Poor Snowman

Warning! May contain some graphic material.

Little man recently learned the cold hard facts of snowman building. 

Lesson 1: Snowman built in our back yard do not come to life when a hat is placed upon their head. 

 Lesson 2: Unlike the ones in his books, our snowman do not leave the yard to play with other snowman when we drive away.

Lesson 3: Rain will cause a snowman to melt away.

Thankfully, it is now snowing again and we can start over after nap time.

Holiday Card

While I love receiving Christmas cards, expecially the ones with pictures, I tend to stress out about doing my own and often end up doing a New Year's card because I waited a bit too long.  Since I once again waited too long, I decided to do a blog card instead (thank you for the idea Heather).

Merry Christmas!



Loving Life

If you have been following this blog at all, you know I love stuff made locally, and the more hands-on things become the better.  Therefore, when I found out one of the local chocolate shops, Laughing Moon Chocolates, holds candy cane demonstrations where kids can not only see how the candy canes are made but shape their own, we loaded the family in the car and headed to Stowe (I am going to apologize for the quality of some of the pictures, we had to move around a bit and didn't always have the best picture taking spot, but it is a pretty cool process).

 To start off, they take the the melted sugar and corn syrup and dump it back and forth between two big buttered trays until it has a nice gooey consistency. 

 Then, (this is the cool part) they put it on this hook and stretched it out so the air can get in and turn the candy white(The girls that work in this place have amazing shoulders).  This was Little Man's (and the bigger man in the family as well) favorite part, and I thought he was going to jump right off my shoulders and go help the lady. The older woman next to us was very amused by his running commentary during this process. Up to this point, I had assumed the gloves were so their hands would not get sticky, but at this point in the process the candy is so hot, that not only to they have to wear the gloves, they have to keep rotating the person who is stretching out syrupy mess, because of the heat.

 After that, it is brought back to these heating lamps where color is added and it is twisted into a cylinder shape, which is clipped and handed off to eager children and adults. 

 Little Man was so excited about shaping his own candy cane.

 Five minutes later we had a nicely wrapped candy cane to take home.  Unfortunately, it was dropped on the way out the door which resulted in a minor moment of emotional trauma.

That is until he realized he could eat some of the broken pieces! 

 Eating the candy resulted in the need to run around the back yard before lunch and work some of the sugar out of his system. 

Thank God for nap time, I'm exhausted. 

Christmas Tree

I know there are several debates out there in the battle of real tree vs. fake tree, but having grown up in New England, in my mind, it must be real and you must cut it yourself.  In the past few years, we have added that it must be cut in the dark and hope for the best when you get it home. 

Bucket List

One of my aunts has told me several times that by the time I am old, I will have nothing left to do on my bucket list; she might be right.

#197 of 453 running a Santa Race-2011 Ri-Ra's Burlington 5K Santa Run.

Life After Cross-Country

If you have followed this blog at all in the past few years, the one thing you may have noticed is that from Mid August-mid November, I disappear.  Actually, my family notices this from time to time as well.  I coach cross-country in the fall and have found that if you have a successful team, then the season may be much longer then other sports.  In fact, the runners still have 2-3 more weeks depending on how they place at the pre-qualifier for Nationals; but because it is a Nike sponsored event, Vermont does not recognize it as part of our season, so we hand the workouts off to some of the parents and watch from afar.  Anyway, enough about cross-country---well almost- they just won the New England Regional High School Cross Country Championships yesterday! OK now I am done. 

I do actually manage to get some family time in during the fall and, no, that does not count the times little man is running along side me at a cross-county race.  Besides Halloween, fall walks, carving pumpkins, apple picking, running a half marathon(yes this is a normal activity in our family!) and other traditional fall activities, we had an entire house full of guests a few weeks ago.  One of my high school friends, her husband, and all 5 of their kids came to visit.  One might ask what you do with all of those people.  Actually that is an easy question: factory tours! Yep, there are about a million Vermont companies around here and many of them have factory tours that are free or pretty cheap.  We spent the day eating Ben and Jerry's ice cream, drinking apple cider, sampling cider doughnuts and watching glass blowers (yes you can take 6 children under the age of 10 into a glass studio and survive!).  We had a great (cheap) weekend with our friends. 

I also spent the Fall learning that sometimes my husband is a very intelligent man.  I was a little freaked out one day when I came home from a cross country race to find all of the leaves raked up before we had gotten the traditional, "jump in the leaves" photos out of the way for the year.  In the past year we moved our garden plot around since it's original location had no nutrients what so ever in the soil.  The area is still fenced in, and my wonderful husband had thrown the leaves into this area in hopes of them composting in the next year along with other things that we have yet to throw into this area because little man had made this into fall play area and is having way too much fun "jumping in the leaves."

I hope all of you have been enjoying the fall as much as we have!

From Scratch

Homemade ravioli with homemade ricotta cheese. Amazing!

That and little man had a lot of fun with the pasta tool.

Slacker

As you can see, we have been far too busy exploring the world around us to bother with the blog. Since it is raining for the second weekend in a row, I figured I have no excuse for not updating the blog. I have run out of indoor activities---and Little Man is supposed to be cleaning up the mess he made this morning in his room.
So where exactly have we been exploring? All over Vermont. We took this picture near my aunt's camp when we took the kayaks out. I wish I had been able to get a picture of the loons that swam under the kayak; but it is really hard to steer a kayak, take a picture and make sure the toddler on board doesn't flip us over in the process.


Please note the fact that Daddy's jeans are wet. After he had just finished telling Little Man not to get too close to the water, because the rocks are slippery, he fell in trying to get a zebra mussel out of the lake. Unfortunately they are an invasive species, but Little Man is now pointing out the mussels in the grocery store, so it was a good learning experience for him (and daddy!)



Mommy, on the other hand, will stick to the muddy marshland. I may get stuck but at least the only thing that is wet is my feet.

How about the garden, you ask. It's been rough...we have had blight, the rain washed out most of the nutrients in the soil(we found out the hard way that raised beds are not always the way to go), but we have had enough grow for Little Man to enjoy the experience.

Someone needs to tell that boy not to pick the small carrots. Oh well that is why he has his own garden.

I know he is small, but he is a really cute caterpillar.

Don't expect much from me this fall, it is cross-country season and Little Man and I are going to spend our days running through the woods.

kinderGARDEN-Rainbow Scavenger Hunt

The kindergarden challenge this week was to look for as many colors in the garden as we could find. I tried to have Little Man take all the pictures, but after about 20 like this, we decided that Mommy should take the pictures while Little Man pointed the items out.

Green

(Note: the rain jacket with no rain)

Orange

(Our chickens are apparently camera shy, it took me 20 minutes to get this picture)

Red

Blue

Purple


(This particular lupine is a little behind; all of the rest bloomed in the spring)

Yellow

White

Pink

We did find Gray!

(This guy has lived in this tree since we moved in)

Brown (Little Man felt the need to take a picture of this guy)

Crazy Summer

I feel like we have been running a marathon all summer; between conferences, family vacations, swim lessons, VBS and a family crisis, I am ready for a break. Thankfully, we have been able to enjoy some of what summer has to offer so far this summer.....

The beach of course (Thank you grandma)! Virginia Beach

Children's Garden, Camden, NJ

Yes, I made my family drive all over VA Beach looking for this place with fresh local peach pie. It was totally worth every bite.

And we got homemade peach ice cream to go with it.

It wouldn't be summer without my kayak.

The best part is we are only halfway through.