mathmom's blog

As Kim just blogged, we went to the mountains for Apple Festival -- for the fourth year running. Amanda was disappointed last year that she couldn't do the ropes course, and this year, as a great big five-year-old, nothing was going to keep her away. This involved a lot of waiting. First, waiting for over an hour and a half before starting climbing. Then she climbed a free rope ladder with rungs about half as far apart as she is tall, to a platform about dozen feet off the ground. Once she got there, we discovered that the "lobster claws" she was wearing were not long enough to read the safety wire, so she had to wait while they changed her over to a different set. Walking a pair of beams never seemed hard to Ella or to me, so it didn't surprise me that Amanda did fine. The bigger surprise was that she never fell off the high wire, and in fact didn't seem to have to use her hands very much -- good balance. She wanted a helping hand before she jumped across a...

Last weekend we went up to a camp in the mountains for a family "retreat". My good friend Julie had been a counselor up there in the (now distant =) past, so she knew the trails. While Ella and Amanda and Michael went on the intermediate ropes course (Ella's favorite part of the trip), I wanted to go on a hike. There were two options: a short (15 minute for a grownup) hike over mostly flat ground, or a longer (1 mile) hike up to the top of the mountain. I had gotten enough sleep that night, or was feeling ambitious, and Julie told me that it would be alright, so we opted for the latter. As with so many things in life (getting married, having children, getting your PhD, etc.) if I had known before I started what was entailed, I wouldn't have done it. Having done it, I'm glad we went. The first part of the hike was over a leaf covered trail, through the forest. As we got higher up, there were more and more rocks to climb over. I pulled Luke up the first part ...

This weekend was Apple Festival up at Lutherock . We had a good time as always---just getting out of the weekend grind of errands and to-do lists is refreshing, not to mention driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway, hiking up and down trails through woods changing colors, meeting new people and old friends. Here are some highlights: Luke turns out to be incredibly afraid of fire, including fire in fireplaces. This was a problem this weekend, since the temperature in the morning was around 40 degrees, (although it got up to about 65 degrees during the day). When Michael lit a fire in the fireplace of the lodge where we were staying, Luke stood screaming at the door to the outside 3 rooms away, "I go out! I go out! Fire hot! It burns! Don't touch!" After about 20 minutes, he was able to sit in daddy's lap in the same room as the fire, but he was clearly still worried. I guess he got the message about fire, but perhaps I should have moderated it a bit. We did not tak...

Eleanor had many toys that she slept with, but she never seemed particularly attached to any particular one. Her favorite was "Sprinkles," a soft giraffe, but she never really carried it around everywhere she went. Amanda slept with one toy, Baa the lamb. We had a backup, who she eventually named "Mr. Maa ", Baa's brother or mother, depending. Amanda does take her toys everywhere, which means they get lost for the night fairly frequently. We explain that they have gone on an "adventure" and she sleeps without them for the night. Mr. Maa was lost for a long time once, and she kept asking him. Eventually she found another sheep, about twice as large, a different brand, a different color... "Look who's back from his adventure! It's Mr. Maa ! He got bigger!" A few weeks later, she found Mr. Maa , and then she had to explain the third sheep... The third sheep eventually was relegated to the toy box. Luke got very attached t...

...otherwise known as, why I didn't post this weekend =). We were up in the mountains at a Lutheran camp for apple festival. The basic idea is that a bunch of people get together to harvest apples from the wild apples around at the camp, and then we make apple cider, apple crisp, apple pie, apple muffins... This is along with typical camp things like campfire, crafts, songs, and so on. Last year there was a great apple crop. We walked to a few known trees, the counselors climbed them, shook down lots of apples, and the kids picked up the fallen apples and put them in the counselor's backpacks. I am sure we had more than a hundred pounds... Michael would have a better estimate of how many we got. Unfortunately, this year was not a good year for apples at the camp (due to a wet, cold spring and a dry, hot summer). So a crop of apples miraculously appeared on the front lawn at the main lodge! The kids ran around collecting the apples that were nowhere near any apple trees.....