Roxy Ann

We've been having a spate of unseasonably warm, sunny weather. Yesterday, Larkin, Finn and I decided to hike Roxy Ann loop. They were pretty excited, partly because Roxy Ann is visible from our living room and they thought it was pretty cool to be able to just get up and go there.

It's a bit hard to figure out, but using Crazy Google Technology, I think we walked about 3.5 miles. I think that's about as far as the kids want to go at the moment, but I only piggybacked Finn a few times so I think it's a pretty reasonable limit to put on my future hike searches.

A big bonus of this particular hike is that there are LOTS of geocaches in the area. We managed to locate six during our outing-- which is some kind of record for us. This awesome old madrone had one hidden among its roots:

Naturally, we had to spend at least 20 minutes playing here before moving on.

Closer to the peak, we spotted a spectacular oak. The way it was positioned, the bank was falling away from its roots, leaving some exposed. Finn decided he needed to visit them.

It was quite a climb. Here's a shot of the tree and roots so you can better appreciate Finn's admiration:

Larkin and Finn were pretty exhausted by the time we got back to the car-- but, of course, a couple of hours later you certainly couldn't tell by their energy levels that they'd done anything strenuous that day. I'm thrilled that the kids can manage longer walks these days... there are definitely more in our near future.

Let There Be Light!

One of our recent impulse purchases was a science kit on light. Larkin and Finn have loved doing the various experiments, including things like using a prism to separate sunlight into rainbows.

I always wonder how much they're absorbing (ha! light humor!) from these sorts of things, but I know something is getting through. An unsuspecting clerk at the grocery store asked Larkin what her favorite color was and Larkin replied, "Well, I don't really have a favorite color because I like so many, but if you're talking about light then I'd have to say white because it has all the colors of the rainbow in it."

Another big hit was coloring circles of paper with different colored crayons and attaching the disks to a small motor to see how they combined. So you take a disk like this:

And it becomes:

And one like this:

Becomes this:

They made lots of disks:

In other optical news, the recent lunar eclipse was visible out of the window at the top of our stairs. Emile managed to roust both kids from their sound early morning sleep and they sat and watched for about half an hour as the moon went from three quarters occluded to entirely gone and then waited long enough to make sure it would return.

The visuals are a little less spectacular on this one:

Larkin and Finn very excitedly made the eclipse connection to the "day of the black sun" in Avatar: The Last Airbender when the Fire Nation lost their power during a solar eclipse.

Culinary Adventures

Larkin has been very excited about cooking lately. She makes Emile and Finn sandwiches and loves baking. Finn fell in love with a stainless steel lunchbox set at the co-op and Larkin bought it for him for Christmas. She has since packed him several lunches for hikes. It's very sweet.

Larkin has recently helped with everything from peanut butter cookies:

To lasagna:

As a side note, I made a red sauce for the lasagna that was so yummy both Larkin and Finn ate a full bowl straight.

And, of course, she helped with the holiday chocolates:

Yeah, I have no delusions regarding why my family likes to visit at Christmas.

Meanwhile, Finn has been occasionally surprising me with his gastronomical requests. Up until recently, he has mostly chosen from options I present to him, but lately he has been coming up with his own, sometimes rather bizarre, food combinations. I wish I remembered more of his requests, but one was a cheese and hot dog sandwich. I mean, *just* cheese and hot dog-- no bread.

So far, he has eaten all of his odd requests.

Holiday Traditions

We spent yesterday engaged in some holiday readiness exercises. Larkin was very excited to make popcorn and cranberry garlands and spent about 4 hours working on them with great focus. I worked along with her about half that time while Finn scrambled about our feet eating all the fallen bits of popcorn.

When I retired my needle and thread, Larkin asked me to read to her while she worked. Expecting her to choose some festive, holiday-related book, I was somewhat surprised when she chose "History!" We've been reading a young person's adaptation of Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States and Larkin is hooked. She chose the chapters on World War II and Civil Rights, so we had detailed, cheery discussions of racism and the Holocaust while making Christmas decorations. The next chapter is on Vietnam which has been getting lots of lip service in our house recently, so she's pretty excited about that.

