Professor Gavin

The other day I bought Gavin a little white shirt to wear to church once the weather warms up. I hung it in the back of his closet, knowing he'd hate it, just like his other "button shirts."

(Our usual Sunday conversation: "Mom, why does Heavenly Father say I have to wear buttons to church?" "I don't know, Gavin, just please put your tie on.")

So I was very surprised the other day when he emerged wearing his white shirt over his clothes.

Look Mom! I have a lab coat! I'm a science professor!

Since then Gavin's "lab coat" has been worn every day. Over jammies, to the skating rink, to run errands, or just to sit home and play Legos. Sometimes he even does up the buttons, and puts pencils in his pocket. We're on February Break right now, so it still remains to be seen whether he will try to wear it to Kindergarten. Where he better study a lot of math if he really wants to grow up and become a particle smasher.

We're art collectors!

We just sealed the deal tonight to buy this fabulous painting.

There's no way for a photo to do it justice. It's big: 3 feet by 5 feet, and it captures the light and colors and movement of late spring in Vermont. The artist, John Hoag, based it on a photograph he took standing along the edge of Terry Hill Road looking toward our hay barn and fields. So it's not just any view of Vermont -- it's OUR view of Vermont.

We are SO excited about our first big art purchase. Actually, it's technically not ours yet. We are buying it on an installment plan, a check each month until it's paid off, hopefully in a few months. When we actually get it hanging in our house I"ll post a picture of it in situ. Then we'll start saving up to put a frame around it. A barnwood frame. Made of barnwood from that barn, of course. Can't wait!

Date Night

Lucy burst in yesterday after school and announced in a rapturous voice, "I have a date with destiny!"

Actually, it was a date with her dad, for the annual Daddy-Daughter Valentine's Dance at the Capitol Hotel in Montpelier. She has been looking forward to this for months.

They both looked ravishing.

The night consisted of a fancy dinner at a restaraunt then a hotel ballroom full of balloons, chocolate, popcorn, punch, and squealing girls. Apparently Lucy joined a roving pack of Northfield 3rd graders but deigned to dance with her dad for a couple of slow dances. I'd been wondering why Austin made such a point of telling all Lucy's friends' dads about the dance -- now I realize it was so he'd have someone to talk to!

Meanwhile -- my date Gavin just wanted to stay home and build a fort where we could watch videos and eat Pringles and cookies. So I spent the evening with my best pal, laying on the floor underneath my kitchen table, watching Toy Story and making shadow puppets in the light of a headlamp. I'd say great time was had by all.

H.M.S. Pinafore

Getting into makeup.

Gavin was less excited about this part.

Front and center, Gavin the sailor in the Queens Navee.


Lucy the Lovely Lady.

Stage makeup and jammies: the afterparty at home.

Kudos to the music teacher who attempted Gilbert and Sullivan with Elementary School kids! The production was surprisingly good. We've got some great talent for such a small town.

Tout Suite

We went up to Montreal last weekend for Austin's Vermont Bar Association meetings and enjoyed three nights at the Sheraton -- in a suite! It was sweet. The kids slept on the pullout couch and the parents got their own room AND own TV. So Austin and I didn't have to watch French cartoons which, for some reason, the kids find riveting.

Lucy and Gavin probably would have happily never left the hotel.

The Sheraton has a gorgeous swimming pool that they keep at about 80 degrees. Lucy practiced jumping in and swimming under water for hours.

Gavin's buddy Liam -- whose dad is also an attorney -- came to the pool with us every day so Gavin would have someone to play and be silly with in the shallow end.

Gavin called this game "whale rider." Hmmmm.

Liam's mom introduced us to the Westmount Library, one of our new favorite Montreal places. They not only have books, they have beautiful greenhouses full of flowers!

There were koi ponds full of fish. Extremely tame fish. They actually let Lucy pet them.

I wish our library looked like this!

We also took a trip to the Biodome one day. I love this place.

It was cold enough for penguins and puffins outside, but it's nice to see them in the nice warm inside.

Gavin with bat ears.

Gavin as crocodile dinner.

