksgiving break is a little more poignant, because right after we left my mom fell again and is back in rehab (duration unknown). (Thanks to all for your calls and emails of support.)

Yes We Can

The yard sign was a first. So were the lobbying emails and phone calls to friends and family in swing states. It makes me believe that Yes We Can ...

View From Our Window

The first measurable accumulation at 6:10 this morning

Climbing & Rapelling

Dan & G went to an indoor climbing studio last weekend. (My back -- ahem -- prevented me from joining them.) G started out tentative, but was rapelling by the end of the afternoon. Dan enjoyed it enough to want to learn how to belay the next time out. There is some noise about doing it again this weekend ...

Rapelling

To the top to sound the gong

Band Concert

The 7th and 8th grade bands and choirs gave their first concert of the year last night, in honor of Veterans' Day. What is more satisfying than listening to patriotic music by not only your own, but other people's children for an hour and a half?

Trombonists extraordinaires Frances & G

Hard at work

Frosty Moon

View from our bedroom window, 11/11 @ 4:11 a.m. (Guess you had to be there)

Weekend Holiday

A group we belong to was offering a special weekend rate at The Wilderness Resort in Wisconsin Dells, so we took advantage of it. We've been to seven indoor waterparks since G was little, and this was the most disappointing one we've ever visited. It is poorly laid out, overcrowded, understaffed (by people who don't care about service) and not well maintained. After the first night we skipped the waterpark and looked for other things to do. (We tried to check out a day early, but they'd only refund our money in a giftcard -- believe me, we will never be returning!) Fortunately for G and me (but not Dan), the Dells is home to a Tanger Outlet. (How can you beat Gap shirts for $3.59? We'll each take one in every color!) We spent a major part of Saturday eating and shopping, then went back to our room and read until we got a second wind. G then tackled a rock wall; we ate dinner, then she tried it again. We left early Sunday but stopped in Madison on the way home and did more eating and shopping. We've got a good jump on Christmas shopping and a winter wardrobe.



Faux Northwoods cabin decor

Faux Northwoods cabin decor with WiFi

Scaling the rock wall (taken from a second story balcony)

Least Wonderful Time of the Year

It is flippin' snowing like crazy and sticking here right now!

Day Off

Yesterday G had a vacation day to mark the end of the first quarter of school. She and her schoolmates deserved it -- I could not believe the amount of work piled on 12-year-olds over a two-day period (G had six tests, two projects and a speech). We took it easy and enjoyed a nice, fairly warm day, which was a good thing since it is rainy and cool here today.

Last of the combining

Last day of bubbles?

Happy Halloween

Fling!

In celebration of the end of pumpkin season, Dan pulled the trebuchet out and has it operational. He added an additional 200 pounds to the counterweight this year, with excellent results:

Snap!

Last Sunday, G and Dan discovered a half dollar-sized visitor on our front patio -- a turtle. They couldn't imagine where it came from or where it was trying to go. We have never seen one on our property, let alone so close to the house, despite having a marsh. Since the weather was turning cold, they brought it in and made a really cool terrarium habitat for it. With a little Internet research, they identified it as a young snapping turtle. After weighing the pros and cons of keeping it, they decided it would be better off in the wild. They are releasing into the marsh today so that it can hibernate with the rest of the turtles.

Temporary visitor

Book Fair

G's school is running a week-long Scholastic Book Fair in conjunction with Teacher Conferences. As a PTO board member, I have been spending a lot of time working there. The scale of this one is exponentially bigger than the ones at her old school. It looks as though our 50+ teachers will have at least $150 each to spend once the fair is over. Since it is a new school with a lot of new teachers, that's a shot in the arm for classroom libraries. I hope everyone reading this will buy a book for a classroom next time s/he has the opportunity!


G browsing on the far left. We have a $130 tab so far and there's still a day and a half left!

Costume Party

Hay Ride

Our friends Beth, Peter, Liz and Dale brought their kids and a bunch of friends out to the farm yesterday. In addition to hay wagon riding, pumpkin picking, animal feeding and general running around, Dan came up with a couple of novel activities for the group. He set the moms up by asking if it was OK for kids to climb up the silo -- of course the answer was "no," but it made scrambling up into the hay mow seem tame by comparison. He also took the hay ride down into the cow pasture, where our "heirloom" apple tree stands. The wagon slats were perfect perches for apple picking. The apples were a hit, even though they are completely natural (i.e., a worm here and there). With cousins here on top of it all, it was a pretty good day all around.

Who's the next one up?

"I can see the next county from here"


Everyone wants apples!

