Feb 8, 2014 - Random stuff with kids + pictures

We've been photo challenged lately on the blog.  Here's some goodies to remedy that.

Liberty joined Christian and me for a morning hike for the first time last weekend.  We ended up covering 2 miles of the AT and then turned around to head back.  The snow was perfect - deep enough to not be rocky, warm enough to pack, cold enough to fall apart on impact.  Also, thankfully, Christian is no better at throwing baseball-shaped objects than I was at 11.

Libby had a great time, too. It has been a few years since she went hiking, and keeping her on track was a little bit of a challenge. But she is so full of fun and spunk that it changed the outing to be much more energetic and fun than it is when just us two older boys go.

I'm a little behind on my goal to hike all of NJ NY and CT on the AT this year, but I'm making good progress considering that it's winter.  When it warms up, I expect to take a day off here and there and do 15 miles in a couple days.  Ideally, a 3-4 day trip with close to 50 miles would be great.  It would cover 25% of my total distance - I could do all of CT and head into NY with that length.  Might be a good plan.  Hm.

You can see from the trail that we've had snow lately. The snow you see on the ground in the hiking pictures melted the next day. It was about 50 degrees and sunny. Everything dripped all afternoon, and the leaves were bare on the ground. That was Sunday afternoon. Wednesday we got nearly 12" of fresh snow. I stayed home from work that day (most of it fell before dawn on Wednesday), and spent 3 hours shoveling and snow blowing. It's work, but I still find it rewarding, unique, and enjoyable. No running for me that day, I got my exercise thanks to the snow.

I encouraged the kids to play out side in the snow on Wednesday, but they didn't. I had a full workday on Thursday, but on Friday morning I got busy. My exercise for that day was packing a sledding run as the sun came up over our sledding hill. That, of course, requires testing. So I packing snow, slid down, repeat, repeat. Now it's a very nice sledding run; the best we've had in 2 winters here.

Today, we had a critical piece of exterior maintenance done. We had a dead Ash tree in our driveway turnaround.  We first noticed it after we were in contract, and we didn't want to make the process a day longer than it had to be, so it has stood there.  It was maybe 10 ft from our power line, and rotten at the base. Every time there was a storm, I'd wait to see if it would fall. Thankfully, it didn't. Until this morning, when an arborist we know from church came over, climbed it, and brought it down. It was about 60 ft high, and now it's mostly cut up and ready for splitting. It's already dry (the tree has been dead for years), so once it's split, we have firewood.

The guys also took down a huge oak tree that was about 10 ft from our sun porch and leaning away from the house, but severely rotten in part of its trunk. So that one is down as well. Look carefully at this picture, and you can see the guy in the top of the tree, cutting down limbs from 50 ft up.

They finished about noon, and I took Jake to a birthday party at 2. It was very low key for parents, lots of fun for the kids. We left there a few minutes early, so I could bring Jake home and take Aria to a youth activity. Now that she's 14, she gets to do co-ed activities with the other youth from the church. Today we pick up another young woman and went to the church in New Windsor, where the kids made 5-minute videos melding a popular movie (think Star Wars, Batman, Finding Nemo) with church teachings. At the end, we all gathered together and watch 6 5-minute video clips. All were pretty funning. Then we all went to Taco Bell and hung out together for an hour and a half. We got home at 11.  It's been a busy day. Tomorrow I have a busy morning planned, and may stay a little longer than normal at church because a young man in the other ward is giving his missionary farewell talk and I want to be there for him and his family.

Also, I finished "Swagger" today.  More on that tomorrow, I think.