Camden

On Thursday we (Nana, Big Opa, Jake, Elena, Erin, Joanna, and Arlo) all went to Camden to visit Aunt Sue and see the Maine coast. First we had a lovely lunch at Sue's with Sam. Then we headed to Rockport.

From there, Sue took us to a local farm to see a herd of Galloways - we are big fans of Galloway cows thanks to Clancey the Courageous Cow, a beltless Galloway. The farm manager showed up and we got to take a closer look. We think we spotted Clancey and had a nice time learning about the herd.

Then Sue took us up a blueberry hill - Jake was crying in frusteration as our batteries pooped out halfway up the hill. Elena almost pooped out as well (no nap) but emergency cookies and Nana's patience helped her summit the hill and enjoy the wonderful evening light. Then we had dinner in Camden and headed home.

Beach time

Do you think that almost 2 feet of snow would stop our little beach lover from getting her time in? Of course not! Today we hiked out to Red Camp on the lake. Elena was excited to see the beach and brought along her toys to play there, shovel and buckets were loaded into the sled along with a wool blanket. Our little bathing beauty wore tights, pants, snow bibs, turtle neck, wool river driver, parka, and her felt pack boots along with mittens and wool hat. She made ice cream happily parked in a drift next to the small hump that is the fire ring in warmer weather. We enjoyed a nice walk in the snow and had lunch with hot cocoa in the new boat house (with heat!).


Headed to the beach


Time to play in the 'sand'

Christmas "Morning" Madness

What happens when you have a house full of 13 people including a 18 month old up at 6am and a 28 year old up at 10 am (motivated by the brute squad) for Christmas morning? Well, you don't start opening socks until noon! Let's just say that Elena was very, very patient.

Elena and Brayden passed the morning wait by vacuming the house with the ball popper. (also used as morning wake up for those with the gall to sleep past seven). Then we had breakfast, opened stockings, and started in on presents. Eventually we had to take a nap break for the kiddos and then started up again before our Christmas dinner of roast beast.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all our friends and family. We are in Maine to celebrate this year.


Blogger is being quite a brat and not uploading pictures very well so here one and more posts will be on their way soon!

Tree Time

We love Christmas Trees! Last year we had a paper one, remember? This year we made up for it with three trees (one for the house, one for Elena's room and one with Nana & Big Opa).

We cut our family tree the day after thanksgiving. Gram and Opa were along to supervise. First we drove up to the parkway for a picnic I packed.

It was 32 degrees and the wind was blowing about 20 miles an hour. We ate in the car.

Then on the way home picked up this lovely little beauty from a family tree farm. It only cost us $15! For $25 you could get one of the huge church sized ones in the back log. Gram was busy trying to figure out if a tree qualified as checked baggage.


When we arrived in Maine on Thursday, there was snow! So we got to take elena out for her first snowy tree picking. It should be noted that she does not take after Gram and enjoyed the little jaunt!

I even found the tree this year! Very exciting.

And we made snow angels.

The Loft

Admit it, you've been waiting. Agonizing, gnashing your teeth. Few things prep the literary taste buds like the prospect of reading about someone (some idiot maybe) building a shed to keep pigeons in. Think Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, The Grapes of Wrath, epic occurrences, epic story lines. All swathed in 3/8" CDX plywood. This is the stuff dreams are made of.

It's been a long time coming, but the loft was a long time building. Over the course of about a month and a half of absent momma, Elena and I managed to put it all together. Except for the paint -- our savoring of the building process ran us short on the climate end of the spectrum and we're going to have to wait for spring before those gallons of latex can do more except hold down a shelf in the garage.

Like all projects, this naturally started with the expenditure of funds. In exchange we received raw materials -- miraculously almost ALL of them -- delivered to the house. The RAV4 is a great little vehicle and even lugs a few 2x4's or a sheet of plywood if needed, but the load of lumber, block, shingles and wire necessary for our "little" (biggest one I've built in about 5 years) loft would just have swamped it. So I went to Home Depot armed with a list. Left with the same list, a lighter wallet, and a receipt and two mornings later this guy showed up and dropped the whole pallet of lumber right in the garage:



Elena and I were both mightily impressed and "forklift" (kid sized) was immediately added to someone's Christmas list.

