Quick Update..More Bingo, and We Have..Sprouts!

Ever since we spent Friday evening at the ambulance company for Bingo Night, Galen has been asking "Is it Bingo Night tonight?" "When is Bingo Night?". He had a really good time Friday, and couldn't wait to go back. I told him that since Daddy usually works up at the ambulance company on Fridays, and then stays to help with bingo, we could make going to Bingo Night on Fridays a regular thing. He thought that was a good idea, but he couldn't wait all the way until Friday. The ambulance company also has bingo on Monday nights, so when he asked yesterday "Is it Bingo Night tonight?" I told him that it was, but that we hadn't really planned on going. When I mentioned this to Tom, he pointed out that he had to drop something off with his dad at the ambulance company anyway, so we could just meet him there and he could bring Galen home or something.

So we ended up at the ambulance company, and once we were there, of course we ended up staying most of the evening. Corwyn volunteered to run the cash register for the snack bar again, which he did all by himself this time. Galen wanted to work in the kitchen too, so he ended up getting sodas from the cooler as customers ordered them. I took some pictures of Corwyn working the register; the best two have been attached to this post. I tried to take a picture of Galen getting sodas out of the cooler, but he saw me and tried to hide, so I said I wouldn't take his picture, and went back to the gaming table, where I had been helping out with various things.

This morning Galen came bouncing into my room and to tell me that some of the seeds we'd started in pots last week had actually sprouted. I've attached a picture of our tray of little pots showing the new sproutlings. All of the seeds that have sprouted so far are kale. We planted two varieties this year: classic Siberian kale and dinosaur kale (apparently the wrinkled texture of the leaves reminded somebody of dinosaur skin). The three seedlings in the pot in the top row are Siberian kale. If you look closely at the pot in the lower left-hand corner, just above the edge of the picture is another little sprout. That's one of the dinosaur kales, and its sister is in the pot next to it. Unfortunately, you can't see it, because I didn't see it before I took the picture, and I didn't realize it hadn't gotten into the picture until I started writing this post. It's after dark now, so I won't have enough light to go take another picture until tomorrow. I'll try to post an update soon though - who knows, maybe by then we'll have more baby plants!

Recent Events #2 - Pizza Night - 2 March 2010

We were having a pizza night because neither Tom nor I felt like actually cooking anything, plus there was nothing defrosted. Frozen pizza is easy, so that's what we did. Since it's next to impossible to get a frozen pizza the boys can actually have, we do the next best thing. We get frozen gluten-free pizza crusts, organic pizza sauce in a can, goat mozzarella from a local dairy, and organic preservative-free pepperoni. Then we make pizzas.

Corwyn and Galen are both very interested in learning to cook, and jump at any chance to do things in the kitchen. This evening, they wanted to make their own pizzas. I pre-baked the crusts for them, and then they spread the sauce, added the cheese, and arranged the toppings. They insisted that I take pictures of their beautiful pizzas and write a blog post about it, so here it is.

The pizza with the red bell pepper slices is Corwyn's. Galen's pizza just has pepperoni on it. When I saw what Corwyn was planning to do with the peppers and the pepperoni, I advised against it - there is a limit to how many layers of stuff you can put on a pizza and that limit is usually One. He insisted, and since it was his pizza, and his learning opportunity, I let him him make it the way he wanted it. It turned out that I had been right, and that having too many layers had caused the pizza to get a little soggy and not be quite warm enough in the middle. After having examined the evidence, Corwyn decided that he would not do it that way again, and that next time he'd find a way to alternate the toppings or something such that there was only one layer. He ate the whole pizza anyway, though, and said that it was delicious despite being a little cold and soggy in the middle. Galen, of course, was quite pleased with his pepperoni pizza, and quickly devoured it.

Recent Events #1c - Still More Pictures from TS Herb Farm

Galen continues to work on splitting up the larger of the pieces of that stump. It's a very stubborn stump. Finally, though, with a little help from Carl, it succumbs to his relentless pounding, and he moves on to a different stump. Corwyn comes outside to watch - he has been inside trying to find the kitten, Miss Molly, who apparently did not wish to be found. Upon giving up his search, he came outside looking for the rest of us, and found us just ouside the front door.

Recent Events #1b - More Pictures from Terrapin Station

Here Galen continues to split the pieces of the log into smaller chunks, with Carl's supervision and guidance. If you look at the woodpile in the foreground of the pictures, in picture 3 and subsequent pictures you will notice the addition of the two halves of the piece of log that Galen split in the first two pictures.

Galen was very excited about learning about farm work from Mark and Carl - he'd been begging me to take them to the farm for a while. I told them that, and told them that he wanted to learn how to do farm work, especially how to take care of the chickens, but other stuff too. So while we were there, Mark and Carl just involved him in whatever needed doing that they were working on at the moment, which that afternoon happened to be splitting wood. Galen had a great time with the splitter, and split wood for about half and hour before he finally got tired. He was very proud of himself afterwards, too, because he had helped split the wood that Mark and Carl need to burn in their woodstove to keep their house warm. He had done useful work, and done it well. Best of all, he's still excited about doing farm work, and wants to go back to visit again soon.

