Pirates in the Woods...X Marks the Spot!

Aiden opening the first cache he found

Given our tendency to try anything that gets the kids outside having fun in the woods, I'm surprised it took us this long to try geocaching.  I sort of got a little reminder at work last week, when I was out in the field with some co-workers and we found a geocache on a Forest Society property.  No biggie, the Forest Society allows geocaching, but when we peeked inside the bag of "trinkets" inside this ammo box, I thought...not for the first time...wow, Aiden would love this.  So this weekend, we finally tried it.

The guts of a geocache, in a ziploc inside an ammo can.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, geocaching is a sport where people hide boxes outside, filled with tiny trinkets and a log book, and then publish the GPS coordinates of their cache(s) online.  Others download these coordinates onto their own GPS units (or iphones, as in our case...yes, there's an app for that) and strike out into the woods to find the treasure.  The caches are different sizes, and often hidden in clever places (inside hollow trees, under rocks, etc) and often you have to decode a hint or small poem in order to solve the puzzle.  Once you find a cache, you sign and date the logbook and trade a small trinket if you want to.  

Haley with her toy horse (left), and one of the caches we found in a dead tree (right)

Armed with a bouncy ball, plastic ring and some silly bands - and Andy's iphone - we found 3 geocaches on a conservation property in New London.  It was fun...Aiden hiked a lot longer without complaining than he would have otherwise...and he got really excited each time we got very close to the cache location and had to actually hunt for it in the landscape.  Aiden traded his old loot for a little plastic ping-pong game, a tiny kaleidoscope, and some dice, and even Haley made a trade for a small plastic pony she clutched happily all the way home.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say this will become a frequent activity for us in the foreseeable future....Aiden loves it because he thinks we're treasure hunting... Andy and I love it because we all get out in the woods and get some exercise, and I (additionally) love it because now there's some grander purpose for all that gumball machine chotsky that Aiden saves in his room!

What's Wrong with This Picture?

Something strange is brewing when your kids are swimming outside in a kiddie pool on March 22nd in New Hampshire.  The temps the past two weeks have been unreal - even two days ago when it was still officially "winter" the mercury was up over 70 degrees.  And today, it was 85 degrees!   The peepers are singing in the marshes, the red maples have budded, and we've got three woodcocks timberdoodling in the backyard each night-- all way ahead of schedule.  The ice is out on Lake Sunapee 8 days earlier than ever in recorded history...since the 1800s!  I feel cliche saying that global warming may have arrived, but this is a very strange "spring" following an equally strange "winter."    I really hope this doesn't go spectacularly wrong in a week or so.  Tomorrow is looking more reasonable- only about 68 degrees here...still about 25 degrees above normal for mid-March, but not quite as freaky.

In the meantime, the kids are convinced that summer has arrived.  They wear shorts and summery dresses to school, dig their toes into the dirt, and Aiden even has the beginnings of a farmer tan on the back of his neck.  I've warned them about the possibility of another snowstorm (remember last Easter?) but they go right on splashing in the pool.  On Monday while we were grilling burgers on the deck in our shorts, Aiden said, "Dad, isn't this the perfect winter day?"  That made Andy laugh.  "Yeah, buddy, I think it is."  he replied.  About the only thing we could do was have another glass of wine and turn up the summer tunes.  Enjoy it while it lasts.  

Magically Dee-licious!

Becky's house won the prize this year.  The prize being, of course, nothing but bragging rights.

 To celebrate St. Patty's day, we made wee houses for the leprechauns.  Gingerbread houses are definitely no longer synonymous with Christmas in our world anymore.  We started making these on New Years several years back, and since then the house-construction has crept later and later each year...Valentines "Love Shacks" and now Paddy Castles.  Next year, I expect we'll house the Easter Bunny.  There's already some foreshadowing going on in that department, as we had mini-eggs and peeps aplenty to decorate with this St. Patty's Day.

Aiden with his house half-decorated, before the "collapse"

Micah looks leprechaunish with his red beard, next to Jeni's cupcake for comparision.

Trouble 1 and Trouble 2

The other trend we've been noticing, aside from the creeping date of our gingerbread parties, is that our construction skills seem to be getting more and more shoddy each year.  We blame this on the kids!  We used to take such care in setting up the houses and decorating them perfectly symmetrically, with intricate designs in tiny candies.  Now we're lucky if the houses stay together long enough for one of the kids to slap a few peeps and a gummy shark on the side, and it's a miracle if they still resemble houses when we're done.    This is not at all worrying, at least to me...it's more about having fun, and the creative process, than the finished product.  Or, as Aiden would say, "I'ts really about the candy, Mom."

Oops.  Aiden's house after its collapse

All the cousins

Yay! Pheeb's house!

Jeni and Ciara, both collapsing at the same time

Fisher-zilla towering over the finished houses

Back to the Sap

Hapa and Grandma came back from Florida at their normal time (first few days of March) but this is not a normal year.  At least in terms of weather.  It's been warmer than normal all winter, with little snow, which is leaving sugar-makers all over the northeast a bit baffled.  Some tapped their trees in January, and have been making syrup off and on for two months, and others waited, hoping early spring temperatures would work themselves into a normal rhythm eventually.  In order for the sap to flow, nights have to be below freezing, and days above... a scenario you typically can count on in March and early April.  This year, all bets are off. Despite a dubious-looking 10-day forecast (way too warm) we decided to tap about 200 maples last weekend and hope for the best.

