Artisanal day trip

I had to go pick the van up. With our family shrinking, and the monthly trips to Calgary no longer happening, my desire for a more winter-worthy minivan is no longer a pressing need. We decided to put some work into the Sienna. I took it in to get the catalytic converter replaced to fix the "check engine" light but it turned out that there was several thousand dollars of more urgent work that needed doing. Oh dear. They kept it for a week. We enjoyed a light little Corolla loaner. Then it was time to go retrieve the Sienna, and pay the bill. 

Fiona had been wanting to visit the east side of Kootenay Lake to see the artisans. The last time we had been there she was too young to remember. There was a Barefoot Running Clinic in the village to the east of us that morning, so we decided to go a meandering eastern route to Nelson to pick up the van. 

First we stopped for the running clinic. I had heard that the clinician had run more than 6000 barefoot kilometres on trails and was hoping for some tips on sole conditioning, so that I could begin to more effectively marry my two running loves: barefoot, and trails. So far I can only run real distances barefoot on roads. But alas the clinician had run "barefoot" on trails, not actually barefoot. As in, wearing minimalist shoes. To me, running barefoot means, well, like, not wearing shoes. I've begrudgingly accustomed myself to the marketing term "barefoot shoes," but I still think that "barefoot running" (as opposed to "barefoot-shoe running") should refer to skin-to-ground.

Ah well, the clinic was an excellent introduction to minimalist running and barefoot-style form. It seemed to be exactly what the majority of the participants wanted and needed. I didn't get anything much out of it, but it was nice to see so many enthusiastic runners, most of them newbies. 

After that Fiona and I grabbed some lunch and headed down the lake to catch the Osprey 2000. This is the big ferry. We're used to taking small ferries across Arrow Lake, the simple flat-deck ferries that carry a dozen or two vehicles and offer as amenities a couple of garbage cans and a collection of tourism brochures. The M.V. Osprey is a different animal entirely. It carries up to 80 vehicles, takes more than half an hour for the crossing, and has an observation deck, a lounge and a snack bar. Better still, as part of the mainland highway system, it's free!

It's on the way to Cranbrook, where we play in the Symphony, so I've taken the older kids on it several times in the past year or two. But Fiona hadn't been in ages and didn't remember it. She was entranced. The weather was lovely. We visited the snack bar for drinks. We stared out the big windows in the lounge, we let our hair be blown in the wind on the observation deck. 

Then when we got to the other side we drove 5 minutes to Crawford Bay. Here there are a collection of artisans with open workshops, gift shops and displays. The blacksmith wasn't working, but that was no big deal: we have one of those at home. We did spend a fair bit of time watching the lady enamelling glass onto copper, looked at the blown glass, perused the pottery studio, and spent a fair bit of time at the weaver's store and studio. 

Janet, the primary weaver, was out of the studio, which was too bad, because she's the elder sister of a very good friend I grew up with in Ontario. I've met her a few times and she's lovely. But the best part is that I have this memory of the mysterious Janet coming to visit my city in Ontario when I was maybe 13 or 14. She was living in the mountains of BC; she had a bunch of children, they gardened, they homeschooled, they lived in a log house off the beaten path, far from highways and airports, they lived in the forest, they baked their own bread, they hardly knew what TV was. It seemed so exotic! And now, except for the TV part, I'm living more or less the same life a mere 60 miles as the crow flies from her. 

Anyway, we stopped in at the broom-maker's before heading back to the ferry. Broom-making is such a quirky craft: definitely not something you see at every historic village or craft fair. We own a couple of their brooms already. I love watching the weaving and finishing process. 

We had time for ice cream and beach-combing before heading back. The pebble beach featured some lovely shades of weathered quartz that we don't see much on our stretch of lake. Naturally we brought a few pocketfuls of special stones back with us.

We made it to Nelson in the nick of time to retrieve the (expensive!) van. It was a great way to spend a day. As is typical, we don't often make the effort to be tourists in our own neck of the woods. Every summer we vow to delve more deeply into what our area has to offer: there is so much to see and do right out our back door. This day was a good start.

