Sailing on the Piscataqua

Not a lot of wind, but lots of boat waves.  We spent 45 minutes going against the current and then three minutes coming back!  For someone who grew up sailing just a sunfish on a lake with no currents or tide, the river seems intimidating, to say the least.

Ah, summer

I'm keeping up with the tomatoes this summer!

Swim to Sandy

I've read that we live in an age without rites and rituals, but in our family we do have at least one pre-adolescent ritual, and that is the swim to Sandy Island.  The swim had more significance when I was a child, because after a successful swim my grandfather allowed us to ride in the motorboat without wearing a life jacket.  But now, with the state government regulating that anyone 12 and under must wear a life jacket, the swim is not quite as big a deal.  But, the kids still get the satisfaction of completing the swim, along with a cool $20 bill from Grandpa (and somehow my kids have managed to mix in a trip to the candy counter at the Old Country Store).

Last year, although she was fully capable of swimming the distance (about 1/3 of a mile), Clara had a swim early in the summer that was so cold she aborted her attempt.  So this year she tried again and did it with no problem at all, laughing and talking the entire way.  

Pinocchio

I took Clara and her friend Kennedy to see Pinocchio at the Peterborough Players.  This was a real treat for Kennedy, who as one of five siblings (soon to be six) doesn't get to do many things that are just for her.  She and Clara had a fabulous time, and to my surprise so did I.  I was expecting to endure a somewhat inane children's production, but to my surprise it was one of the best productions I've seen at the Players.  It was put on as a play-within-a-play, and it was creative and funny, and the music was fantastic.  What an unexpected treat for a summertime Monday evening.

Fancy Dress Party

Ok, it was just a pig roast, but we don't have much of a chance to dress up here in rural New Hampshire.  

Nubi Kids Camp

One of the highlights of our first few summers at Nubi was Nubi Kids Camp, run by Catherine and Elsbeth, the only teenagers in the neighborhood.  It was a morning camp, 9-12 Mon-Thu, with Thursday spent at Pitcher Mountain picking blueberries.  It was a great chance for the neighborhood kids to bond as a group.  

In 2014 there was no camp.  Lee and Lila were getting too old, and there were lots of younger kids.  So this year Lee and Lila decided to take the reins and run the camp for a week.  They ended up with eight kids from age 3-8.  I don't know how they did it!  They did a lot of prep work, planning activities and scheduling each day.  Tuesday was a complete washout, so they had to be flexible and move things around.  There were lots of challenges along the way, but they both emphatically said that they wanted to do it again next year.  

Annual End-of-School-Year Lunch at Kimballs

Big Baby Head at the MFA

Actually we went to see the gallery dedicated to pieces depicting scenes from the Iliad and the Odyssey.  It was lots of fun looking at all the clay pots (even for Lee, who is DONE WITH CLAY POTS after last summer's trip to the Mediterranean).

Here is Polyphemus (not at all how I pictured a cyclops would look), and Odysseus escaping his cave under the belly of a ram.

What Dandelions?

Ah, Spring (sortof)

Spring here is here.  Well, sort of.  If you were to judge things by Clara's clothing, you would think it truly had arrived. She's been wearing summer clothing for the last few days, despite the fact that the temperature has barely topped 40.  Here she was yesterday, soaking up the sun, and swearing to me that she was "boiling!"

The cats also had their first venture outside for the year.

New England Aquarium

We went to the aquarium for the first time in years.  Linda and Roger joined us, and we had a great time.  The aquarium has undergone some changes in the last several years.  We had been there once since they added the outdoors area for the sea lions and fur seals, but the shark and ray touch tank was new.


We spent a long time there, reaching down to feel the rays as they swam past, and feeling the sandpaper-like skin of the tiger sharks.   I especially loved the Leopard Whiptail Ray pictured below.  It was huge!












There was one small ray that acted a lot like a dog, returning again and again to be petted.  It would swim away bit, and then come back and nuzzle up against your hand.  The girls were enamored with it.

We also spent a fair amount of time just looking at the colorful fish in the coral reef exhibit.  I especially loved the lion fish.














We walked over to Flour Bakery and Cafe for lunch (mmmm...delicious!!!), and then went back to see the IMAX movie on Humpbacks in 3D.  It was fabulous, with fantastic scenes of humpbacks coordinating together to hunt small fish.

In Jail

We're tough around here. 

We don't even allow Tiger in for a visit.

Knitting as a Winter Sport

Leopard Girls

This week is February vacation week, and Clara chose to attend Winter Wol's Nest at the Harris Center.  This left Lee and me home together for a good chunk of the day.  She has some work to do for her CTY course, and Lila is also around this week, so there was no need to entertain her, but today I planned for just the two of us to have an outing together.  I thought we'd go to Nashua, stop at Mother and Child for some clothes, restock some TJ necessities, and top it off with a movie at Chunky's.  

We had a great day.  I was so touched when Lee told me she couldn't eat much breakfast because she was so excited for the day.  We first stopped at A&E Coffee Roasters, had a hot drink and picked out some interesting teas (Toothless Tiger Chai for me, Very Berry for Lee, and Green Mango for Clara).  Then we scored big at Mother and Child.  Lee found several shirts, some pants, a long velvety black skirt, and some hiking boots for the summer.

