Day 91: Mad Science

Our neighbor and good friend Jerry (aka Professor Pi) works as a Mad Scientist and gave the Camp Fire kids a wonderful chemistry demonstration today in his front yard. Daniel, of course, was gripped...

Day 90: Surprise birthday party

How lovely to celebrate a truly wonderful friend and surprise her with a party!

Day 89: Rainy Day Art Project

I have vivid memories of being taught marbling by my teacher Mr Grant in the English equivalent of fifth grade. The kids and I spent a fun afternoon today experimenting with inks and were very happy with what we produced.

Day 88: Movie night

My friend Allison and I went to see "The Hunger Games" this evening. We both loved the books and were impressed with the faithfulness of the movie. I was on the edge of my seat for a good portion of the time!

Day 87: Seeds

It is time to plant our garden! The boys did a great job sowing seeds in neat rows today...

Day 86: Silver Falls State Park

Today was the only day of Spring Break for which rain was not forecast so it was the perfect day to go hiking with friends in one of our favorite places: Silver Falls State Park. The hike included walking behind two gorgeous waterfalls - as a child, I always thought it would be thrilling to be behind a curtain of cascading water, and, as it turns out, it is just as I imagined.

Day 85: Seconds before checkmate

Turns out Johnny is really much, much better at chess than I am.

Day 84: Saturday afternoon walk

We had a wonderful family walk this afternoon along Marine Drive. We had Mt Hood ahead of us, the Columbia River on one side and the airport on the other. Noah loved watching the boats on the river and the planes taking off from and landing at PDX.

Day 83: Compost

Snow yesterday, bright sunshine today - and Noah was excited to discover that all the fruit and vegetable peelings he has been faithfully putting into the compost bin for months have turned to rich, black soil. We are going to start planting our vegetable garden this Spring Break.

Day 82: Record-breaking weather

Apparently this is the latest ever snowfall on record for our neighborhood - one last blast of winter before spring takes over.

Day 81: Daffodil

It poured with rain all day long but the daffodils are out and brightening up the garden.

Day 80: Poem

It has rained all day and I thought about taking a rain-inspired photo. However Daniel came home with this rain-inspired poem, so I took a photo of that instead.

Day 79: Art project

Anna is learning "Song of India" by Rimsky-Korsakov for a piano recital next month. One of the requirements to earn a studio award is to produce a piece of artwork inspired by the music and so Anna and I worked today on this drawing of the Taj Mahal.

Day 78: Roller skating

We celebrated Camp Fire's 102nd birthday at Oaks Park this afternoon with a roller skating party. Daniel took to the skating most naturally and warmed my heart by encouraging his sister who was feeling more tentative about the whole experience.

Day 77: Blossoms

Today was a busy, busy day, with Noah attending a birthday party in the morning, lots of baking for church tomorrow this afternoon and a wonderful concert this evening. But I think my favorite part of the day was taking a long walk with Johnny and Tilly in the spring sunshine.

Day 76: Starry Night

Tonight's wonderful auction was in support of Noah's preschool, which has students up to 8th grade. The art club produced this gorgeous homage to Van Gogh's famous painting, sparking the most exciting and dramatic bidding of the evening.

Day 75:... and chocolate cheesecakes...

And today I made sixty mini cheesecakes for the same auction: twenty dark chocolate, twenty white chocolate and twenty lemon.

Day 74: Hmm... meringues...

This is one of my favorite desserts. I made sixty today for a charity auction on Friday.

Day 73: Life plans sketched out...

Daniel always has interesting homework assignments and I often learn things about him from them. Last week, he made a timeline of his life so far. Today, he drew up his future plans...

Day 72: Qwirkle with Nana

Noah and I loved introducing the game of Qwirkle to Nana this afternoon and were delighted that Nana won!

Day 71: Before the throne...

This morning at church, Daniel played one of my very favorite hymns as the Prelude to the service. He played it beautifully and several people told me afterwards that it moved them to tears. When I shared those compliments with Daniel, he just shook his head and said "Grown-ups are so weird!".

Day 70: One down...

Remember this? Yesterday evening I finally finished my first sock - it took me ten months... Hmm... good thing my family isn't relying on me for their foot wear. Now to start the second one...

Day 69: Fort Vancouver

We have lived in Portland for eight years and are embarrassed to say that this was our first visit to Fort Vancouver, a National Historic site barely fifteen minutes from our house. David's parents are staying with us, the children all had a day off school, and the sun was shining - it was a perfect day for a new adventure. The whole day was wonderful, including a delicious lunch in a 150 year old log cabin, but one of the highlights was definitely seeing the blacksmiths at work.

Day 68: Blueberry pie

Today was incredibly busy, even by normal standards, but amidst parent-teacher conferences, an extra piano lesson, swimming lessons, shopping, a PTO event at the Middle School and a soccer board meeting, I did find time to make a blueberry pie for a friend's daughter's birthday...

Day 67: Soccer season has begun

Actually the boys have been attending practices for three weeks already. We are all excited for the Spring season!

Day 66: True love

Harry is Anna's kitten but, oh my, Noah does love him. While Anna is at school, there is no rival for Harry's attention and Noah cuddles him whenever he can.

Day 65: Poem

Anna wrote this poem and it makes me smile...

Day 64: Theatre

It has been a pretty cultured weekend. Having taken Daniel and Anna to the ballet on Friday morning, I went to see the musical "Good News!" performed at a local high school on Saturday evening, and featuring one of the girls from church. Then on Sunday afternoon, David took Johnny downtown to see a play called "Locomotion", which they both thoroughly enjoyed.

Day 63: Back to White River West

My friend Kim and I took eight kids from the church's Middle School youth group up Mt Hood to sled today. There was one spare seat so Daniel got to come with us, much to his delight. It was a wonderful day, with much better conditions than when we came for his birthday party. After sledding for a while, he decided to try snowboarding!

Day 62: At the ballet

Today was a teacher work day and so a group of friends took our kids to a morning performance of "La Fille Mal Gardee" downtown. It was a wonderful experience for everyone. Here are Anna and her friend Lexi twirling in the lobby before we took our seats.

Day 61: Surprise!

March 1st and an unexpected dusting of snow - it looked pretty but the kids were very disappointed that it had no effect on the school day.

Day 60: Multi-cultural night

We LOVE our school and Multicultural Night is a highlight of the school year, an opportunity to honor and celebrate the many cultures represented at our school (17 different languages are spoken by our families). Families bring in a dish to share and there was an amazing spread this evening of delicious food from countries as diverse as Mexico, El Salvador, Holland, Portugal, Vietnam, Laos and Korea (and many more). I baked my grandmother's sticky toffee pudding, a firm favorite in our family, and in this picture Anna and her friend Charlotte are pouring the toffee sauce over the individual portions of pudding before the crowds arrived to eat.

Day 59: At the indoor playground

It is cold and wet so what could be more fun than an afternoon with his friend Greg at an indoor playground, featuring an amazing jungle-themed play structure?

Day 58: Old Favorite

I loved this book when I was a child and am really enjoying reading it to the kids. It is a very descriptive account of the life of a 9 year old girl growing up on an English farm in the 1890s - it is a completely different world from my children's upbringing and utterly fascinating.