My working parent day

Today I felt like a working parent. I packed all three kids off to school, went to work, picked them up in time to start juggling the after-school activities and homework.

Yes, all three are at school this week. Fiona is busy finishing up the series art workshops that have been offered to homeschooled students this year, and she is also participating in the Arts & Writers Festival the local school is hosting for K-5 kids, so she's involved one way or another all day every day this week. Meanwhile the Grade 6-12 kids are enjoying their elective week, so Noah is attending full days all week (normally he is home at least two days). His elective is about mountain cultures and their spiritual relationship with the natural world. Lots of hiking and snowshoeing and learning about various spiritual practices and philosophies.

My Working Parent Day started at 5:40 when I awoke early for some quiet time on my own. I looked after the cat and the chickens. I made lunches for the three kids. I showered and had a coffee. Then I got the kids were up. I made sure they were organized for their various days. I drove them to school.

I dashed off to the clinic to see patients for the morning. After finishing up my charts in the early afternoon I headed home to check on the sick cat and then back to the school to meet Fiona as she finished up her day. I hung out with her waiting for Noah to finish, at which point Sophie headed from her Theatre Writing elective to soccer. I drove Noah and Fiona home, then dropped by my mom's to deal with some music school details. Then I grabbed a few groceries, picked Sophie up from soccer, came home, taught a viola lesson, made supper, practiced with Fiona, headed out to an evening quartet concert, came home, helped with the editing of a couple of writing pieces, and encouraged everyone to get bed.

The week has been great for all three kids, but I'll be happy when the flow gets back to normal.

March Break for Fiona

March Break, the one- or two-week spring schools holiday, has never had much to do with us, other than loosening up our out-of-home activities schedule. But with Sophie in school full-time, and Noah part-time, it's gained relevance this year. Those two headed off to Montreal to visit their big sister. And that has made Fiona an only child for a week. With siblings gone and activities on hold, we felt we needed something nice to fill things up.

We had to drive to Calgary to get the middle two on their flight. So Fiona and I made a excursion out of it. We spent a half day at the new Calgary Science Centre (better than the old one, but still not in our top three, and over-run by busloads of Alberta schoolkids who are not on their March Break for another week or so). We went shopping for summer things. Fiona is a great shopper. She likes clothes, but has an eye for bargains and a healthy skepticism for brand names. She was very excited to buy a tank top for gymnastics. After holding our breaths all year, we were finally able to get her registered for gymnastics beginning in April. So buying a gym tank was a major highlight. Then we picked up a couple of small items other people had asked us to buy for them, and in the process wandered past a place that offered ear piercing. Fiona had decided a couple of years ago that she would pierce her ears when she was 9, and then a couple of weeks ago had decided the time was finally right. So she marched in and asked the person at the sales desk and within ten minutes had some lovely little studs in her lobes.

The next notable excursion was to the zoo. We took the C-Train rapid transit system there, which was an exciting adventure all in itself. We enjoyed the penguins, and assorted other wacky animals. It's a relatively small zoo, with enclosures that aren't nearly as spacious and natural-looking as those in Toronto.  We talked a bit about the ethics of zoos.

While Montreal was enjoying summer-like temperatures, we were having a blustery cold day, so we mostly stuck with the indoor exhibits. New to us was the plant and butterfly Conservatory which had opened a little over 2 years ago. Fiona was absolutely entranced. It was quiet, and warm and practically creaking and squeaking with the sounds of growing plants. We spent almost half our zoo time with the plants.

The next day we got up super early and headed to Lake Louise ski area. We put in a few huge runs. It was cold, though the sun did its best to warm things up a little. Fiona got to experience her first rides in a gondola, and on various chair lifts. She was amazed by the length of the lifts and the runs. 

We had a lot of hours of driving ahead of us, so we didn't stay beyond lunch-time, but it was a lovely morning. 

Now we're home, and poking around for a few special things to do here too. Today Fiona cooked dinner for her parents and her grandma. We had Tuscan Bean Soup, fresh-baked herb buns, and tapioca pudding for dessert. She had a little help along the way with the main course, but mostly it was her cooking that brought it all to fruition. 