Grandpa Dada doing the double drag

 As always, we had great fun getting the taps in.  Grandpa Dada joined us too (he's getting addicted, I think...this is his 3rd year tapping!) and with only two inches of snow in the woods (fresh from the night before) it was easy going all around.  The sap was flowing both Saturday and Sunday, which meant we could (at the very least) enjoy sap soda and get the traditional photo of Aiden waiting with his tongue under a tap.  I think I drank about two gallons of sap myself over the weekend.  It's refreshing stuff, just slightly sweet and ice cold.  Carbonated, it makes the best seltzer you've ever had.

Andy on the tractor

Haley in the trailer with sugaring equipment

 Haley got to ride in the trailer and watch the buckets, lids and taps getting prepped and going off into the surrounding sugarwoods.  She helped "Mema" Sally make hot chocolate for the rest of us too.  Aiden was a great helper for about an hour and a half - he hammered in taps, cleaned out tap holes, lined buckets, and delivered lids - after that point he definitely started to drag (How many more do we have to do, Hapa? Aww, man...) and it was a bit like pulling teeth until we finished up for a lunch break.  We got the rest in after lunch though, 200 taps dripping away, at least for the time being.  You just never know.

Mema and Hapa are raising eight new baby chicks for the chicken coop.  They're New Hampshire Reds and some other kind of cross hen... anyway, at this age they're just adorably soft and cute.  Aiden, Haley, Timber and Kimball were all mesmerized by the little cheepers, and spent a good deal of the weekend staring over the edge of the cardboard box which is the chicks' current abode.  Aiden held the chicks so many times I think he used a half bottle of hand sanitizer in 2 days (we told him to sanitize after he was done but he usually couldn't stand waiting more than 2 minutes after hand-sanitizing to pick up another cute little ball of fuzz).  And the best part?  The plan is that these chickies are coming to 21 Gould Road next fall in a mobile chick-house, to spend the winter in our yard while my parents are in Florida.  Granted, they won't be as fluffy and cute by then, but I still think the kids will be mighty excited!

Sugar on Snow, with mud season rut background

Goats at Palmers Sugarhouse

Sticky stuff

Family Cow- where my mom gets her raw milk

Cows at Family Cow

Haley in a little dress my mom made for me when I was little

The First of Winter...I mean, March

Winter finally arrived on the first day of March.  Over a foot of snow dropped from the sky over the course of the day, and it was howling and wild outside.  School was closed, so Aiden and Haley settled in for a day of indoor adventures.  We made our own recycled crayons for starters that morning, involving peeling,  melting down and re-molding all the little bits of broken crayon in the kids' art bin.  They came out pretty well, i think, for our first try.  The kids certainly seem to like them more than the bits they came from!

  

The snowstorm came on a Thursday, and there was perfect powder and sunny skies on the Friday following, but (of course) it rained buckets on Saturday and put a big dent in the snow quality.  While it was raining we went to a chocolate fest and then spent a few hours at splash park pretending we'd never left Florida.  On Sunday, though, we finally go to enjoy the snow.  Micah, Becky, Pheebs, and Fisher came up for the day and we got ALL the kids (with the exception of Fisher - please, we're not crazy) skiing at Mt. Sunapee.  Aiden is progressing really well, making good turns and handling the runs all by himself now...no hand holding or parental micro-management required.  It's very cool to see.  Haley and Phoebe...well, that was a bit of an experiment taking two 1-year-olds up the slopes!  The rental place had a good chuckle trying to outfit them, as the smallest boots and helmets they had were definitely too big for these two little munchkins.  But whatever, live free or die, as we say here in the granite state.  No time like the present!

Sacked out at Splash Park

Oh, yeah.  We can ski too!

The ski team

In the end Haley and Phoebe made about 5 "runs" down the smallest bunny hill...with lots of hand/jacket holding and heaps of verbal encouragement.  We learned that it is totally possible to tell a one-year-old to make a pizza wedge with her skis, and to lean forward and bend her knees slightly.  It's just not possible that they'll have any clue on earth what you're talking about.  Still, there were no tantrums or major wipeouts, and they definitely got the idea of what it feels like to slide downhill on skis.  Mission accomplished.  I'd say they even enjoyed it, for the most part.  And as with any good skiing excursion, hot chocolate and brownies were enjoyed in the lodge afterwards.  They definitely enjoyed that part.

Micah feeding Fisher 

Happy Fisher...still has a few months before he can hit the slopes too.

Nature Nerds

Palm warblers are everywhere in South Florida

 One of the amazing benefits of vacationing with grandparents is that you and your man can escape for an entire day to do whatever it is you love best.  For Andy and I, that means a rare uninterrupted day of birding and "nature nerding"... even better if that happens to be in the Everglades!  By now we have been there so many times that we know all of our favorite hotspots, and can plan out a day with some accuracy of time and effort.  We started this year with a stop in Key Largo at Dagny Johnson State Park, to look for a rare stray from the Bahamas that had been reported on the bird listservs recently.  It was no small feat to find this LaSagra's Flycatcher... he's small and mostly grey and very skittish and secretive, and it's a big park. But thanks to a tip from another birder we passed on the way, we were both eventually able to get great looks at this elusive life-bird.  Not enough of a look for good photographs though.

 Big gator (left) and an Anhinga (right)

Green Heron

 Andy was able to get lots of other really nice photographs of more cooperative birds, bugs, and fish though.  We didn't see any more lifers, but as usual we saw some birds that we never expected to see, which is always fun... like a Western Kingbird, four Scissor-Tailed Flycatchers, three Marbled Godwits, and a Vermillion Flycatcher.  We had lunch at the new little cafe they've put together in Flamingo- fried gator and a big (surprisingly crispy and fresh) salad each.  If they had sold beer with lunch, I think we could have called the day perfect!

Another Green Heron

White Ibis

Anole

Spider, not sure which type

Northern Parula

 Common Green Darner (left) and Needlefish (right)

Snowy Egret