Lucy looks a lot happier about it.

I wonder why these crocs don't eat the turtles and birds crawling over them?

Lucy thought the sparkly piranhas were very cool.

Gavin liked the spooky piranha skull.

Lucy took pictures of EVERYTHING with her new camera. Gavin took pictures of almost everything with my camera. All the pictures in this blog were taken by Lucy or Gavin except the pictures of them.

Off-Label Toy Uses

Yesterday Gavin was playing with his Hexbugs and got a little bored. Or creative.

He decided his Hexbug tracks would make a perfect saxophone.

He spent a good part of the next hour happily jamming away.

This isn't the first time Gavin has used his toys in some interesting and innovative ways. Remember Ghostbusters?

We watched it with the kids a few weeks ago, and now Gavin loves to play Ghostbusters.


All he needs is his duffel bag -- worn like a backpack -- and the launcher for his Stomp Rockets. Who ya gonna call? Gavinbusters! He ain't 'fraid of no ghost!

The Stomp Rockets are also useful as microphones for Lucy's performances. Gavin is accompanying her on a "bongo drum" that is actually his new bungee jumper.

By the way, while we were searching for a Ghostbusters picture on GoogleImages, I found somebody's Lego version. So the kids decided to make their own. This is Egon, Venkman, Spangler and the other guy fighting the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. Lucy made the marshmallow guy while Gavin assembled the Ghostbusters from various other Lego people. You might recognize Indiana Jones' and Harry Potter's hair on bodies mostly taken from Star Wars sets. As usual, I'm amazed by their inventiveness! I hope it's a long time before they feel constrained by convention -- at least as far as toys are concerned.

Christmas Week 2010

I know I've been posting a lot about Christmas and Holiday events this year. I can't help it -- I really love Christmas, and I love Christmas traditions, old and new. But I did try and hold off so I could put all the fun stuff we've done this week into one big blog post.

On the last day of school, Gavin's class put on a performance of the Kindergarten classic "Christmas Cookies and Holiday Hearts." Gavin was the baker -- it was his job to introduce all the different cookies. The whole thing lasted all of ten minutes. Nothing is sweeter than singing Kindergarteners dressed up as cookies.

With the kids out of school (and some snow on the ground, finally!) Austin was able to get out his new (to us) snowmobile and pull the kids around the field.

The ski helmets, goggles, and balaclavas were perfect for a snowy ride on a beautiful but frigid December day.

I found these fun Gingerbread houses at Costco and we spent an afternoon decorating them. Lucy frosted the front of her "toy shop" house to look like the picture on the box but made the back look like a big red barn. Love it. These kids are such Vermonters -- of course Santa would need a barn to go with his house!

We fed the gingerbread house and barn to the chickens for their special treat on Christmas Day.

We continued our tradition of the Bethlehem Dinner, inviting friends over for a multi-course Middle Eastern dinner (hummus, cheese, grapes and olives, followed by lentil soup, then chicken, tilapia and couscous with olive tapenade, and baklava and fruit for dessert.) Luckily, people in the Middle East eat sitting on the floor, because we don't have a table that could accommodate so many people! After dinner the kids (and a couple of good-sport teenagers) put on the nativity play.

Christmas Day was wonderful. Lucy got a My American Girl doll and a camera from Santa, but her favorite gift seems to have been a sewing kit. She spent most of the day working on sewing projects.

Gavin got the Lego Hogwarts Castle. I was figuring my Christmas day would mostly involve me and Lucy building it for him, but it turns out he wanted to do it all by himself. And he did. I was impressed -- those were some long and complicated instructions. He spent hours totally absorbed in building Legos.

By nighttime he'd got the first two towers completed. He's so proud of himself.

And Lucy finished her first ever sewing project, a little felt cat.

The only lame thing that happened on Christmas was that our oven finally gave out for good. No hot rolls, no turkey dinner. But in the grand tradition of A Christmas Story, we made Chinese food instead. Fa Ra Ra Ra Ra, ra Ra Ra Ra! Guess I'll be getting a new range for my birthday.