But the big find was this leopard skin jacket.  And, she found this leopard skin vest for Clara.

"Mom, we have to get this for Clara," she said.

Lee was so excited to give the vest to Clara when she got home from camp.

Clara loved it, and is actually sleeping with it spread out on her pillow right now, so Lee was right on.





The movie was fun too.  Lee is definitely moving beyond kids movies (although not the better ones that most of us enjoy our entire lives), and so we watched McFarland USA, which we thoroughly enjoyed.

Stomach Bug

The kids each had a brief stomach bug this week.   They were both troopers about it and bounced back really quickly.  Lee's timing was ideal, as she was hit after breakfast and pretty much recovered by evening.  Clara, however, came down with it at midnight, and so we had a long and interrupted night which included a fair amount of cleaning up.  She was so sweet, though, and kept saying how much she loved us and how grateful she was that we got up in the middle of the night to take care of her.  Then she wrote us this card:

What a sweet, sweet kid she is.  Now if only I could convince her to give two hoots about spelling.  ;-)

Knick Knacks

For Christmas I found Clara an old type-set tray from an antique store.  I kind of wondered what she would ever put in it and how long it would take her to fill it.  I needn't have worried.

Winter 2015

Well, this winter started off pretty poorly.  It was cold, and then every time it would threaten some precipitation it would warm up and rain.  Pour, actually.  We received inches of rain in December, including a completely lacking-in-Christmas-spirit downpour on Christmas Eve.  The ground was partially frozen and there was nowhere for the water to go.  Then it would get cold again and the water would freeze.  We had weeks and weeks of thick ice that made it treacherous to venture outside.  It was awful.

But, our cries of despair must have been heard.  What a winter we have had the past four weeks or so.  We've had one storm after another, and unlike the coast which is buried in ridiculous amounts of snow, we've received a manageable foot or so at a time.  And, somewhat atypically, the thermometer has not ventured above freezing, and so we have feet of soft fluffy powder on the ground and snow sticking around on the evergreens.  It has been just beautiful.

Of course, it's been very cold too.  But you get used to it!  When I went out this morning in 4 degrees, it felt pretty balmy.  I skied without a hat and with thin gloves on.  Then I realized it was 15 degrees warmer than the previous morning.  So it was, relatively, balmy.  And yesterday we had a heat wave when the temperature hit the mid-20's.  We were all running around without hats or coats.


Oreo has been very happy with this snow.  We take him out snowshoeing or xc-skiing every morning.   The snow has gotten so deep that he's pretty much kept from running off on his own and stays right with us, eager to stay in the broken trail.  Lee and I are teaching him the command "Break Trail" to move him in front, because otherwise he tends to tread on the backs of your skis or snowshoes.

He loves jumping at the trees and knocking the snow off and then enjoying the shower of snow coming down on him, as shown below.  It's pretty funny to watch.

That is him in the middle of the snow shower in the second picture.

Great Clara Quote

We were doing math the other day and Clara was very distracted.  "Mom, my mind's just on screen saver!" she said.

Big Snow Pile

Lots of Fort-Building Going On

Beautiful Morning

Cookin' Bacon

It doesn't seem so long ago that I would make all the meals, dish up the plates, and bring them to the table.  Actually if you go back further, I would spoon the food in their mouths.  And back further than that, I manufactured everything myself too!

And now, look at us.  More often than not, there is a point in the day when all of us are on top of one another in the kitchen, everyone doing their own thing.  Ah, liberation.

The Sauna / Rope Swing Cycle

Today Blizzard Juno hit us (although we didn't have blizzard conditions here, and our snowfall was much less than the predicted 18-24 inches).  I gave the kids a snow day (why do homeschooled kids think they need snow days when we take so many other days off, I wonder?).  After a long day of sledding and trudging around in deep snow, five girls ended up in our sauna.  They then proceeded to take turns climbing out the basement window into the snow and swinging on the rope swing.  It's not quite as extreme as making snow angels, but pretty chilly nonetheless!  They did at least have sandals on their feet.  

Lee

Lila

Clara

Whatever Happened to Cake and Ice Cream?

For Lila's birthday celebration this year, she brought four friends to a glass-blowing workshop.  Wow, my kids are at the age where they're getting to do cool stuff that I haven't even done yet!  I'll post a picture of the finished product once we get it back (it's tempering for a few days).  

Oreo and the Snow

This dog is in his element in the snow.

Learning Something New Every Day

Today we were reading about the phases of the moon and we learned that people in the Southern Hemisphere see the moon upside-down as compared with people in the Northern Hemisphere (which is really cool!).  

So I said, "See, I learn something new every day!" 

Lee replied, "Well, I learn several new things every day when I'm doing school.  And on weekends and when I'm not doing school I learn tons of stuff."  

When I asked her why that was, she said, "Because that’s when I’m out doing things!"

Existential Angst

It's a bit early for this, isn't it?