Our last Christmas tree was a glorious live giant sequoia which, unfortunately, didn't survive our dry summer. Now that we know we need to water it a couple of times in its first few dry seasons, we wanted to replace it with another one this year. There was only one giant sequoia left at the co-op, and it was a somewhat small and spindly specimen which clearly needed a good home. Larkin and Finn wanted to continue the tradition (can something be a tradition if you've only done it once?) of decorating solely with homemade fused bead projects.

So we pretty much totally obscured our little tree with decorations. What says "Christmas" to Larkin and Finn? Aliens.

And the ship they flew in on.

A small herd of ponies.

'Shrooms.

And, of course, what would Christmas be without velociraptors?

While we were decorating, I asked if they would like me to put on some Christmas music. Larkin's response? "YEAH! How about Firewater?"

We had a long car conversation when Larkin and Finn asked about the religious aspects of Christmas. I believe I began with something like: "So... Jesus was supposedly the son of God, right? But his mother was human..." and it only went downhill from there. It was, perhaps slightly more knowledgeable than my subsequent explanations of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. The conversation naturally led to other holidays. Finn was particularly confused about why people thought an Easter Bunny and easter eggs were the obvious way to celebrate Jesus coming back to life. I couldn't really help him there, but I am motivated to help them find out more about the history behind modern holiday traditions.

So hey-- may the aliens land safely among your decorations this holiday season!

My Kids Are Badass

That is all.

Technobabble

Our friend Hunter started the kids building lego cell phones... generally they look like rectangles minimally dressed up with bits that look like buttons. After Finn had made about 20 of these, I asked him what he was mass producing:

His answer: "iPhones!" Well, duh. Larkin heard my question and thought she would help any other kinda slow adults out a little bit with a homonym clue:

Yup. An eyePhone. Finn, not to be out-done, announced that he was designing a model for spies. Wait for it...

That's right... it's an INVISIBLEiPhone.

The kids and I recently had a long discussion about what fractals are. Imagine their delight upon discovering this with the produce:

They were quite tickled by the idea of eating fractals for dinner, although after a taste they both decided to stick with the traditional broccoli we cooked with it.

In other culinary news, Larkin and Finn were very excited to find baby octopi in the seafood section of the grocery store. Emile, bless his fishy little heart, looked up a recipe on-line. After an overnight marinade and a few minutes on the grill, everyone (ahem, almost everyone) gave them a try. Neither Larkin nor Finn have a new favorite food, but Emile, Elly and Janelle declared them remarkably tasty. But can you blame me for not trying them? Check out this cute little guy:

It's wrong, I tell you. Just wrong.

Grace Under Pressure

If you don't want to read about vomit, skip this post.

We've had a raging stomach bug in our house this week. I am amazed at how well Larkin and Finn deal with adversity.

Larkin was the first down. She woke up sick at about 3am, but after her bed was cleaned up and re-made, she decided to set herself up to watch a movie on the couch with a blanket and a puke bowl. She didn't think she would be able to sleep with such a sore belly. Every 30-45 minutes we'd hear a musical little call of "moooore puu-uuke," signaling the need to empty her bowl. She was totally fine with us napping between episodes and was chatty and cheerful when we (read: Emile) got up to help her out. She didn't eat anything the next day, but there was no other indication that she had been sick.

Finn also experienced the worst of it at night, starting about 2am the next day. Now, Finn *adores* his beauty sleep and was mostly confused and disappointed that his body was waking him up so regularly to engage in such pointless and revolting business. He made several disparaging comments about his "stupid, puking body" the next day and then slept 12 hours that night.

Then it was my turn. I was a hopeless, woozy, drooling, teary, disgusting mess, making deals with the devil in the hopes of staying in bed 10 more minutes before another sojourn to the bathroom. I tried to go to bed at 6:30 pm in order to escape life. I hardly got out of bed the next day.

Ah, for the resilience of youth.