Tag Archives: play

Snow Day Number Two

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We had another snow day today. The snow fell all last night and most of the day today. It is hard to tell just how much snow fell. The wind blew hard. We may have gotten two feet. We had “blizzard-like” conditions. A blizzard needs to have sustained winds of 35 miles per hour for three hours. We did not quite meet that definition. A severe blizzard also has temperatures of 10 degrees or lower. We started the day at 14 degrees. So I guess we just had a snowstorm.

I stayed inside for a while, although the kids did get out early. They didn’t last long in the cold and wind, but they went out several times throughout the day. I figured I would start with breakfast. Since I did not have to drive anywhere I used what would have been my commuting time to make home fries.

I paired these hot crispy potatoes with a hot omelette

I paired these hot crispy potatoes with a hot omelette

The snow did let up eventually. I took a walk in the afternoon when it was falling lightly, although the wind was still pretty fierce.

The town road crew got the road passable, but wind kept the drifts coming

The town road crew got the road passable, but wind kept the drifts coming

There's a river under there somewhere

There’s a river under there somewhere

By the end of the day the sun came out for a bit, the light low across the white landscape. Before the sun set the world turned pink. After a dinner of soup and hot sandwiches, we all headed back outside again. We fell backward off the hill into a huge snowdrift and flipped upside down into the pile the plow had left. We tossed snow at each other in the dark. We came inside red-faced and a little soggy. After some reading together the children headed up to bed. Two days off and they are back to school tomorrow. I worked a bunch from home today but I am back at it myself once the sun comes up. It was a great couple of days in our house. We have to enjoy the snow when it comes, and we did.

Late day sun on Camel's Hump

Late day sun on Camel’s Hump

 

Snow at Last

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White Stuff in the Viewshed

Finally we got some snow yesterday. We spent an hour or so outside as a family last night tossing the stuff at each other. We got wet. We got chilly. We slept well. Today we had good reason to play. We sledded. We skied on the hill and in the field. We had some good fun. The temperature never got all that high. It was in the single digits by the afternoon. Still, we could not stay in all day. The wood stove did its duty for us today.

The temperature should get below zero tonight. We will snuggle down and sleep well again. We will still have snow again tomorrow. The parents in the household need to decide if skiing is worth it with wind chills in the negatives. Skiing? To be determined. We will play one way or the other. I just hope the snow sticks around.

Transcript: Interview with my Son

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ME: So what do you want to be when you grow up?

HIM: I want to be a scientist.

ME: A scientist. So what do want to study as a scientist? What do you want to learn about?

HIM: I want to learn about water.

ME: Water. What do you want to learn about water?

HIM: Well, I can learn about what happens when you put paint in it.

ME: Oh yeah? And what else do you like about water?

HIM: Well, I can do a lot of different experiments with water.

PAUSE

ME: So what is your favorite thing to play?

ANOTHER PAUSE

HIM: Outside

Then he started off into space. That was the end of that.

Bus in the Rain

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Soggy Walk

Soggy Walk

It was wet this morning when it was time to meet the school bus.  We went anyway.  That’s the rule apparently.

How about we just not walk down to meet the bus this morning?  Stay at home where it is cozy and dry?

Can’t.  Gotta go to school.  That’s the rule.

Umbrellas helped.  The big fat black one and the little green frog one. The wind blew. Pants were moistened. My daughter got on the bus with her arms wrapped about her.  Smart kid.

Walking back to the house with her brother was wetter.  We walked into the wind.  He hardly noticed.  He wanted to stay out, in fact.  At another time I would have encouraged it. Get wet!  Romp in the rain!  Play in the puddles! But we had to go.  The clock is a cruel master.

The rain had stopped by the end of the school day.  The sun brightened the tops of the clouds.  My daughter and I walked back, dry. We laughed at her water bottle; it seems the bottom came unglued.  “We’ll have to glue gun it,” she tells me. Indeed. We also laughed at her description of playing Twister with her classmates.  She was the first one out.  She didn’t mind.

It rains and your pants get wet.  You fall down first in the game.  Don’t mind that.  There is laughing and playing to be done.

Another New Toy

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Our new Mac arrived today.  We finally have moved from the world of the laptop to the world of the desktop.  This puppy is pretty sweet I tell you.  Everything seems to work and work quickly.  We can watch videos!  We can download things zip zip!  We can…  Well, I haven’t played with it all that much.  

I can tell you that this blogger will have some fun playing, however.  Once we get the right cable to transfer everything from our old to our new computer, we will be golden.  I am looking forward to playing but also to use this new machine as a tool.  We use our computer as our newspaper, as a means of communication, to purchase things (like a computer, for example), to write and create, to manage photos.  It will be nice to have a better tool than we have had, kind like upgrading to a powerful cordless drill after using only screwdrivers for a while.

So I will get back at it.  Play time awaits.

New Toy

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I am not really a fan of stuff, and one type of stuff that seems to always grow is toys.  Our children have a gajillion toys.  We buy them toys occasionally (hard to resist when you are Disney World, for example) but they also arrive as gifts from friends and family, and they also arrive as toys that are outgrown by cousins or friends.

Our children have received many toys that are really great.  They have a huge collection of Lego and Duplo blocks, for example, that were given to them.  We did not have to buy any for them to be able to create buildings and spaceships and cars and cities.  My son’s favorite toys are wooden trains.  Most of those were given to us as well.  So we have received some good stuff and I am thankful for that, even if they don’t quite see the beneficence of their relations.

