things I am grateful for

[chelidon]

a mostly-pictoral list of today's gratitudes:

Happy Kid
Wacky friends
Roller coasters
Ferris wheels
Gorgeous wood stoves with stags on them (not mine, unfortunately)
Perfect farm days
Just-made ice cream
Good times with good friends
Things that go boom in the paddock
A fully restored moose
Wildflowers in the yard
Medicinal herbs blooming in the garden
A sword surprise-gifted by a friend
A warm hearth
High temps in the 60s (even if it is going up to 85 Sun-Tue)
Finished projects

Cool science museum summer programs for my son -- letter sent home to parents:

"Our primary goals in this camp program are to help your children:

o Develop a greater comfort with the outdoors
o Develop skills for learning and exploring outdoors
o Build ecological understandings:

This year our Week A focuses on Nature's Neighborhoods. The week starts off with us learning to explore our camp area with all of our senses. An uncovered map leads us to a treasure box. Inside are instructions from the King and Queen of the Gnomes. Each day they send us out on a new adventure to explore the animals, plants, and habitats unique to this area.

Week B centers around Opposites and Diversity. Opposite Man comes by to enlist our help in investigating why there is so much diversity in Nature. Each day's theme focuses on opposites -- big and small, fast and slow, hot & cold, etc.

o encourage discovery and use of the senses outdoors
o build a respect for and gentleness with other life

Homemade margaritas and guacamole
A quiet weekend at home with family and housemates
The blessing of all of you

Comments

[snakey.livejournal.com]

I want your sword!!

Oh god, that sounded totally dodgy. ::facepalms::

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

*lol* Buh...

Oh, ow. You almost just caused a good Islay malt to come out my nose!

[snakey.livejournal.com]

That would be a terrible waste. ::grin::

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

mmm, yes. No taste buds in the nose... :>

[mystfemme.livejournal.com]

Now that's a lot of stuff to be grateful for!

And loooook at your finished floor. It's gorgeous!!

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

thanks! I'm sometimes way too much the perfectionist in my projects, but I'm really happy with how all of the wood on the main floor came out, sooooo much better than the nasty stained carpet (http://www.casachaos.net/Casa_Chaos2003-2004/pages/page_105.html) that was there when we moved in. Next up, after finishing up the last bits of floor molding and trim, are redoing the hall bath (got one of those big bowl sinks, deep green glass with a starfish pattern (5-pointed star, natch :>), building the kitchen island (using local timber, and am getting a local stone mason to cut me a top of local granite), and getting ready to pull out the oil furnace and put in the wood boiler (scares me, 1200 lbs of furnace to move, and much more complicated plumbing than I've ever done before, but fools leap in... ;>)

[moonmelody.livejournal.com]

The pictures are wonderful. Thanks for sharing.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Thanks, and you're welcome!

[eeedge.livejournal.com]

You can tell I've got a child about the same age as F. My most favoritest part of your list was about the summer program.

H is going to a one-day summer program at the local Indian Mounds twice this fortnight. The first one was lovely, but not as fanciful a construct as the excellent one you quote.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

We've been really lucky with programs for F, but I sometimes forget that as rural as it is here, we're in serious hippy-land (Vermont more than New Hampshire, but we're near the border). For instance, when Opposite Man came to visit the science/nature program I wrote about above, part of the time he was talking to the kids about the dangers of Sameness. What he was really getting across to the kids, in language they could understand, was the importance of diversity, individuality, and again, in simple terms, not falling into the least-common-denominator consumer/mass-marketing-driven culture we're immersed in. It was placed into a context of scientific investigation (the importance of diversity in nature, etc), but they even went into the concept of looking at opposites (big/little, hot/cold, etc), and working those opposites with appreciation and value for both, instead the common approach of having to overlay some kind of moral judgement on it (i.e, "big" is good, "small" is bad) I do love it here.

How old is H? I can't remember how close there are in age, but they can't be that far apart? Hey, now that the kids are getting older, we could think about another U.K. trip. Seems like about time! :>

[eeedge.livejournal.com]

H just turned 7, and C turned 4. I think that the big trip to the U.K. is coming soon, especially with C getting so good at being so good. I would like to wait one more year, as I think 5 is about the youngest that she'd remember bits of it well. ('though H remembers a couple snippets from her trip at age 3...)