If You Build it,They Will Lay Eggs

Memorial day came and went and now there is a chicken pen in our backyard. It only cost two pints of blood each to mosquitos. It's hard to say if the chicks like it, they don't do much.

We Built a City and We Destroyed a City

This natural disaster was brought to you in part by the Sciencenter in Ithaca. It was nice to have Nolan feeling better.

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A Journal of a Sunday

Two Small Anecdotes about My Boys

First, for dinner toight Gerret requested pepperoni, cheese and crackers. I gave him an even amount of each. Near meal's end he displayed his remnants with which he made a giant cracker sandwich that consisted of everyone of his crackers and his last piece of cheese. He ate it all, but I still don't understand why he chose to eat each ingredient separately except form saving one slice of cheese to be consumed with 4 Ritz crackers.

Nolan likes signs. I'm not sure why. Maybe he'll go into Advertising. In any case, we try, as a family, to do a campfire each Friday night. It's a tradition we're trying to establish. This picture is of the sign/announcement Nolan made for anyone and everyone. He had Lindsay post it at the front of our driveway so drivers can see. We haven't attracted any strangers with it yet, but I'm sure the day will come.

Poor Nolan

This is Nolan at 7 am, again at 3:20 pm, and finally at 11 pm. He's had an off day (though disappointingly He was all better for a few hours earlier this evening and now has fallen back into his fever again). His fevers always run high, but I still worry every time. Hopefully tomorrow will prove better.

You Know There's a Tornado Warning Right?

That's what I asked Lindsay and, bless her heart, she still decided to meet me after work to go walking through Cornell's Botanical Garden, a part of Cornell Plantations.
It was 80 degrees with high winds and blue skies and a tornado warning. We pulled into our parking spot at Cornell, unloaded, began setting up the stroller, and the sky darkened. One drop. Two drops. A million drops. Hail. We all raced to throw everything back in the van and then rode out the sudden onset of a storm inside. We hoped this was a small passing bit. I checked the weather map and it seemed like it would end in just a minute. Maybe two. And in three it was over.
The skies were blue and sunny with not a sign of further storming or tornadoes.
Lindsay and I love the Cornell campus. It is of singular beauty and Lindsay had really wanted to go see the gardens. I'm glad she did. It was beautiful and I was more than happy to spend it with family. There was a giant flower the size of my hand (and it's not like I have dwarfish hands or anything). Something called the Masterwort which just made me laugh, and two peppers that sounded like amazing dares.
I had a good time.

