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Brothers

Tea Party with Boys

It has been a long winter and we have had to get creative on things to do to pass the time while stuck inside. Today I decided to do a tea party with Mr. G and Mr. M. Complete with real ceramic dishes and food and everything.
My thought was to have a plain colored blanket on the floor so I could take a photo of our elegant little tea party. Nope, Mr. M insisted on using the solar system blanket.


My thought was that they would wear plain clothes to keep things simple for the photos. Nope, Mr. G was wearing his spiderman outfit (his eyes light up whenever he gets to wear it) and there was no way I was going to try and get him to change.

My thought was that we'd have a calm lunch with our little finger foods. Nope, before long Mr. G and Mr. M had shoved the grapes into their mouth and then proceeded to pretend they were chipmunks. And then tried to squeze each others cheeks to get them to come out.

But you know what, it doesn't matter what my original intent was. What actually happened was far more amusing, and the stuff that great memories are made of.

Trees

When is the best time to plant a tree?
25 years ago.
When is the second best time to plant a tree?
Today.

Snow...again

We woke up to a blanket of fresh white snow this morning. Three days ago it was sunny and 75 degrees, today we have two inches of snow. Fortunately most of it has melted. Remember the photo of my daffodils coming up? Here they are today...

Cooking

It rained the entire day today. Yesterday it was a warm rain, today it was a very cold rain. We spent the day in the kitchen cooking. We had a lot of frozen rhubarb that needed to be used. We made strawberry rhubarb jam and rhubarb pies.

Cereal

None of my kids have liked riding in the car as babies. When they are old enough to get cereal it helps make road trips a bit easier. Here is Mr. G with a Kix for his unhappy little brother.

Rainy Day

It's quite rainy today. It's a good day for taking photos of Mr. C. Almost everyday is a good day for that. :)

Pretty in Pink

Is she not just the cutest little thing?!

We played this afternoon with my neighboor and her kids in the warm spring sunshine.

Spring has sprung

Some of the plants in our yard are starting to come up. Here are the daffodils and sedum.

With Dad

Mr. C loves to be carried. Here he is coming back from a jaunt around the yard looking for signs of spring with Dad.

Nana and Grandpa

Thanks for the great visit!

Sunday

Room for one more?

Real Maple Syrup

Today I went on an adventure with my little boys to learn all about where real maple syrup comes from. We went to see my friend Dave. He lives in the country and has been very busy for weeks. He was finishing his last batch of maple syrup and we were fortunate to spend some time with him this afternoon.

When we first got there, I had expected to see metal pails hanging on the trees like in the old days. I was surprised to see plastic milk jugs instead. The plastic jugs have lids and are more enclosed than pails. This helps keep stuff out of the sap as it is being collected. Moths especially like the sweet sap.

Here is one of the spouts. A new hole is drilled each year (it doesn't hurt the tree). You can see one of the old holes to the right of the spout.

The sap is collected and then needs to be cooked for several hours to remove most of the water. It takes 46 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of maple syrup! He made 15 gallons of syrup this spring. Needless to say, he has been very busy.

Dave was so great with the boys. Here he is telling Mr. M and Mr. G all about cooking the sap.

Mr. M has been interested in the cycle of water, but hadn't quite grasped the concept of evaporation and steam. Seeing the billowing steam coming off the boiling sap and hearing Dave's description made it all come together. All of a sudden Mr. M's eyes lit up and he got excited. I could tell that he finally understood. So neat. Here he is deep in thought while he listens.

This is how the sap looks when it comes out of the tree. Typically sap is mostly clear. You can tell this is sap from the end of the season because it has color.

He takes the pot of sap and puts it way in the back of the stove to warm up.

When the sap is warm he pours it in with the rest that is already boiling.

Here he is stoking the fire to keep it hot and to keep the sap boiling.

A highlight of the visit was when we got to taste the syrup. He reached into the boiling sap and brought out a spoonful.

Nothing like the taste of warm maple syrup on a cool spring afternoon. Mr. M didn't even hesitate when he was offered a taste. And Mr. G smiled and danced a little jig right after he tried it.
Here is the sample we got to take home with us. It is such a beautiful color.

We all had so much fun this afternoon. Thank you sooooo much Dave!!

Santa

No interesting story on the hat, it just happened to be the closest thing in our entry when we headed out the door. Probably means it is time to clean up the entry.

My first bike