We have lots of crap as well, of course.  Can you say birthday party gift bags?  How many UPO’s have they generated?  About a bazillion, I’d say.  And the Mardi Gras parade this spring?  Plastic bead necklaces up the whazoo.  Too much, if you ask me.  Even if you don’t ask me it’s too much.

Today, however, our children got the most excellent toy.  My father-in-law had mentioned this teeter totter that his second set of kids had played with and loved, and that he was hoping to pass on.  He came by today and left a shiny new plaything.  The thing is, the one he dug out of his barn was broken, rusted, not in good shape.  It wouldn’t be safe to use.  So he made a new one.  It is strong and beefy and operates smoothly.  And it is no ordinary teeter totter.

Call it a seesaw if you will, but this doesn’t just pivot up and down.  The pivot also allows the cross beam to swing in all directions.  So it goes up and down, yes, but it also swings in circles.  My children have been playing on it for about three hours, with breaks for dinner and spraying each other with the hose.  They have been laughing most of the time as well.  I love this thing.  Not only is it just plain old fun, but they have to work together for it to be fun.  They seem to have it down pretty well at this point.  They are spinning fast.

I think my father-in-law ought to patent this thing and sell them.  Seriously.  It is fun just to watch them spin around and up and down.  I am betting that this becomes the toy of the summer.  They won’t play with it quite so much as the days go on.  They will become accustomed to it and the newness will wear off.  I am sure, however, that it will continue to be way fun for them.  It is one item of stuff I feel will get plenty of mileage at this household.

Rained Out Again but Enjoying the Rain

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My daughter has been participating on a T-ball team (sort of like baseball, except they have the option to bat off a T).  So far she has had only two practices.  Four have been scheduled.  Two have been rained out, including tonight.  The kids are supposed to have a game next Tuesday.  That will be interesting.  Most of the kids don’t know the rules;  they do not know, for example, that touching the bases is part of the deal.  But it’s really about having fun anyway.

Instead of going to T-ball, my children played in the rain instead.  First, on the way home from my son’s school, they played with the windows.  They put them down to clear off the rain, which worked for all of three seconds.  Then they decided to put them down every time a car passed.  They got pretty wet but they were laughing so hard I figured it was OK to let a little moisture into the vehicle.

By the time we got home they were all fired up to run around outside in swim suits.  So they did.  They got soggy and muddy, playing in puddles and sliding down the slide.  They were soaked and dirty when they came in, just in time for a warm dinner.  They really wanted hot chocolate, to get cozy as they put it.  We waited until after dinner for the hot chocolate, then curled up by the fire with jammies.

Soon it will be time to head up for showers and bed.  The rain will likely continue into the evening.  I love going to bed when the rain falls.  I even enjoyed walking out to meet the bus this morning, listening to the rain on the umbrella and smelling the new blossoms.  Lilacs and apple blossoms are out now and the air smells sweet when the rain falls.

I don’t have to water the garden these days.  I just have to sit and watch the rain fall on the soil.  The children know that rain means the garden gets enough to drink, so they are happy when the skies gray and spill over.  Plus, they get to romp in the puddles.  So we had no T-ball practice today, but we all enjoyed what we got anyway.  We’ll get back to the field next week.

About the Weather

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We are planning to take a trip down to Connecticut to visit my parents and other sundry relatives this week.  You know, celebrate the national holiday about the mythic sharing of the harvest between the native people who managed to survive the plague brought by Europeans and a group of those Europeans seeking freedom of religion.  I hope we get good driving weather.

I think about the weather a lot, and I especially think about it during the transition seasons such as November.  This morning as I drove home after dropping off my son at his, as my wife referred to it last night in our daughter’s parent teacher conference, “foo foo la la” preschool, I heard on Vermont Public Radio that the weather forecast might be “complex” today but it was pretty nasty 58 years ago.

Apparently, they had a big storm back in 1950.  The Great Appalachian Storm brought snow and high winds to a huge area of the northeast.  Burlington had sustained 72 mile per hour winds with gusts up to 100 miles per hour.  Hello hurricane, although it was technically an extratropical cyclone.  It had more of an effect on other states, including New York, but damage was extensive in Vermont.  It was one of the biggest storms of the century.

It was pretty mild today.  I ate my rapidly cooling lunch as I walked out to meet my daughter off the bus for her half day of school today.  It was a little windy and the spitting rain was misting my glasses.  I even grumbled about it for a moment, until I realized that I did not want to be an ass.  What is a cool lunch when it means being on time to meet my kid?  I had no blizzard to contend with.

We should have fine weather for driving this week.  Rain continues to drip out of the clouds at the moment.  We might get more of that.  My car’s wipers, although brand new, seem to be–how to put this eruditely?–sucky?  They will get us through.  I’m not going out to buy new ones at this point.  Too lazy.

I will keep an eye on the weather for now and when we get there for the ride home.  It won’t be long before we are thinking about snow days.  We talked about the possibility that school might be closed today if the weather turned just right.  Soon soon

The Pilgrims and their native hosts had a mild first Thanksgiving although, to be fair, it was in October back then.  It looks like this one will be pretty mild as well.  We will have no century marking storm, which is good.  If we are going to have a big storm, let’s hope it happens during the middle of a week of school.  That way we go out and play when school gets canceled.