The Thing that Should Not Have Been

Monday night was one of those, 'You've got to be kidding me' moments.
I've told this story a few times now, always to shock, amazement, curiosity and laughs from my listeners, so I trust any readers herein will appreciate the content.
So we went shopping on Monday night. We went as a family and, after discussing gas mileage, we decided to take Lindsay's van. Our drive down into Ithaca was quiet and uneventful. A typical 25 mile journey to the supermarket (that's one-way mind you, NOT round trip).
We headed into the store at about five of eight o'clock and got a quick bite to eat (see the previous entry about Gerret's fortune cookie from the meal) before pursuing and completing our shopping. Again, fortune cookie aside, there was nothing really of note about our journey even up to the point that we loaded the groceries in the van, loaded ourselves in the van, and backed up. When we put the car into drive, that's when it happened.
BUMP!
I looked at Lindsay and her wide green eyes looked back at me. Our minds were racing. Couldn't have been a person, we'd checked. There was no one around. Lindsay pulled forward and I confirmed as she went that it was not a person. Thankfully not a person. Not a car either. It hadn't been a BUMP of contact, but rather an up and over BUMP. Something'd gone under my rear passenger tire.
I kept watching out my mirror, but it was 9:20 pm. The light was conciliatory at best and the parking lot lamps did little to illuminate the shape or color of whatever we'd hit. Indeed we had hit something, that was unarguable. It was in the parking lot behind us now; a black lump of something.
At first I thought it was a crow. But that was stupid. We were going like 5 miles an hour, it would've had to lay down on the ground and just wait to be hit. Something was flapping though, like a wing.
My next thought was a black plastic bag of something. My mind tried to recall any black bag that may have fallen out thenback of the van as I'd loaded groceries in, but there wasn't one. Lindsay confirmed, no black plastic bag. So maybe somebody dropped one there. At didn't make sense eiher, no one was near us. There was one family on the other side of our parking lane—they walked over to check out what we'd hit, so they knew what it was, and I knew from theirnreaction (dark and silhouetted as it was) that it didn't belong to them—and no one else until after we'd pulled out.
We were coming to the exit now, but something—curiosity or responsibility to make sure it wasn't something important—told me we should circle around and drive by again. Lindsay obliged, and I never took my eye off the black lump all the way around.
As we neared the object again, slowly coming up on it as we traveled down the lane, I began to hang my head out the window like a dog. Here it was, closer and closer. It was almost all curiosity at this point and then—I couldn't believe it. It couldn't have been. Shouldn't have been.
There, curled on it's back, mouth open, tail wagging in the wind, a giant groundhog. A giant groundhog!? That didn't make any more sense than a crow. We'd been going 5 miles an hour. It mad eno sense, and then in a flash it made perfect sense.
Before we'd left for shopping Lindsay had said Cocoa, our dog, had been circling her van all day, barking intermittently. True enough, when I'd gotten home there she was circling the van, and I remember getting down on my hands and knees and checking under the van and there'd been nothing there.
Then my mind remembered a big groundhog burrow that had recently been created right underneath my propane tanks (and which I'd promptly flooded with water and reburied). Cocoa had chased that groundhog back down it's hole and then circled the hole for hours.
We hadn't suddenly backed over a groundhog. This was the groundhog from back home, from 25 miles away.
Cocoa had caught the groundhog hiding under Lindsay's van and circled it, threatened it, barked at it, before the groundhog had finally sought shelter the only place it could think—up. It had crawled up into the engine and there it had been as we drove down. It sat in our engine for 25 miles, baking and being exposed to noise and car fumes. I have no idea at what point the groundhog died, but I do know that as we were pulling out of the store parking lot it fell out of the engine—finally—only to be flattened by our tire on our way.
There is no moral to this story, just craziness. 25 miles with a large groundhog under the hood. Beat that story if you can.

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A Wise Man Once Said...

...the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

This came out of a fortune cookie Gerret had Monday night. I thought it was perfect: it's not a fortune, it's clever, and it involves a snapped mouse.

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I Am the Warrior

Last night we made some brownies. We had a late lunch and no one felt like dinner, so we made brownies for a just-before-bedtime snack. Lindsay melted chocolate chips on top for a finishing touch. It was a nice family ending to a nice family Sunday. We also went for a 2.5 mile walk through Amish farmland as the sun dipped in the sky (that's how we worked up our brownie appetite).
It's beautiful out here. And I am the chocolate brownie warrior.(and even warrrs need to brush their teeth)

I Found it Amazing

I found it amazing that in the midst of an early congressional debate, John Adams had the certainty to declare, when asked by Benjamin Rush if he thought America would succeed, "Yes, if we fear God and repent our sins." Amen to this statement.
—found on page 160 of David McCullough's biography John Adams

I Love Lindsay's Two-Lips...

...They come in all kinds of colors.