Phase one, that weekend, was leveling the site and getting the foundation square and level.



With Elena as sidekick



it only took about 4 hours.

The next day she left me in the lurch and went for a bike ride with Erin:



But I persevered and managed to get the deck onto the foundation, side walls and rafters up, and get the frame in front for the aviary.



Week of rain passes, Erin leaves town, and Elena and I do a Halloween party.



Post Halloween party, Elena and I did our level best to get the roof on as well as the front and back walls. Walls weren't too bad, but without a ladder the roof was a trick. Elena tried to build a path to the sky, but we ran out of bricks:



The "hard work" involved in that necessitated a break for Halloween cupcake:



Which unfortunately prompted a sugar coma:



Meanwhile I made a "ladder" out of a 4x4 and some 2x4 scraps and my sudden appearance on the roof catapulted Elena into quantum warp hyperactivity. Somehow we survived and even got a good slug of the shingles in place.



Erin returned and we got another week of rain. Following which, with winter looming, I managed to get the roof done, the aviary on the front, and all the "pigeon holes" on the inside completed.





None too soon (actual finish of everything was post another trip of Erin's and on Thanksgiving weekend) as our first residents arrived the first week of December. Archangels, noted for the beautiful plumage, are descendants of -- and believed to be more-or-less the image of, the ancient holy pigeons of Babylon who lived at the top of the same named tower and flew up into the heavens to "commune" with the Gods. Not bad credentials, hopefully their new home lives up to their ancestral expectations.

Jake! The _kings_ are here!

I have to preface this by admitting that we are not what one would describe as playing, or even practicing, church attenders. At the moment that status is decidedly "bench warmers" and if the religious right is holding out for us to come in and save them in the 4th quarter they are probably betting on the wrong horse. But we are not atheist and Christmas, including the "real" Christmas story and the concepts of familial closeness and gift giving as a symbol of love, is alive and well in our household. As a consequence of these two facts, Elena has a bit more of a pragmatic association with the Christmas story -- it having equal footing with other such Biblical sagas as "Thomas and the Big Big Bridge". Today I walked into her room to be informed that I needed to be quiet as she was talking with baby Jesus (note to self, leave rural Appalachia _soon_). I then received a lengthy discourse on baby Jesus' sleeping habits (in a covered cradle at that moment). I informed Elena that I was headed out to pull the car into the garage, got the OK, and went and did that. I walked back in from the garage to be confronted by Elena who, in an exasperated tone of voice, said "Jake! (which she has taken to calling me). The _kings_ are here!". Madness. The kings brought their kid with them (didn't know they had one did you?) and he was loud and rude and was yelling and waking up baby Jesus. Finally the kings gave their kid away to someone else because he was too loud (apparently an acceptable practice in 0 AD) and gave their gifts to Jesus -- he was sleeping so they had to put them on a shelf, maybe they should have kept their kid long enough to keep Jesus awake for the presents. With that sorted out, Elena settled down to nurse Jesus (yes, the second coming is upon us and I am the "grandfather" -- didn't know that either did you? Be a little nicer next time you see me.) while his older sister (I'd heard rumors of an older brother, but this is the first I'd learned of Jesus' 7 or 8 year old sister who he really likes quite a lot) kept him entertained.

And there you have it, "the rich, bulging, pageantry" of life with Elena in the Christmas season. Seeing as King James clearly muffed a few details in his translation, we'll be getting drafts of the "Princess Elena" translation to the copy editors soon and you can expect the accurate, revised version under pews near you by Christmas 2008.