Festivus

Erin arrived from China a week ago. She'd been there on tour with her orchestra and was on her way back to Montreal, by way of "home" in the Kootenays for a week or so. She had picked up a killer cold in China and spent the better part of the week recovering from that and from the loss of a day and a night or two what with the jetlag, dateline, red-eye flight and the inevitable sleep deprivation of a tour. She brought back photos of the terra cotta army and the Great Wall, as well as of smoggy cities, video arcades in dodgy underground plazas where she fascinated the Chinese teens with her mastery of the motocross game or some-such, markets, plazas, beaches and the like.

I killed chickens. After being vegetarian for the better part of 20 years and having two or three other avowed veg-heads in the family, I was betrayed last summer when both Erin and Sophie decided to start eating meat. My own vegetarianism suddenly seemed like rather a large family inconvenience. So I decided that if I could make my peace with the whole farmyard to table business by immersing myself in it, I'd feel okay about parting from my vegetarian ways. The task I set myself was to kill our own surplus chickens. I selected three of our now-maturing roosters, inverted them in a killing cone so that they settled into somnolence, cut their jugulars, bled them out, dipped and plucked and gutted and dressed them. Into the freezer they went.

We ate one as part of our Festivus Fondue Feast, along with plenty of cheese and veggies and some venison sausage from a friend. I'm not sure I would have been ready to eat it right after the butchering, but the couple of weeks in the freezer allowed some emotional distance for me. I ate it. It was yummy. I feel like an honest carnivore now.

Festivus was great. It snowed a delicious 35 cm of light-as-a-feather white snow overnight and through the day. It was the first big snowfall in a couple of weeks. "It's another Festivus miracle!" said Fiona.

I worried that the lack of all the decorations and music and traditional Christmas rituals would keep it from being special enough, but it was fine. We started the day with fresh-baked cinnamon buns. We opened gifts. Fiona gave me a set of six computer-printed coupons for Free Massages courtesy of herself (she gives great massages!). She imprinted my name on them so they couldn't be stolen and redeemed by other family members. "And," she warned me, "I deleted the file on the computer so you couldn't print any extras." She's got really good business sense, this girl!

The Fondue Feast was swiss cheese to start with veggies and meat, and then chocolate with fruit to finish. After the Feast, we held the Airing of Grievances during which, according to the Seinfeld episode in question, "you state all the ways that your family members have disappointed you over the previous year." Kind of a dangerous place to go, but the kids handled it with humour and sensitivity and a sense of good fun. I'm thankful we never got to the feats of strength, though there had been talk of tickle fights in lieu.

Then we finished the evening by listening to Erin practice the Bach Chaconne in the kitchen.

Soap and teenagers

The soap has cured! We've wrapped it up in salvaged tissue paper and ribbon, to keep it protected until use by us or others. While the lavender buds turned a less-than-fetching brown in the alkaline environment, the basic marbled green of the soap is nice to look at, and the mixture of lavender and rosemary scent is just right.

The power was out most of today and this is one of the things Fiona and I did to fill the time.

Today we also enjoyed having three teenagers in the family for the first time.  Sophie has joined Noah and Erin on the far side of twelve. Plans for birthday dinner and coconut cream pie were almost foiled by the power failure, but the electricity came on just in time for us to squeeze the cooking in.

I would wager that Sophie has felt thirteen for a while now. She joined Corazón (nominally for 13 through 25-year-olds) in September. She's been one of the youngest students enrolled in the local public high school this fall, through school-wide multi-day field trips and multi-grade workshops. Her social affinities have always tended to run a little 'old.' And she's a well-grounded, mature kid, with a solid sense of what's right for her and of what she likes.

Now it's official. She's a teenager. As always any nostalgia I might feel for the little-kid days is far outweighed by the excitement and pride I feel watching my children grow into such interesting and capable young people, ready for adventure, quirky as heck but as loveable than ever.

Role reversals

Erin, normally the obsessive music-practicer of the family, is spending her days playing computer games.

Noah, normally the obsessive computer-game player of the family, is spending his days baking and practicing viola.

Sophie, typically one of the more social members of the family and often the baker, is spending copious time in her bedroom in the basement, getting plenty of alone time.

