Exponent II

I've never brought my camera to the Exponent II retreat -- I always leave it home for Austin -- so I never have pictures.  But this year I did better than bring my camera, I brought Sharon.  Who is always attached to a camera.  And as a result, I have some nice pictures from this year's retreat.

Sharon, me and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.  The world's best mother-in-law, and the world's nicest Pulitzer-Prize-winning Harvard Historian, past president of the American Historial Association, and founding mother of Exponent.  (Intimidating, much?  But really, so great and down-to-earth.  When I can muster up the courage to talk to her.)

I gave a presentation on "Sacred Spaces in Mormonism."  I spend so much time thinking about the meaning of architecture and sacred space in 16th and 17th century German Lutheranism, that I thought it would be interesting to apply some of those ideas to the churches and temples of my own religious tradition.  And it was very interesting, at least for me! 

The executive board of the Exponent: magazine, blogs, and retreat.  Some very fun, awesome ladies to hang out with!

Tunbridge Fair

Austin and Howard took the kids to the Tunbridge World's Fair last Friday. "World's Fair" might seem like a grandiose name, but I think it really has to be the world's most amazing fair. You step onto the fairgrounds and instantly go back in time at least 100 years. 

These oxen, Doc and Dan, belong to Gavin's first grade teacher, Mrs. Morvan. (Yes, raising oxen is a perfectly usual hobby around here. No, we are not thinking of getting our own pair of 3,000 lb. bovines. No matter how good they are at hauling wood.) 

Uh, Austin, aren't our kids a little close to the back end of this thing?

Lucy proves that she can climb a rock wall even wearing galoshes.

Papa got the kids tickets for the Ferris Wheel.

Later, they couldn't decide if the best part of the fair was the rides, the animals, or the pig races.

Or maybe popcorn at the tractor pulls?

Who wouldn't love watching this dude?

The Cake

Gavin's pirate birthday cake turned out very cool so I've decided it deserves its own blog post.

The inspiration.

I baked two flat cakes, cut them up, put them together, then stuck them in the freezer overnight so they would be easier to frost. (No crumbs from the cut edges in the frosting, you know.)

Vanilla wafers cut in half for the rail, then unwrapped Rolos for the canons. Six of the canons had long birthday candles pushed through them so the candles would stick out the sides.

Whoppers for canon balls, a few wrapped Rolos for treasure, frosting windows, Swedish Fish in the water, and a paper sail with pirate flag on a skewer. The Lego skeleton guy isn't edible, of course, but he looked so cool on the front of the ship we decided to leave him there.

View from behind. I wish I'd got a picture with the candles lit up on the sides -- that looked awesome. But there was a bit too much chaos at that particular moment.

Cake Wreck.

Pirate Party!

Shiver me Timbers, Mateys! The day for Gavin's pirate birthday bonanza finally came on Saturday. He's been planning this for months.

All the kids got pirate hats to wear with their names painted on the back. Here, they are giving me their very best pirate "Aargh!" (A dozen felt pirate hats from Oriental Trading plus one tube of puffy fabric paint from Jo-Ann's equals an easy, cool-looking pirate party favor.)

We divided into teams and went on a hunt to find the treasure map that led to the pirate treasure.

The treasure was finally located -- but it was locked inside a treasure chest pinata! All the kids had a chance to take a couple of swings before one of the big kids brought it down.

After the loot was divided, it was time for cake and presents.

Gavin insisted on providing pirate swords and eyepatches. I insisted that these be given out at the END of the party, AFTER parents had arrived to take their kid home. This limited pirate skirmishes to brief encounters on the porch. The Dread Pirate Gavin challenged each of his friends to a sword fight before they left. Remarkably, his flimsy plastic pirate sword survived to fight another day.

Ten Years Later

We took the kids up to the Upper Parade Ground at Norwich to help place flags in commemoration of the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

One flag for each person who died that day.

After only a couple of rows, Gavin says "Wow, Mom, there sure were a lot of people." Yeah, buddy, you got the point.

It was cool to be there with this guy, the Marine Gunnery Sergeant, a decorated veteran of several deployments. And with these first-year cadets. I hope that in four years when they graduate and commission, they won't still be cleaning up the mess of 9/11.

First Day of School

The school delayed opening for a week due to Hurricane Irene. So when school finally started this morning we were all SO happy and excited! (Especially me.)

Gavin is in first grade with Mrs. Morvan, who is entering her 40th (yes, 40th) year of teaching first grade. I think we are in pretty good hands there.

