Finishing Spring

 On this warm summer day, knowing the week will end up with temperatures in near 100 degrees, it is nice to look back to the cool days of spring.  This spring we made two trips to see animal babies.  Our first trip was on a cold day, but we had fun despite the weather.  UMASS-Amherst had a Family Day at their animal barn. 

C & W hay ride. 

This camel kept nibbling kid's necks??

 The piggies were our favorites.  They were amazingly cute and very active nursers.  Teenage boys kept giggling while watching them.  I think there were three litters of at least seven apiece. The moms just kind of lay there, tolerating every kind of childish mischief.  The piglets would all start nursing about the same time, like they couldn't stand by and let another piggy get more than them. 

The runt of one litter.  So cute!

It was pretty cold so the piglets would pile up under heat lamp in the corner of their pens. 

 

This guy was my favorite!  He was quite frisky, as well as having a cute bum.

Communing with piglets.

Baby goats!

 

As we were visiting the alpacas, the kids were discussing the names they gave to some of the pigs including Eater, Milker and Two Spot.  Then they started in on the Alpacas: Brownie, Darky, Whitey, Hungry, Calpaca, Tanny, Lazy, Hoofy and Al.  (Well, I actually named Calpaca.)   I'm not sure if there were as many alpacas as there were names, but they had a great time doing the naming. 

The next week we went to Hancock Shaker Village with our friends Josie and Harry.  Hancock Shaker Village is near Pittsfield, MA.  HSV was established by the Shakers in 1791 and is currently run as museum. We did not explore the whole place, but made a bee-line for the round barn and the baby animals.

Here's what Wikipedia says about the barn (I think it's interesting... skip it if you feel differently.):

Inside the barn there are four rings. The innermost is also the smallest and is used for ventilation. This ventilation is necessary to help draw the moisture up and out of the hay which prevents mold from growing and the hay from eventually spontaneously combusting.  The next ring out is where the hay was stored. It was tossed in from an upper level. That balcony was accessible by ox-drawn wagon via a ramp outdoors. Because the barn was round the wagons could enter, unload the hay and then exit the barn without ever having to back up.
The third ring out was where the Shaker brothers would walk to distribute the hay in the second ring to the cows standing in the outermost, fourth ring. The barn could hold up to 70 cows at a time. They would go to the barn twice a day: once in the morning and once in the evening to be milked. Inside the barn they were put into wooden stanchions. Standing there, the cows could eat while the brothers milked them. The floor of the outermost ring is split level, with the inner part raised up 3 inches. This was so that the milk buckets were not on the same level as the manure which was unsanitary.

Willa kept going back to hold the baby chick and ducks.  She seems to really like chickens...

This guy is a French Angora rabbit. 

Roof of barn

Turkeys were really showing off.

We were not sure what this was, but the kids figured out what they thought the best use was.

Josephine, Harry, Cal and Willa look at bees.

Sheep riding!

Seat weaving!

We thought the Shakers' adoptees probably enjoyed rolling down the hill too.

Tired out at end of day.

There was more to our spring adventures, but as it is already summer, I'll leave it there.  We miss you!  Wish you were here!

Bonus Pic: 

W & C with Becky Bunny

the grass has riz...

Our winter was long.  We had a lot of snow and it took forever to be gone, but when it finally did, we were outside.  (I really shouldn't complain, as friends and relatives in the NoDak had it much worse).

 Here are some shots from a few early spring outdoor adventures:

Fairy house in garden.  We even did a little landscaping.

Fairy house under apple tree.  A bit sturdier in a three-little-pigs sense of the word, but no landscaping.

Cal and fairy house.

Some digging in the herb bed produced some earthworms.  Cal is not eating it. (someone asked)

Willa's worm vacation condo.

Kite flying. 

Happiness is the sun on your face after a long winter.

Catching up, again: Crazy Kids and Sugar Shacks

Well, it has been a long time.  I keep having ideas about what to post, and then I don't seem to find the time.  I'll be brief in order to catch up (again).


One post I was collecting pictures for was something like:
The Wacky Things My Kids Do!

I'm sure all kids do lots of weird things, like make alien hats for themselves and their bird, or impromptu art exhibits in the dining room, but it makes me happy to see these little endeavors.  Currently Willa is the main engineer of these physical products, whereas Cal is great at telling stories.  According to him, he's got another family in California with 2 brothers (both named Callahan) and a baby.  They have 2 black dogs.  He's always telling us what happened in this other family, like fights with his brothers or that their grandparents came over.  He easily comes up with lots of ideas for stories with a few prompts, a game we often play when trying to distract him at a restaurant or doctor's office.  You can't take pictures of the stories, but here's just a few interesting projects they've undertaken in the last few months.

Alien hats mentioned above.

Willa cut up a mylar balloon and taped (lots of tape) it on the rocking giraffe for a night cap.

Willa discovered MLPs have a magnet in their feet (I'm not sure why?) long ago.  Every now and then I come across them defying gravity somewhere.

I think this is a pig necklace.

She attached lots of scraps to this crab, just for fun.

This isn't crazy, but they made it themselves.

Collage art?

Glitter glue splotches as dining room exhibition. 

One Sure Sign of Spring

Willa checks out syrup

Cal's turn

Greta and her dad. 

