Happy Birthday Dimble-Dog!

Kimball Dimble-Dog turned one this weekend.  Or at least that's what the single sheet of paper that came with her at the Puppy-Palooza All Breed Dog Rescue event would indicate.  Never mind that nothing else on that paper has been correct.  It reads that she's a male, needing to be fixed (try female, already spayed - at least the first part of which we had already determined before we left with her- pretty obvious), and the microchip tag they gave us was did not match up when our pup was scanned at the vet.  Whether or not Kimball's birthday is actually April 21st...well, who cares?  It's certainly sometime this spring...

Frosty Paw consumption

 Kimball is a good-natured and playful pup now, somewhat skittish and insecure around strangers, but always tolerant of the kids' rough-housing and good for a snuggle or a nap in the sun with you.  She's definitely a full-fledged member of the family. Still, I doubt we would have done much of anything for Kimball's birthday, but having a birthday-crazed 5 year old in the house means its impossible to ignore anyone's birthday.  Aiden promptly decided that Kimball should have a birthday party to which she would invite her best doggie friends to consume Frosty Paws (a kind of frozen doggie confection) and open presents including a new stuffie to destroy, a peanut butter filled bone, and a special birthday cookie.  The party was a huge success, at least as far as the five dogs were concerned.  Frosty paws were consumed, dogs and kids alike ran wild, and beers were consumed by the adult humans.  Happy Birthday to Kimball the HoneyMutt!

Other fun at Kimball's bday party...

Raptor Obsession!

Aiden has a new obsession every few weeks these days...it's usually an animal or a class of animals, but I feel like we can barely keep track sometimes.  Last month it was snakes (we had to watch umpteen you tube videos of snake charmers and viper pits) and before that it was lizards, fueled (I think) by the "pet for a day" miniature gecko he found in Islamorada when we were there.  Now, it's birds of prey.  For the past week he's been studying bird guides and taking out library books on hawks and eagles like nobody's business...he wakes up and the first think he says is, "Mom, I love hawks!" and when he gets home from school he says "Dad, what could I study about hawks?"  At Windy Hill they finally broke down and found a 24-hour live nest-cam of a red-tail hawk nest in NYC and put it up on the whiteboard in the classroom so that the kids (i.e. Aiden) can watch it, larger than life, all day long.  One of his teachers told me the hawks caught a huge fat rat last tuesday, right when the kids were eating lunch, and the hawk proceeded to rip up this big rat with it's beak and feed it to the chick bit by bit.  The kids thought it was awesome, but the teachers were all struggling not to gag up their sandwiches. Yup, that's our Aiden. 

Screech Owl, Bald Eagles, Red Tailed Hawk @ VINS

So this weekend we took him to the Vermont Institute of Natural Science (VINS) raptor rehabilitation center.  Andy and I hadn't been there since Andy was in law school and they had a much shabbier facility further down the road in Quechee VT.  Now it's huge, and brand-new, and the hawk enclosures are really large.  We saw bald eagles and peregrine falcolns, turkey vultures and snowy owls...and many more... all with some sort of injuries that prevent them from returning to the wild.  Aiden was impressed with some of the birds he saw, but also surprised by how small some of the fierce-looking falcons and hawks of his bird guides were in real life.  The best part of the visit was an hour-long program where VINS staff brought out some different birds and had them make short flights (all they can really do) right in front of our noses.  Aiden sat way up in the front row and I think he raised his hand to answer about every question the presenters asked.  He also asked a bunch of his own questions about raptor behavior.  I just marvel at how NOTHING like me this kid is...I don't know about Andy but I don't think I voluntarily rose my hand to answer an adult's question until I was in college. I'm not sure where he came from, but it sure is fun for us to watch as parents, and we'll encourage the obsession-of-the-month as long as it's healthy and gets his mind working in a positive way!  