Fiona. Thank goodness for Fiona. She's doing exactly what she always does -- being busily in orbit near whatever activity is going on, chatting away.

Right now Fiona and Noah are in the kitchen, baking cranberry oat muffins and a double batch of ginger crinkles respectively, listening to a wacky wide-ranging music playlist that juxtaposes Sinatra, swing, ELO and Vampire Weekend.

Trail running

It's been a lovely Nothing Day, one of those precious days with nothing scheduled. Some science bookwork got done, a lot of Harry Potter got read, bureau drawers got sanded, primed and painted, the pond got emptied and cleaned, a few loaves of bread got baked, some music got made, compost got spread on the garden ... and Fiona and I made this video.

The intro and outro backgrounds are shots of the bureau drawer fronts drying on the deck with sunlight filtered through the overhanging cedars. My favourite part of the video!

Car Free Day

I wonder why we haven't done this in forever?

The Sienna gets a day off to enjoy the spring-like sunshine.

Our biggest challenge in trying to reduce our environmental footprint has always been in the realm of transportation. We live miles (or depending on how you define it, hours of miles) from anything. There is no public transit to speak of here. One day a week, which is the wrong day for us for any number of reasons, if you have the entire day to spare, there's a bus that will get you to Nelson and back. But we've never been able to use it. Buses to Calgary, which Erin does make use of regularly, require us to make a 6-hour round-trip drive just to get her to or pick her up from the bus station: and cost almost double the price of gas to drive the whole distance in the van. And even the short distance to town (3.4 kilometers to get to the top of main street) is along a winding mountain highway with scanty shoulders, with a 6-8% grade. It's not a walk for the faint-of-heart.

As anyone who reads this blog will know, our village of 600 has a lot going for it, but when it comes to several of the things that my kids are interested in there simply aren't the numbers and activities here to support them. So we travel a lot. Playing a soccer game against another team requires a 40-minute drive. The aikido dojo we were a part of was 30 minutes south. Corazon Vocal Ensemble rehearses 90 minutes away. And of course violin and viola lessons for the older two are 8 hours away in Calgary.

So we drive. A lot. Thirty thousand kilometres a year, at least. And feel guilty about it. Six years ago we bought our minivan with an eye to fuel efficiency. (Passing on the 4WD model was a probably short-sighted choice made primarily to reduce fuel consumption.) But it's a minivan nonetheless and it runs on fossil fuels.

Today we didn't drive. Today we decided to be car-free in order to remind ourselves how much we depend on the vehicle, how much we appreciate its convenience and instant gratification it affords. (Out of milk? Wondering if anything interesting came in today's mail? Drive to town! Go back later for something else...)

Wild turkeys, seen crossing the highway yesterday

The three younger kids and I had a meeting at the school with our DL program liaison teacher this morning. We had a bunch of projects, books and bookwork to bring and show off, so we packed them in a backpack and headed out. There was snow on the ground at home, but out on the highway things were clear and dry. We had hoped we might run into the turkeys again today but alas while Sophie heard some gobbling in the woods, they weren't out in plain sight.

We arrived perfectly on time, the walk taking about 43 minutes (downhill being much the quicker direction). While Noah was finishing up his part of our meeting, the girls went to the Post Office and picked up the mail. We went to the bank and then to our favourite café for lunch. Then we headed home, which took about an hour.

After we got home, Erin, who had stayed home practicing for the morning, went to the gym. She jogged down, did her couple of hours of working out, and then power-walked and jogged back home, for a total of about three hours of exercise.

In the meantime the three younger kids had eaten supper and we had given their bikes a spring tuning. They rode off to Gaming Night, a Friday night occasion not to be missed. Held at one of the community halls, this is a chance for kids and adults who enjoy playing computer and video games to get together and play in real time and real space in a social atmosphere. There are 4 or 5 reconditioned computers, plus the organizer's own couple of machines, plus a console game platform or two hooked up to a TV (most recently the Xbox Kinect which my kids love). For the first three hours the games are all rated "E" for Everyone and all kids are welcome. After 9 pm it's mature gaming time targetted at teens and adults (slightly younger kids can stay with parental permission) so all the younger kids leave and the older ones stay on or drift in. Noah attends the entire six hours if he can manage it, and has become kind of the Assistant Tech Guy, granted full admin privileges and recently taking most of the responsibility for selecting and installing games for the pre-teens.

