Year: 2007
-
Rinky hope
Over the past couple of days I’ve spent a lot of time and energy patching leaks in the rink. In places where the water seems to be draining I’ve packed snow, added a splash of water from a bucket, packed more snow down waited a few hours and repeated. Tonight promises to be our last […]
-
Fiona’s Mignon
Fiona’s grandma wanted her to record her “Gavotte from ‘Mignon’” over the holidays. For those who don’t know the Suzuki violin repertoire, this is a piece students and parents love to hate. It brings together a whole slew of technical skills and introduces a bunch of new ones too, and puts them all together in […]
-
Storytellers and engineers
The world, they say, is divided into two types of people — those who like to divide the world into two types of people and those who don’t. I guess I fall mostly in the former group. Though I will readily confess that many people don’t fit clearly in one type or the other, I […]
-
Fiona’s cabled sweater
It took me almost 9 years. I knitted it in Child’s 5/6, intended for Erin, who now wears a Women’s 6. It got a little more than half finished and languished through the years when I didn’t have enough arms and laps for looking after my children, let alone for knitting. A couple of months […]
-
Homeschool beginnings 3
[Homeschool beginnings 1] [Homeschool beginnings 2] The year Erin was, by virtue of her early birthday, still a pre-Kindergartener, I began a secret thought-experiment with homeschooling. I changed nothing about how I interacted with her. I did not go out and buy a curriculum or start trying to teach her according to some external agenda […]
-
Rinky challenges
There are few things as magical as a backyard rink on a mountainous rural property flanked by mature evergreen forest. Especially late at night, with a warm fire, pyjamas, hot chocolate and a readaloud story awaiting. This I know. This I forget: building a rink here stinks. Every year I forget. Challenge #1. BC weather. […]
-
Multi-tasking 101
As I sit here simultaneously blogging and roasting coffee, I thought it appropriate to share this photo of another multi-tasking feat, one I engage in every evening. On my lap is a book. The pages are held flat by a piece of plexiglass. The plexiglass has a little lip on it which has proved to […]
-
Foaming gizmo
I do love my coffee. I now buy Central American virtuous (fair trade, co-op grown, organic) beans, inexpensive because I home-roast them, so I appease my guilt with that. And I drink more than 50% decaf. Still, I love my coffee. Probably too much for my own good. I had been lusting after an espresso […]
-
Christmas gifts
I’m thinking a lot today about our Christmas gift-giving. Partly because I’ve been making the rounds of blogs and message boards and reading posts from people about what their kids got, and partly because I’m just thinking about whether we’re going the in the right direction in our own family. One thing that has been […]
-
Smithy sign
This is the sign the kids and I made for Chuck’s new blacksmith shop. I was thrilled that I had lots of help with this endeavour. Noah researched and downloaded the font for me, and the younger two were especially enthusiastic with the painting. Fiona did a fair bit of the black edging (with masking […]
-
The tenth hour
Not the eleventh hour, but close. I finished Chuck’s Christmas Socks at 10 pm on Christmas Eve. They’re made of an alpaca blend and feel heavy and durable as well as warm and snug. Hopefully not too snug — there’s some tencel in the blend and they’re not as elastic as I’d hoped. I knit […]
-
Khet
We seem to have a fondness for family board games played in relative darkness with small sources of light part the the strategic gameplay. Khet seems destined to be another favourite. This was our Christmas Eve game this year. Basic Khet is played with four types of gamepieces. Almost every piece shares the same two […]
-
Lessons and Carols
Today was the ecumenical “Festival of Lessons and Carols” hosted by one of the churches in a nearby community. With communities so small, church congregations are tiny and church choirs almost non-existent, so aside from congregational carol-singing, the music is provided by small instrumental ensembles. For years I was part of this service. This year, […]
-
Homeschool beginnings 2
While I had never in a million years considered homeschooling before we moved to our little town and began watching our unique little girl grow into her own person, in retrospect I can see the seeds of the idea that were planted in my mind. People who seemed to like me and understand me began […]
-
I love these guys
Only the video camera managed to get to the school Christmas concert, and it only managed to peek through a few heads in the audience for half a minute or so, so this is the best photo I have to share, but it’ll suffice. This is the Slocan Community Intergenerational String Orchestra — or part […]