Camping, Sort of

Last night I went camping, sort of. It's not really camping when you do it in your backyard. Not for grownups anyway. For little boys it is and that's exactly who I had for company—two little boys named Nolan and Gerret.
Lindsay, as the leader of activities and ecclesiastical education of the girls in our church had organized an activity—or rather the girls organized an activity and Lindsay provided adult supervision with her friend Ashley Nyre and she provided all of the food. I clarified because Lindsay never would have come up with this activity herself: sleeping in the loft of a new barn, pampering one another, a campfire, and celebrating a birthday. That's what their plans were. They were all (7 of them) spending the night on cots and mats in the barn.
My boys and I were there to chop firewood, make a fire, and tend to the fire and breakfast in the morning for them (we'd volunteered). We were not, however, pampering ourselves or sleeping in a barn or doing any celebrating. Instead we had brought along our tent and sleeping bags and blankets and we were spending the night under the stars (we were until it started raining and I had to run at 11 pm and get the rainfly and throw it on the tent). The three of us piled into the tent after we'd got the fire going for them.
It was a bugger to get going. Nolan helped a lot, but the wood was all wet, even what I cut was damp. Finally, after using up all the dryer lint we had, and after only wet papers and boxes to try and help start it, I settled on cheating a little with lighter fluid. That got it going.
So the three of us piled into the tent and cocoa found room at the foot of the tent. So we were two boys, a dada, and a dog stuffed into our little tent. It was awesome and it stayed incredibly toasty, didn't even need a blanket—though my boys did, and Gerret took it upon himself to pee on all those blankets around 5:30am.
It was a beautiful dawn. The dew and fog hung thick around us, blanketing the pond and landing lightly on the grass. We got the fire going again today from coals that were still gloriously warm and then made yummy breakfast for everyone. We enjoyed kayaking and paddle boating before cleaning up and calling it a day. Not much of a campout for the truly devout, but a blessed occasion for a father and his two sons and, of course, my best friend Lindsay.
PS—Nolan took the picture of the fire.

A Tree from my Office

I admit I did take these photos into photoshop and better the color saturation and sharpness. The colors here are much closer to what I actually saw than the muted digital photo I took home from the scene. The impressionist effect, however, was all in camera ( as I mentioned a few days ago), and I love it. Amazing, unintentional, feature. 

Out of the Mouth of Babes

On the drive home from siblings' night at Nolan's school Gerret asked me if I had any more "jolly Rodgers". He meant jolly ranchers.

Later tonight I was playing "superheroes" with my boys. I was Waterman, Gerret was Ropeman, and Nolan declared himself as follows: Electric Marble . . . In the World . . . Electric Marble in the World for the Peace! That's some superhero.

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My Night Last Night

We have been having some crazy fog. It's almost 4 in the afternoon and I still can't see across the street at work. I took my dog Cocoa outside this morning and everywhere was wet. Not just the grass and trees and the normal fare. No. Every step of our walk the air was saturated and I could feel water droplets settling on my face. It was bizarre. More bizarre because it's been like this since last night. You get a little idea of it from the photo. The moisture on the air really scatters the porch light. I think it's neat though. A unique wonder of the weather. 
I also had to include the photo of one our chickens with Lindsay. I take one out every night for a few hours so it imprints on us...so it won't be scared around us. I think it's working well. Usually I just hold it in my hands while I read or watch a movie and they sleep. This guy got to run around a bit on our bed last night (he only pooped on it a little), and he preferred to be cuddled up to Lindsay. I can't blame him. 

I went to the woods because...

I'm not sure what I was feeling Sunday morning. It must have been something leftover from our time at the Migration Celebration. Whatever the culprit I had a sincere urge to get back out into nature after church and Lindsay obliged me. Olivia and our boys were in company and I couldn't have had a better time. 
The rain beat on us relentlessly. The path was the kind of mud that leaves footprints behind you that instantly turn to little progressive puddles. The wet soaked through even our rain jackets and more than once Nolan and I threw off our hoods to let our hair and scalp in on the adventure. 
The moisture was so dense it was white around us—a great cloud often obscuring our view. 
We tromped from the top of Taughannock trail all the way down the south rim to the main entrance. Nolan made it a point to slosh through every puddle along the way. He was the wettest of us, but to his credit he hiked the entire way himself, never once was he carried. He was a real scout on this trip, often picking his mother flowers or random downed sticks. 
At one point Olivia asked, exhausted, why we had come out on such a day as this cold, rainy day. I simply responded that I'd like to see her find any place more beautiful, or any memory more worth making. I loved it. 
I felt so peaceful. Yet so energized. I was dripping head to foot. I was finally satisfied with my purchase of the waterproof Kodak Playsport camera. I drank from a fountain of rain pouring off a dripping tree. I relished how alive everything in the world is, and just how creative Heavenly Father was when the birds, fish, and plants were created.