So the kids rode their bikes down and have ditched them at grandma's house for retrieval tomorrow. I'll head out in time to pick Fiona up at 9 o'clock. I'll bring four head-lamps and some water and leave half of my supplies with Sophie and Noah. I'll walk home with Fiona. At a few minutes before midnight, as Gaming Night is shutting down, Noah and Sophie will don their own head-lamps and start hoofing it up the hill. They are have pointed out that according to their logic Car Free Day ends at midnight and that therefore I will be there in the minivan to pick them up before they get too far up the hill. Depending on how cold and spooky my walk home with Fiona between 9 and 10 turns out to be that may indeed be the case. Then again Fiona will have self-transported a total of 15 km today, most of that on foot; should Noah and Sophie really be rescued after 11.5 kilometres? We shall see how benevolent the owner/operator of Mom's Taxi Service is feeling at midnight.

All in all they've taken to it without complaint and with the spirit of adventure and appreciation that it was intended to nurture.

Oh, and Chuck is off at a conference for a few days. We had a feeling he wouldn't have been willing to play along (as his lack of appreciation and respect for No-Screen Days in the past has suggested), so this Friday was chosen strategically to avoid the issue of paternal non-compliance.

Ski Day

It was a family ski day. Chuck had to go to Nelson but the rest of us headed to the ski hill 30 minutes north, a small family-friendly hill. It has a handful of runs (one easy, a few intermediate, a few expert), a short steep T-bar and about 500 vertical feet of drop. No lineups, so you can get dozens of runs in in a day.

Believe it or not Erin hadn't been skiing since she was a tyke, and Noah had never ever been. With Chuck on call so much, it was pretty much going to end up being me and three beginning skiers on the hill with a toddler to also look after ... and that didn't seem humanly possible.

And then the years just slipped by. Life got very full -- so much travel, so many rehearsals. Any free day was needed for recharging, and somehow we never went skiing.

Finally this year Sophie and Fiona started skiing, initially with the school's ski program. During this program they had instructors on hand so they got lessons and progressed quickly. They were soon skiing well and managing the T-bar just fine together. So I figured it was time to get the big kids going.

Erin got her ski legs back pretty quickly, and Noah, daredevil that he is, did some lovely wipeouts trying to go faster than any beginner should ever go, but eventually saw the wisdom of learning to control his speed. Which he did, quite capably.

Sophie got confident enough to try the t-bar solo and discovered it was easy. Sophie and Fiona enjoyed a combination of beginning and intermediate runs, and especially the trails through the forest.

Unfortunately Sophie got a migraine in the afternoon so we cut the day a little short. But not too much ... I had some viola teaching to do, and we were expecting company for dinner, so we weren't going to ski until closing anyway. But we'll be back I think. And Sophie has already decided she wants a season's pass for next year. (I think Fiona will be lined up right behind her.)

Four for four

It was a proud mom day full of accomplishments.

Fiona and Sophie spent their third day on downhill skis with the school's field trip program. This time I went along. They're skiing fabulously! Sophie got moved up to the intermediate group after only one day and is carving nice parallel turns. Fiona is zipping all over the place fearlessly yet under control. Both skied part of a black (expert) run and a couple of different intermediate runs, loved zipping through the trees and tried out some deep powder. It was a great day.

Noah had been procrastinating on writing his Math 9 midterm for a couple of months. The course is mostly review, but he easily gets anxious and unsure of himself, and having never written a test that actually counts for anything, he was not keen to dive in. I finally pushed him to do it. He heard from our liaison teacher today -- he scored 96% with just a couple of little "brain fart" errors in the arithmetic: he nailed all the conceptual material.

And Erin, who couldn't think of anything better to do today, decided to go to school to do a bit of work mopping up some of the peripheral grad requirements. How fortunate. It turned out that her English 12 exam, which she was sure was tomorrow, was actually today! She wrote it, it was marked, and she scored 100%. On an English exam. How is that even possible?