Lucy is in fourth grade with Mr. Appleton. She heard he likes to give jellybeans to kids who do well in math. Motivation by candy-bribe works well for Lucy, so she thinks it will be a good year.

Lucy and Gavin both had a fabulous first day of school. They were hardly off the bus before they launched into stories about how great their class is and how fun the day was. They got louder and louder as we walked because they were trying to be heard over each other, so I made them take turns, which meant they switched from loud to fast in order to get as many words in as possible before it was the other's turn. We were all the way home before they ran out of stories.

Me, I was a little bleary-eyed today. Maybe it was because, for the second year in a row, I stayed up all night making personalized birthday cookies for Gavin's class, covering each one with perfect little icing dots, putting them in individual bags and tying them with bows? When I could have brought a box of Oreos and the kids would probably have been just as happy? Someday I will learn. Until then, I'll probably continue to work out my emotions by going overboard on birthday cookies the night before school starts.

Gavin's Birthday

I can't believe this kid is six years old.

We made him a homemade ice-cream cake for his "actual" birthday. (As opposed to the "party" birthday, which will apparently require a pirate ship cake.)

He was thrilled about his gifts . . .

. . . and spent the next two days building new Legos and playing with his sister. Which is exactly what my six-year-old loves to do most.

Hurricane Irene

Hurricane Irene blew into town last Sunday. The forecast was for rain and high winds. The winds never materialized but the rain certainly did. So. Much. Rain. It rained hard and fast for hours and hours.

By early Sunday afternoon it became clear that the 36-inch culvert under the road wasn't going to be able to handle all the water. The stream became a rushing torrent and tore through the road again, for the third time this year. What we didn't know was that roads and bridges were going out all over town at the same time, so we were really and truly stranded for two days. (We managed to get to work on Tuesday by taking a 45-minute drive around back up country roads to the one road that they managed to open. Normally, my commute to the college is 5 minutes.)

This time, the stream cut a channel right INTO the foundations of the hay barn. For a while I thought she was a goner. We managed to pile some scrap tin by the northwest corner to divert the water somewhat, but the cribbage supporting the rear corner blew out. Somehow, the barn is still standing. I guess after 175 years it will take more than a hurricane to bring it down, the frontier farmers that built it knew what they were doing.

While we were distracted by the road blowout, the water in the field started to rise rapidly. The Dog River frequently comes up in spring and creates a lake in the field, but I've never seen the water actually FLOWING THROUGH the field! The trees you can see out there, apparently in the middle of the river, are normally about 30 feet in from the edge of the river. This is an unimaginable amount of water. We rushed to get the horses out and created a temporary fence for them on the higher ground of the lawn.

This picture was taken next to the dairy barn. I just can't believe how deep that water is, so far up in the field! Each of those T-posts is about 5 feet high.

The next morning the field was a rocky, muddy, mucky mess. Uprooted trees are everywhere. The water had to have been 6 or 7 feet deep here in the lower field, because even the tall corner fence posts were submerged. (We were in the river Saturday, before the hurricane, it was knee deep. And a hundred feet away from here.) After things dry out, we are going to have to get a backhoe or bulldozer to push the rock out of the field if we want to have a horse pasture again next year. Not to mention chainsaws and a pretty massive bonfire to deal with the downed trees. Most of the trees seem to have come from upriver somewhere, only a few of our trees came down. Unfortunately, one of the trees we lost was the one we had our canoe chained to.

We spent most of Monday morning rigging up a new fence for the horses, up on the lawn near the house. They are thrilled, of course. They love eating the thick green grass. And Austin is pretty happy because he won't have to mow any more this year. In all, we feel grateful not to have lost more than we did. The barn is still standing, the pasture is reparable, and the water got nowhere near the house. Our neighbors further down, on Water Street, were all evacuated and came back to find 4 feet of mud on the main level of their homes. It has been a sad sight to drive down Water Street now that our road is repaired, and watch people piling all their furniture and possessions into dumpsters. The only thing we lost was the canoe. We heard about canoe sightings in Northfield Falls and Montpelier and figured our canoe was in Lake Champlain by now.

Or, maybe not! Austin took Major out for a ride last night and guess what he saw, HANGING IN A TREE, down by the Norwich soccer fields? The canoe was full of mud and debris, but still had the paddles and seats in it! He freed it and cleaned out what he could, then we dragged it home. Austin was a mess -- the kids decided he looked like a Mud Goblin -- I made him take his clothes off outside on the porch before he came in. But he was so happy to have found the canoe. So I guess that means that we didn't really lose anything in Irene. We are feeling very blessed and grateful.