Cousin mule ride

October 11

Just Because

Last Hurrah

Dan closed the pool up yesterday. G & I couldn't let him do that without one last dip. At 5:30 p.m., the ambient temperature was 59 degrees and the water was 54 degrees. Did that stop us?

False bravado

Cold!

Did it!

Survived!

An Apple A Day

We have been neglecting our apple trees, so G & I went out and picked Braeburns, Empires and a Granny Smith. The Braeburns were perfect for me: tart and firm. G still prefers Fujis, which are a sweet apple.

"Fruit-laden" is not hyperbole

G with a Braeburn

Season Opener

Yesterday Dan, G & I woke up dreading what was ahead of us: the first day of pumpkin season. But it turned out much better than we thought. (As the saying goes: Expect the worst and you will always be pleasantly surprised.) It was a superlative day, the stream of people coming in was never overwhelming, and the morning and afternoon were relieved by visits from friends. G accounted for half of the sales -- she worked her butt off. Today the forecast calls for rain, so it should be slow.

G and her friend Sarah, who she's known since they were three

The colors of the day

Maike on Stand Down

Merlin's Dragon

T.A. Barron, author of several Merlin series, was at G's school today. He talked about his books and the writing process. The factoid she came away with is that he lives in Colorado and has five kids, all of whom are named after mountains. Mr. Barron also made appearances at local indy bookstores today to promote the first book (Merlin's Dragon) of a new series. G & I went to meet him at one. He was extremely personable and chatted with everyone in line about something. He seemed genuinely glad to see each person; he was especially touched that one girl brought her dog-earred copy of one of his books for him to sign. We've seen several authors over the years, but T.A. Barron is the first one whom G said she would like to see again. If he's at a bookstore near you, you should stop by and see him.

G & T.A. Barron

Preparations

This weekend G and I spent a lot of time setting up the front porch display. Unfortunately, we are not very optimistic about pumpkin season this year. There aren't as many pumpkins as in previous years, the ones we have are small, some are mushy already, several varieties didn't grow, it's super weedy (but at least there's diversity there: pigweed, velvetleaf, foxtail, milkweed, common ragweed, giant ragweed, lamb's quarter, grass and something that looks like bushy tumbleweed), and there's a weevil infestation. We do have birdhouse gourds out the wazoo, however, and crown of thorn gourds for the first time since G was really little. We are definitely going to have to play this season by ear.




G sets up the specialty gourd table






Cocoa nests in the ornamental corn display

Norman

If you've see the movie City Slickers, you're familiar with the scene in which Billy Crystal's character saves a calf. A lot of viewers were moved because "Norman" is so goshdarned cute. But anyone with any knowledge of cattle was sitting there wondering, "How in the world did that purebred Jersey calf come out of that mongrel of a beef cow?" Answer: The art director took poetic license because Jersey calves are so adorable.

When people come to the farm, they love to see the cows. Unfortunately, unless you have show animals, beef cows aren't really warm and fuzzy. But dairy cows are, and dairy calves especially are. So today Grandpa went out and bought a Jersey calf for visitors to bottlefeed during pumpkin season. G's calling him "Bunny" but D is calling him "$6 Bargin Basement Purchase." I'm hoping neither one sticks ...

FACE'd

G's transition to her new school is going pretty well. She's got a group to eat with at lunch and she now realizes that everything she touches gets a grade, so she's made the adjustments. Then there's FACE - Family and Consumer Education. So far the group she is in hasn't had the best results with their projects, and their grades reflect that. At my prodding, she asked her teacher what the extra credit project this week was. As a result, G made a chicken stir fry for dinner last night. Since I phone out for anything involving sizzling hot oil, it was hard to watch her do it. The general consensus was that she did a good job and it is something we'd eat again (although next time she might add some extra soy sauce, because the stir fry sauce turned the rice a weird shade of beige).

Step 2: Stir frying the broccoli

Finished product

Who Cooks For You?

We have a barred owl somewhere in the neighborhood that is vocalizing between 3 & 4 in the morning. Fortunately it is not right outside our window; it's close enough that I can hear it if I am awake, but not close enough to keep me up. Barred owls have a really distinctive call that I think sounds like "hoohoo ha-hoooo, hoohoo ha-hooo," but that birders say sounds like "Who cooks for you?" We don't hear one often, so as long as this one keeps its distance, I'm glad it's around.

Getting Closer

This pretty much sums up my feelings about pumpkin season, only days away:

Thanks to Mark for forwarding it. If anyone knows to whom I can attribute this gem, let me know.