Bed stars

My little one has turned 8. What an amazing person she is. So affable, curious, capable, thoughtful, resilient, incisive. Easy. And bright. Wow.

I made her a couple of gifts. One was a hardcover journal modelled after the books in her favourite TV series ever, the 21st-century re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica. That was fun to make. I hadn't made a book with a case binding in years and I had to look up a few of the details. I was pleased with how it turned out. Erin's reaction was priceless. (She's the other huge BSG fan in the family.) She saw the book, her eyes lit up with recognition, she blurted out "Hey, that's a ... Why didn't I ... hmm..." and then drifted off into good-humoured but envious silence. Yup, kiddo, this one's for Fiona. You got your mom-made BSG military fatigue shirt set for your birthday a couple of weeks ago, don't complain. She didn't. She laughed as hard as the rest of us at her reaction.

What Fiona loved best was the stars. She sleeps in the lower berth of a bunk bed in the room she and Sophie share. She stares up at the slats beneath Sophie's mattress and told me a while ago that she wished she had a picture of the sky to put up there. I decided it should be a night sky. I bought a huge black sheet of foam core board and got out at star chart and a bottle of glow-in-the-dark paint. (Every creative family should have a bottle of phosphorescent paint. It's what we used to make Fiona's butterfly costume glow in the dark last Hallowe'en, and it's been fun in a few other applications too over the years. I don't know where you buy it; our bottle is so old I've forgotten where we got it.)

I put the stars on as dots of glow-in-the-dark paint. I didn't go for mathematical accuracy. I tried to reproduce most of the major northern hemisphere constellations in recognizable shapes and in the correct general orientation, but scale isn't accurate, nor are their relative positions totally proper. Fiona likes looking for constellations, so I labelled the constellations using a silver-grey pencil crayon. With a flashlight pointed at the board you can spotlight a group of stars and see the configuration and name of their constellation. With the flashlight off you see just the "stars" and you can practice picking out the constellations. The photo doesn't do it justice: it only shows half the area and it's blurry due to the 30-second time-exposure. It's quite lovely to look at. (I can say that because it's not my design. I just copied what's writ across the heavens.)

It was a successful birthday. She was so excited all morning that she had to resort to jumping jacks and practicing her violin to contain some of the energy she had. She had chosen to have an afternoon tea party at her grandma's house as part of the celebration. This entailed a lot of snow-blowing and shovelling to release the van from its tomb of snow. It has been impossible to get up and down our laneway for more than a week, so the poor van has been parked up at the highway, not used much and bombarded with the sprayed snow of the plows and with the relentlessly falling-from-the-sky stuff too. There was a good 40 cm of depth covering it, and more than that on the ground around it. After we'd got rid of all that, it was left sitting on a sheet of ice and a bit of icy snow and it took a fair bit of sanding, digging and pushing (by the three older kids) to get it unstuck and able to move forward. Finally we made it to grandma's. We drank tea, ate pumpkin gingersnap cheesecake (adorned by marzipan pumpkins made by Sophie and Fiona) and she opened gifts. It was nice to get out. We've been at home a lot since the driveway got un-navigable. We then returned home for a dinner of Shepherd's Pie -- one pan with meat for the three omivores and one vegetarian version for the three vegetarians. And now it's time for bed, and a view of bed stars.

Goodbye holidays

Erin emerged from the basement yesterday and asked "When can we go somewhere?"

It takes a lot to get that introvert to the point where she's wishing for a social outing of some sort. It's been that kind of holiday break, though. We all needed a dose of home-bodying. We had a lot of travel and a lot of performances last fall. After a full week of little other than being home together I guess we're feeling recharged and ready for something more.

The three older kids were all sick in succession, which was a bit of a bummer. But still, it was a nice time. We skated on the rink. We played board games. We worked on jigsaw puzzles. We talked and laughed and drank egg nog and ate treats and stayed up late and read stories. I started knitting again. I'm currently mid-way through my Alto Clef Chullo, a warm hat for a violist. Chuck was on call most of the holidays, but things were relatively quiet.