Aiden at VINS

Easter Weekend

Easter weekend came and went in a whip of egg yolk and candy and food coloring.  I had to work all day Saturday, so I was disappointed to miss the kids scramble for eggs during the annual egg hunt on the town green.  Grandma and Hapa were here to watch the madness, though, and as everyone pointed out later, the "hunt" takes all of 2 minutes to completion.  I always feel very sorry for the one or two kids who inevitably run over to the green at 2 minutes past 9:30, only to find there's not a single egg left kicking around anywhere on the grass.  Aiden and Haley got their share of eggs filled with candy and trinkets, and then went home to color the real thing later that afternoon.  As usual, fingers were dyed darker than any of the eggs but everyone had fun creating one-of-a-kind masterpieces.

Viewing their loot with Grandma

The Easter Bunny brought Haley fairy wings 

Hop hop hop!

 Aiden's tye dye experiment led to doing most of the eggs that way

We had a nice Easter ham for dinner and ate lots of hard-boiled and deviled eggs.  Aiden tried the yolk for the first time and declared it "delicious" ... but then hasn't built up the nerve to try another one since.  Haley snarfs it all down, yolk and white - she's a protein fiend, while Aiden is our fruit (& veggie) bat.  Both of them love Easter candy (including Peeps) though...go figure.

Eating his first yolk EVER.

After the kids went to bed, my mom and I had our own experimental egg fun, trying to make Ukranian decorated eggs, or pysanky.  I had bought mom a kit for her birthday, since the designs on the cover reminded me of the doodles she sometimes makes on paper while she's talking on the phone.   I secretly wanted to try it myself too, and I figured we'd most likely end up working on it together sometime in either VT or here in NH.  The intricate designs on pysanky eggs are created by applying fine lines of wax using a tool called a kitska, which you have to hold over a flame to melt the wax inside it.  After most of the initial design is drawn in wax, the egg is dyed in a light color.  More wax is applied to any parts of the design you want to stay that light color, and then the egg is dyed in a bit darker color.  Wax is added again, and the egg is dyed in progressively darker colors each time, until you reach whatever final background color you want. When it's done, the egg is heated in the oven until you can rub off all the melted wax, and voila!  It's all harder than it looks, since the tool is testy and spurts out large blobs of wax erratically, and it's rough to keep any sort of straight line going.  My design was a quartet of bees, with flowers around the sides of the egg, and Mom's was a more abstract pattern.  I thought they both came out well for a first try but we'll have to try it again sometime now that we know what we're doing!

My pysanky....I didn't have a photo of mom's!

A Big Week

We've had quite the week here.  Grandma Chris came to visit, so the kids were already in heaven.  And then, Aiden lost his first tooth!  He's been obsessing about this ever since his last dentist visit four months ago when the hygenist noted that one of his bottom teeth was "already loose."  This was news to Aiden, and to be honest it wasn't even really loose...on the xray, she could just see the new tooth starting to come in below it so she knew it would be loose soon.  Every few days Aiden would stick his finger in his mouth and push all of his teeth one by one and say..."Mom, which one's my loose tooth?!"  So FINALLY it did get loose...four months later.  He bit into an apple on a school field trip and thought, "Hmmm....what's that white bug sticking out of my apple?  OH!  IT'S MY TOOTH!"  Or at least that's how he tells it.  Luckily Grandma Chris was here as an extra witness and to give suitable fanfare to the momentous occasion.  The tooth fairy also arrived, right on schedule, bearing a comic book with a dollar bill stuck in it.

The kids had a great fun spending time with their Grandma.  Haley did lots of coloring , sculpted with play-dough, and read many books over and over and over again with "Mema Chris."  Aiden and Grandma played legos, baked chocolate chip cookies, and drew robots together.  There was only one day that was really warm enough to play outside, and Aiden practiced his baseball skills while Haley played in her "new" car.  We also did some geocaching at Low Plain and Andy and I (thanks to Grandma Chris) were able to sneak away for an afternoon and see a concert with some friends.  Like I said, it was a big week!

Diva Dog

Barenaked Ladies @ Mt Sunapee

Geocaching

Aiden practicing up for t-ball

Thanks for my new car Andersons!