Silly boy.

Our annual trip to the sugar shacks around the area is always fun and looked forward to, but this year it was especially good because it heralded the end of a long and extra snowy winter.  Sugar shacks (otherwise known as a sugar house, sugar cabin or sap house) are essentially where maple syrup is made.  In this day and age, people have added dining rooms where you can eat yummy pancakes, etc. and watch the syrup being made.  It's a lot of fun! (Can you tell I like breakfast?)  These places are kind of rustic, but always warm and inviting, full of people and good smells.  This year we went to Pomeroy's one weekend and the Nick and the kids went to Steve's on a weekend I was away.  Above are pictures from Steve's last year and below from Pomeroy's this year.  I guess we were too busy eating to take pictures of the syrup in use.

An infamous Aieta artsy shot.

 Bonus pic:

From Earth Hour (an hour on a March night when you turn off the lights for the environment).  We made it Earth Night and lit the fireplace for the last time of the year.

Yoga and Yunicorns: W's Birthday

When Willa and I talked about her party this year, her first word was "Unicorn!"  I had already had sort of planned to do a yoga party at a nearby studio.  W loves yoga since she took it in preschool.  When I mentioned yoga, she said "Yeah, yoga AND unicorns!".  So that is what we went with.

While planning and looking for supplies I could not find a single unicorn in all of Michaels!  The kind-of-punk check-out woman said "I'm not surprised." with a smirk.  I'm not sure what that meant.   Then I had to go on a bit of a safari (maybe not such an appropriate term to use here) to find a unicorn balloon.  I was kind of shocked by all this lack of unicorn love.  I thought they were quite popular, though perhaps they are "so last year" or something.

Finding the cake- or cupcakes in this case- to make was actually easy!  I thought I would just put a printed cupcake topper on them, but then I found this.  These were really easy.  I frosted them and Willa put the faces on.  I should admit I had made the snouts in advance, so all she had to do was stick them on.  They are pretty "snouty" looking, as one of you said, but they were a hit.

"Aren't I cute and delicious?"

 

The party was really fun.  There were nine kids, which was a good sized group for yoga and it seemed they all enjoyed themselves.  They did yoga first and snacks and gifts after.

Willa looks like she's having fun.

Cousin Fiona performs one-legged pigeon pose.

I believe they are "growing plants" in the "yoga garden".

Cousin Evie pretending to be a fish.

Downward facing dog. Well, most of them, anyway.

Now they are a huge sunflower in the garden.

 

Camryn using her snout in new ways.

It was really fun and relaxing.  How many kids' parties does everyone get to lay down and close their eyes for several minutes?  That was W's favorite part, "the nap" as she called it.   We had a great time, but of course, we wish you could have been there. 

G visits and W turns 6!

Willa had a big day last week.  On Thursday she had both her 100th day of school celebration and her 6th birthday.  She'd been asking to bring cupcakes to school on her birthday, then we learned that she needed to bring 100 somethings to school that day.   I had to put my foot down and say, "I am not making 100 cupcakes!".   Well, she didn't really ask, but I think both our minds went there right away.

As I was looking around and brainstorming, the second thing I thought of was wine corks (I have a quite few hoarded).  Probably not a great idea.... but at least it wasn't tampons like my friend sadistically wanted to send.

Anyway, I decided it would be cool to cut 100 different samples from my paper stash, and perhaps make a collage I could give to the class or... something.  I thought this despite the fact that the note said "bring to share" and Willa's warning that she thought it was supposed to be food, or at least something to give to everyone to enjoy.  So, I happily cut 100 one inch pieces from scraps of paper.  It took an afternoon.  Not too bad, and I was having fun as I was playing with my stash and getting to hang out with my good friend, Greta, who was visiting.  I decided not to put it together into a collage just yet, because of the "sharing" suggestion.  

We had a great weekend with G!  It was like she'd never left.  We didn't do much but hang around the house.  W had a fever Friday night and it was kind of cold and snowy.  G and the kids made a snowman on Sunday.

Post snow-play cocoa.  That's Uni in bottom right enjoying her cup.

On Monday Willa brought home another note from teacher stating that, indeed, she would prefer the 100 things to be edible, or at least shareable.  Sigh.  It took me a minute to let go of my idea.  Tuesday was an inservice day and W did not have school, so off we went to the grocery store.  We got stuff for birthday cupcakes and W got to pick out what she wanted for her 100 things.  She chose licorice chunks.  Then I (always having to make things more complicated), decided they would be kind of sticky, so I bought mini paper baking cups to put them in.

It was fun, counting out the cups (except for Cal's continual quest to mess them up) and putting the chunks in, less fun stapling the cups shut.

 On Thursday, Willa was sent to school loaded with 15 cupcakes and 100 pieces of licorice.  I took some time that day to make this (dammit, I will not be thwarted):

100 pieces for 100 days. I gave it W for 100 days and her birthday.  Now we just need to find a place to put it.


Willa had a good day at school and we went to Friendly's (her fave) for supper.  She got a few presents (Thank you notes will be done soon!).  Her big party, though, was held on Sunday.  I'll tell you about that next time, as now I have to go get the boy from preschool.

We miss you!