Recent Events #1a - Pictures from Terrapin Station

In these pictures, Carl and Galen are splitting a log. The tool they are using has a chisel-like head on one end and a handle which slides up and down in a barrel attached to the chisel head on the other. The chisel head is placed where the user desires the log to split - it is important to choose this location carefully to capitalize on weak points in the wood, and to avoid trying to split strong points such as knots. Then the user lifts the handle part up as far as possible within the limits of the tool, and slams it down with as much force as possible. This action is repeated until the log splits, which generally takes about 3 or 4 slams, even when an 8-year-old boy is doing it.

Carl and Galen first discuss where they're going to try to split the log, and position the chisel-end of the splitter carefully. Then Galen splits the log. Once it starts to split, a few more whacks with the splitter will split it all the way.

Recent Events #1 - An Afternoon at Terrapin Station Herb Farm

On Thursday afternoon, 18 March 2010, the boys and I went up to York Springs to visit their godfathers, Mark and Carl, at their Certified Naturally Grown herb and chicken farm, Terrapin Station Herb Farm, and to buy eggs. We needed to hard boil and dye a dozen eggs for our Ostara celebration, plus the boys and I were planning to dye and decorate some just for fun as well. Mark and Carl have the best eggs we've ever tasted. Corwyn won't eat eggs in restaurants anymore because he says compared to Mark and Carl's eggs, they taste like cardboard.

When we got there, the first person we met was Mark's sister, Deborah Ann. She told us Mark was around back, so we followed her to the back, where we found Mark planting garlic starts. We said Hello, and I told him that Galen really wanted to help with the chickens. So Mark and the boys set off for the chicken coop. Deborah Ann and I followed more slowly. By the time we got to the coop, Galen had collected all the eggs, and proudly displayed the almost-full 18-egg carton. We hung around in the coop for a bit while Corwyn explored the chicken yard and Mark told the boys about chickens and answered their questions. After a while, we started heading back towards the house, and met Carl coming towards the coop. We went back up to the house with him to get the rest of the eggs, and Mark went off to do something else, and so did Deborah Ann. After we bought the eggs, Carl took Galen outside and showed him how to use the splitter to split logs for firewood to use in the woodstove that heats their farmhouse. Galen was really into using the splitter, so he and Carl worked with that for a while, and Carl showed him how to tell the age of a tree by counting the rings. The two of them had a great time. I had missed Galen collecting the eggs, and didn't think to take pictures of the boys at the chicken coop, but I did think to take pictures of Carl and Galen splitting the logs. Those pictures are attached to this post (and several subsequent posts, since I can only put 5 pictures on each post). Meanwhile, Corwyn explored the bamboo forest and tried to make friends with the kitties, with varying degrees of success. Finally, we said goodbye and went home with our eggs.

(In these pictures, Galen has found a pithy inner core to one of the logs they are splitting, and pulled it out to look at it and to show Carl. Carl then shows Galen how to tell the age of a tree by counting the rings.)

Too Much Living, Not Enough Posting

I know it's been a while since I posted anything here, and in the meantime, we keep doing things, and I keep saying to myself "I'll have to put a post about this on the blog" and sometimes I even take pictures, and then somehow I keep not getting around to actually posting anything. So in an attempt to remedy that, I'm...well, I'm writing this post. And I'm going to try to do a series of posts with "Flashbacks" about all the stuff I never got around to posting about. Recent news first though...

On Fridays, Tom usually takes his laptop over to the ambulance company and telecommutes. Then he stays late to help with the ambulance company's Friday night Bingo game. Galen has been asking to go help with Bingo, and I had said that we could do that sometime, so on Friday evening the boys and I went over to the ambulance company to meet up with Tom and spend some time helping out. The boys have been to Bingo nights before, with Tom and also with Tom's parents on a couple of occasions when we needed them to babysit for an evening and it was Bingo night. (Tom's parents are also members of the ambulance company, and very active members at that. They were the ones who got Tom involved, in fact.) Most of the other ambulance company people there seemed to recognize the boys, and of course everybody knows Tom. Most of them seemed to recognize me, too, although I didn't fare nearly as well. Everybody was very friendly though. We had originally intended to stay only a short time, but with one thing and another, we ended up not leaving until around 9:30 - not quite the end, but close. The boys started out helping a young lady named Kim sort the winning tickets that had been turned in for the tear-off games. Then they went to help in the kitchen. Corwyn stayed there, but Galen wandered back after a while. Galen wanted to play bingo too, so Tom bought him a Kid's pack, which had boards for the regular bingo games, and he got one of those special markers to mark it with. Tom asked Kim to sit with him and help him play, which she did. She was very sweet about the whole thing, and I thanked her later for helping Galen. Meanwhile, I wandered back to the kitchen to see what Corwyn was doing, and ended up staying to help with the Intermission snack bar rush. Once things died down a bit, I left the cash register in Corwyn's capable hands and went back over to hang out at the table where they had the cash drawer for the games and ended up helping sort winning tear-off tickets. After that was done, and after Galen had played all his bingo games, we went home.

Even though we hadn't really planned to spend the evening volunteering at Bingo night, it ended up being a fairly pleasant evening - we were doing something together (more or less) as a family, and it was something that helped others as well. The best way to raise kids who care about others besides themselves, and about volunteering, is to teach by example - what they see us doing they will also learn to do, especially if it's something they see us doing on a regular basis. I should probably note here that neither of the boys was required to help out at the ambulance company - we had told them they could bring their Nintendos or a book or something so they'd have something to do if they didn't want to help. They both brought their Nintendos, and then ended up leaving them in my knitting bag so they could go help out.