doings

Playing a bit of catch up with a suddenly busy February...this lovely photo of the bespectacled friends was taken a few days after our little buddy's first birthday, and he was so pleased to be playing with Ani. He clearly shares her love of goggles. 

Aaaand it snowed again...which suited our still-queasy fluish selves just fine...though cabin fever won out most of the weekend and got us out in it for a walk and what may be (fingers crossed?) the last snowball fight of the year! (I vascillate between being obsessed with checking the weather for upcoming storms and being in total denial that such information is available to me at the touch of my fingertips)

Hi! I counted you! Several times!!

The Great Backyard Bird Count had us talking to the little guys who visited our kitchen window feeders.  We discovered that the Northern Mockingbird will come if we put out sweet clementines for him to eat,  that we have a pair of downy woodpeckers - a pair! -  who take turns at our suet, and that a flock of starlings can wipe out a block of suet in no time at all.  One day.  I also felt justified in leaving all of the weeds in our yard - the runner bean vines and the shiso, the comfrey and the stubs of horseradish leaves.  The birds not only ate the shiso seeds, they used all of it for perching, hiding, and jostling for the best angle at the suet.

Weeds.

The semi-frozen Hocking River

Ani and I rediscovered a game we love - Colorku (think Sudoku with colors instead of numbers).  You can play alone, of course, but there is so much to talk about when you figure it out together...We start every day with games: cribbage, kapaga, Pente...another one to add to the rotation.

This is where I often find Eliza, working on story.  She's been enjoying inventing characters and, of course, naming them is half the fun.  When I asked where she got her inspiration, she said that she'd been looking at the dedications in the fronts of books and had found some good ones:  Tyler and Taylor (twins), Shay, Amani, Ian, Dakota, Rufus, Tansy...

Sharing of poetry (Shel Silverstein, a favorite).

There was hiphop, homeschool coop, homeschool marching choir and Warrior Poets (aka writing class) - the regulars that punctuate our week - and Eliza and I attended a lecture at the local historical society museum about women's fashion during the Civil War.  It was really fun - the lecturer crafted her own degree for historical costuming and is passionate about the Civil War era.  She brought several gowns she had made and dressed a friend in period clothing, discussing all of it as she went (brave friend!).  Hoops, corsets, the whole bit. Eliza was in heaven.  It was also inspiring to hear that this young woman has fostered this love of history and fashion since she was fourteen and developed her skill as a seamstress to follow that passion.

Artistry in the kitchen

 And now it's nearing the end of the week.  We're anticipating a weekend visit from friends, and the weather is acting strangely like spring...we saw our first Mourning Dove, and rumour has it the temperature got close to 68 Thursday. Can that be true?!  Ani is making demands of the weather, coming down the stairs in a tank top and bare feet, looking like California Dreamin' on such a winter's day...it might be a long March.

Not today!