Dutch again for a day

About a month ago, I found a woman who is from the Netherlands. She has a 2 year old and we decided to get together so that her son could practice dutch with Elena and maybe Elena would talk dutch to her. Jake and Elena went over to visit Kirsten, Xander, and Brad while I was in Utrecht. So I emailed and asked if they would like to celebrate Sinterklaus together. She said she'd just met some other Dutch people, they were having a big Sinterklaus party and would we all like to go together. So, before we knew it, we were invited to someone's home for a gathering on all the local Dutchies (and their various american spouses and assorted kids) for a borel and singing of Sinterklaus songs (they provided copies of the words, just in case!)...then there was a loud knock and the Sint himself had left a bag on the door stoop! Elena was abit freaked out from the knocking (afraid the Zwarte Piet's were out), but once she realized that kids were getting chocolate out of the bag, she was all over it. They included her in everything and the evening ended with her running around with a pack of slightly older kids teasing the really old kids (17 years old) and screaming and running all over the house, high on chocolate, stroopwafels, and olliebolen. Jake and I met new people, talked with people, and it was just really a lot of fun. It was the best time we've had in Blacksburg. We actually felt so welcomed...It was really nice. In Blacksburg, people are super friendly to you in the supermarket, but it's pretty hard to 'break in.' Not unlike the Netherlands in that respect. But I guess we thought that we'd fall more into a social scene like we used to in Santa Cruz. Not so, so tonight was especially fun...and because we got to be around Dutch people.

Unfortunately we forgot the camera - so here, picture this...Elena is shoving her face with dutch food, cheese, stamp-pot, worst, chocolate, kip curry, pepernoeten, pickled/candied ginger (gember bolen) and looking quite pleased that there is chatter in duch (though not willing to say much herself).

Kirsten, Xander, and Brad are still coming over here on actual Sinterklaus...I have secured my graduate student to bang on door and leave the presents - although this ellaborate step may not be required this year...on the other hand, she cornered one poor woman at the party with detailed questions about how sinterklaus find the boxes for chocolates, where exactly he stores them while riding his horse, where does he keep the Zwarte Piets, why did he knock, why can we see him.....

..I'd try to get a costume, but she'd expect poor Erik to speak Dutch....

Giving Thanks

(ok, so we are behind...if you want to come and do the ironing, we'll get these done quicker! ha ha).
(**photos to be added when blogger decides to behave itself**)

Thanksgiving this year was fun...we had out things back, and there was turkey! Jake has already told you about the bounty of our turkey, but this year we had Gram and Opa here to help celebrate. First, I massaged the turkey with an herbed butter - who knew pasture life could be so tense.

Then we all went for a hike while the turkey filled the house with wonderful smells. (Isn't that the best part, walking into the house after you've been gone to be greeted by the smell of roasting turkey.) Our menu was modest this year. We had to accept that it was the smallest Thanksgiving in many, many years for us. Without Heather, Meegs, paleo-Heather, and Mart, along with assorted others, we couldn't really justify (or produce) the massive side dish and dessert spread of years past. So we kept it simple - cornbread stuffing, green bean casserole, monkey rolls (which, by the way, were quite a feat as I had lost the recipe card that came with the pan Martha sent for herbed rolls in the monkey bread pan - after much internet and house searching, I just called a Williams-Sonoma and made them read the recipe to me over the phone. The woman sounded slightly annoyed, but I was determined and they were tasty...now, where is that recipe?), green bean casserole, salad, and apple pie & chocolate pie for dessert.

The night before T-giving, Elena and Opa were in charge of making the chocolate cream pie. I'm not exactly sure what happened - Elena was in charge of showing little Opa the mixer ropes - but it ended with chocolate pudding everywhere - including Elena's forehead and shirt.

Here Jake cleans it off the wall.

Little opa did admit to 'operator error.'

We had some very nice wine with dinner (our chilled version loving wrapped in our custom made 'stuffing shovel' towel from paleo-Heather - one of our treasured Thanksgiving items! After blessing, we offered the first toast, in honor of Aunt Martha, who we really, really missed that day. And from her blog, the goose looked lovely. We do request a photo of Henri's chocolate mousse, though.