James Turns 11!

James turned 11 today! He is growing up to be a kind, soft hearted, black and white deep thinker. He works so hard everyday to navigate his world and try to make it a better place.  He is a loving brother who is always up for playing legos, Magic, or for a discussion about literally anything to do with history.  We can't wait to see what this next year holds for him!  We love you James! 

James was thrilled to have a day all about him.  We started with waffles, he got to spend the day with his best friend Mason out on the boat.  The weather was beautiful and the water was surprisingly warm for June.  Hopefully this will be a pattern for the rest of the summer:)

Bears, Social Justice, & Birthdays

We woke up to the evidence of a larger visitor in the night.  The kids were surprised that the wind blew so hard to knock over our bird feeder, but upon closer inspection, clearly a bear came to visit last night.  I guess the upside here is that because our bees didn't survive the winter we didn't loose the bees and all of the hives to this bear.  

This week we were fortunate to have a bit of fellowship with our church family who we haven't seen in months.  It always makes our hearts happy when we can raise our voices for social justice for all groups in the spirit of our faith family.  

We actually saw friends this past weekend and got to have a catch-up birthday celebration.  When I say friends I really mean just seeing two other families, but when we have a birthday party in the mix it is always more fun.  Technically this is James' birthday time, but he was kind enough to share a small gathering with Audrey (and Noah, but he insisted we not celebrate his birthday too). It was fun to spend the afternoon playing outside with friends again!  This bottom picture also shows evidence that we are making steady progress on our tree house. More pictures to come soon!

Hiking Mt. Blue- 2020

 

 

Now that public school here is officially done for the year we practiced some more (not super successful) social distancing with friends we haven't seen for months!  The Mt. Blue road was open for sure today and we made it up to the peak of Mt. Blue, but it was SO hot... like pushing 90 degrees hot and so humid.  We were really wishing there was a pond at the top, but settled for the breeze that helped and kept the bugs at bay. We checked another peak off of our list in preparation for Katahdin in July.  Needless to say, Noah was glad to have stayed home for his last middle school fiddle group Zoom meeting;)  

Hiking White Cap Mountain, Rumford

Today started out with a bit of a wrinkle.  We voted that Mt. Blue would be our next hike, followed by White Cap since it was a bit longer. We drove all of the way to Weld to find the road to Mt. Blue closed.  No one was willing to walk in the road (about 1.5 miles) and then up the mountain, so we turned around, slightly, and headed to White Cap in Rumford instead. This kids handled the change of plans and the extra time in the car well (thankful for good audio books!), especially given the debacle of the last hike and unexpected mileage. Before we got our of the car we set clear expectations with a promise that there would be no unplanned side hikes;)

It was a gorgeous day!  This is another favorite of ours because of the longer distance, but much more gradual incline than Bald. The 360 degree view shows Sunday River, Mt. Abram, and the mountains of Grafton Notch to one side and the back side of Black Mountain on the other.  It is cool to see 3 of the ski mountains in one hike.  

Educational Baking, Birthday, & Pool Time

We have been having so many desserts during this quarantine! James is becoming more interested in baking and made this awesome lemon cake.  We have also made donuts, bagels, bread, and eclairs together among other things.  Luckily doing lots of yard work and hiking are balancing it all out;)  

This week we celebrated Grandpa's 75th birthday.  It feels like we miss him more everyday, but we certainly feel his presence in all that we do. Everyone is always excited to celebrate him as if he were here with letters, cards, and stories. I often come into the dining room and hear them talking to his "flat Grandpa" pictures about various things:)

It felt a bit crazy, but we opened the pool! May 17th is the earliest we have ever opened it, but it has been pretty warm and we actually have TIME to open it and enjoy it.  The kids did make the first jump, but it was only 55 degrees so it was short lived.  I will say though, Ben has a current streak of 5 days of "swimming" since it has been open.  It is warming up surprisingly quickly, it is now up to 68. 

We have completed testing for the year and are finishing our days with fun projects.  One of the topics we have focused on this spring has been cell structure.  Today we used cookies and candy to create different parts of the cell for both an animal and a plant cell. Can you tell the difference?  Among the cell components are: nucleus, mitochondria, ribosomes, cell wall, chloroplasts, and vacuoles. Naturally the frosting represents the cytoplasm holding everything together;)  

Randy Riley Rap

Noah has been doing the most distance learning this spring with his chorus class. He put together various projects on different topics, composers, exploring different music genres, etc.  I did want to share this video he made at the end of the year.  The assignment was to rap or sing a children's book or story. He created a rhythm on Incredibox, took and edited the pictures, recorded the song and put it all together.  He is pretty proud of how it turned out. You can find his rapping of "Randy Riley's Really Big Hit" by Chris Van Duse by clicking Here Enjoy!

Bald Mountain and the Saddleback Wind Trail

After last week's "easy" hike to Reed Brook we were ready to take on one of our favorite hikes, Bald Mountain in Weld.  We love this hike because it is just about a mile to the top with amazing views, but the hike is straight up for some great exercise.  I quickly realized that the kids had reached an exciting place for hiking endurance this year.  We made it up the trail very quickly with almost no stops.  Each time we hike, Ben begs us to continue on to see the windmills on the Saddleback ridge trail (an additional 1.5 miles one way). This year was no different.  The kids were only mildly excited, but since the first part of the trip went so quickly and easily I thought there wouldn't be a better time, especially since the bug weren't out yet this year... 

I am sure the rest of this story is fairly predictable... we got about halfway and people started to complain that the trail was too long and were getting tired... I will spare the details, but it is pretty easy to imagine. BUT when we finally made it everyone was really impressed to see the windmills from this perspective, and so close!  Not impressed enough to continue down the trail to see the bases, but still impressed. Although tired everyone did an awesome job on the way back and I was so thankful for this "peak experience" or none of us would have made it back;) When we did finally reach the bottom the kids were really proud of themselves and ultimately glad they did it.  I had to promise no more "unscheduled" extensions of our hikes.... Understandable since we were all mentally prepared for a 2 mile hike and came out having hiked over 6 miles... oh well!