Erin is practicing up a storm for her National Youth Orchestra audition which we just found out is next weekend. (We hadn't heard anything, so had assumed it would be later in the month. Luckily we were planning to travel to Calgary next weekend anyway.) She's been practicing hard for a couple of weeks, which means she'll be pretty well prepared I think. Still, she hasn't managed to have a lesson on any of the audition repertoire. Too bad, since 80% of it is orchestral excerpts, which she's never had to prepare before. She's also madly trying to complete her Canadian History course, doing two assignments a day. The course is very heavy on assignments: about 65 in total. She's now more than three quarters done. She dislikes the course intensely for all its touchy-feely "creativity-nurturing" assignments. She's of the "where's the beef?" persuasion when it comes to required coursework. She's also taken on the piano accompanying gig for the local Suzuki recital in February, so she's working on some of that music. She spends her free time dreaming of living in Montreal on her own.

Noah has been doing some awesome virtual robotics stuff, scripting something he's called "Followbot v3.0" in Garry'sMod / WireMod, building scripts and virtual logic gates in a virtual physics environment that allows him to test everything out. Even better, he's been writing about his process, explaining everything in detail in a blog he keeps in order to report to our DL teacher. He's an amazing technical writer, but hasn't had much interest in writing this year. To have him write in great detail in a clear and incisive way about his projects takes a lot of heat off me and his liaison teacher in terms of providing proof to the school system that he is in fact highly literate. It also functions as a de facto major project for the Grade 10 and 11 InfoTech courses the school hopes to give him credit for. And he got totally stoked by some new viola repertoire he was given just before Christmas: the magnificent Schubert Arpeggione sonata in particular. He's taught himself the first two pages and is now chomping at the bit waiting to receive the last two in the mail from his teacher with her fingerings and bowings.

Sophie has been taken under her Noah's wing in the programming and gaming department for better or for worse. She's learning some basics in WireMod and playing "mature" games on-line, or via LAN with Noah on the other computer. She's also been doing some awesome artwork on RateMyDrawing.com -- using a laptop touchpad, for heaven's sake. She recently acquired a digital pen tablet, so that should simplify things. She sewed some really brilliant gifts up for Christmas, figuring out how to do all sorts of nifty stuff with the sewing machine in secret and is finishing up some fair-isle knitting for a little cushion she's making. She seems emotionally on a much more even keel and is happy. For a 12-year-old girl anything else is a bonus.

Fiona is as always an energetic and passionate renaissance kid, interested in anything and everything, game for whatever she's presented with. Her ice-skating is coming along wonderfully, she can make scrambled eggs, and soup and cookies from scratch, she's puttering her way through her current math workbook, reading chemistry and biology textbooks for fun, mastering "Treasures of Montezuma" on the iPad, reading for hours a day, enjoying blogging and photography and knitting, working hard at the tail end of Suzuki violin book 5, and making pithy little observations in the course of daily life that make me laugh, or my jaw drop, or both.

And now I've got a few little odds and ends to do on the computer (music arranging and meeting minutes to type), and then it's back into the fray after one more cozy evening knitting in front of the fire.

Holidays

I slept in this morning! We were up late last night, and today had absolutely nothing scheduled.

Last night was the community choir concert. Sophie is doing her first season with the ensemble. Unfortunately she was put in the middle riser so that her sense of pitch could help those in the first row. Which probably benefitted the auditory appeal of the concert, but meant that she alone amongst the choir was totally hidden. I could occasionally catch a glimpse of her shoulder but that was about all.

Erin accompanied. It's a paid gig for her -- a not-insubstantial sum for learning a dozen and a half pieces in time for the first rehearsal and then attending every rehearsal as the choir gradually learns its parts and polishes things up. She did fabulously! She's exquisitely sensitive, manages a kajillion page-turns totally on her own, plays musically and knows exactly when to take the bull by the horns and railroad the choir into melodic and rhythmic cohesion.

It was the choir's 25th Annual Christmas Concert. My dad sang with them for a few years before his death in 2003. Then Erin sang with it for two years, and Noah for one, before they both defected to Corazón. The choir director throughout those 25 years has been the wonderful woman who took Erin to S.E. Asia two years ago. So it's great that Sophie is now taking her turn with them, and that Erin has come back to support it as the accompanist. The choir  is a good one for a community so small and it has a lot of heart, and personality. It even inspired a funny and touching chapter in Caroline Woodward's latest novel. It was a lovely concert, and there was a fabulous community potluck dinner / party in the hall afterwards, with kids running around, people with canes and wheelchairs, old folk, young parents, lots of hugging and singing of carols around the piano.

And now there's almost nothing on the schedule for the next week. Chuck works, Erin has one shift at the café. I teach a few violin lessons and work a morning at the clinic. But no group classes, choir rehearsals, Summit String rehearsals, no trips out of town for lessons or orchestras, no violin lesson for my kids, no driving Erin to and from school.

Today I did some more work rehabilitating the rink from last week's thaw. There's a nasty four inches of crusty snow on top of an inch and a half of frozen slushy stuff that adhered to the rink surface. And the dog walked through it at some critical juncture, making nasty bumps and potholes. It's taken me hours to get it shovelled off, and it will require a few more floods to be back to its smooth state of glory from earlier in the month. Oh well, it will be worth it.

And we started in on the gingerbread house. We used to do some sort of gingerbread construction every year, but we let this habit lapse and I hadn't realized how long it had been: Fiona has no memory of ever decorating a gingerbread house! I know we've done this since she was born, but I guess the last time she was too young to really appreciate it. So it was high time. Sophie and Fiona were, as usual, workhorses in the kitchen, managing huge amounts of the work themselves.

Then to top it off, Noah cooked pasta dinner for us all.

This girl's a keeper

It was Erin & Noah's last Corazón rehearsal of the year, and I needed to do grocery shopping, buy dog food, help Fiona with her Christmas shopping and do my own last-minute gift-garnering. Roads were slushy, and nights come early these days. It was a Tuesday I wasn't looking forward to, especially since Chuck had a meeting and wouldn't be home to help with supper. I would arrive home at 7:30 pm with three tired and hungry kids, and a vanload food and stuff and no energy at all for pulling together a meal.

And so I was sure pleased to see what Sophie, home alone for the afternoon, had conjured up: two beautiful pizzas, made from scratch on freshly leavened dough, ready and waiting to be popped in the oven to feed us all. Very impressively, she even managed to touch some actual Meat and spread it on the omnivores' pizza!

Over-extended-dom

I think I've been much better about not over-extending myself recently. But things are piling up a little now. Running has been put on hold. I've been able to squeeze rink maintenance in, but nothing else.

Tomorrow the giant wholesale dried fruit & nut order needs to be sorted and delivered. I spent all evening tonight working on the labels and accounting for that.

The next day Noah, Erin and I leave for Cranbrook to do a weekend gig with the Symphony of the Kootenays. Five hours of driving each way, with two overnights. Hopefully we'll get back late Sunday evening. It's mostly baroque stuff (Messiah, Purcell, more Handel) so should be manageable for Noah who has excellent baroque instincts and can sight-read extremely well with those instincts assisting him (otherwise ... not so much). I'm actually playing violin rather than viola. I hope I can play more or less in tune; it has been years since I've performed on violin!

The younger girls will be staying home with Chuck and enjoying Christmas by the Lake.

Next week is a mess of lessons, group class, choir rehearsals of various sorts, a trip to Calgary, a frantic trip back home in time for an Annual General Meeting of the VFA Society and a long complicated board meeting the next day.

Somewhere in the midst of it all I'm supposed to be conjuring up some sort of holiday season, including gifts for everyone. Virtually nothing has been started.

Hmmm.

Fiona and Sophie just arrived in from skating announcing they'd invented gods as a result of playing some twisted game of Simon Says.

Sophie's god is Chaezploz, the god of beverages.

Fiona's god is Applodox, the god of paradoxes.

My kids are weird.

Neologism of the day:

Tireturd. n. A concretion of sand, dirt, salt and slush, sprayed up from the roadway while driving only to freeze into a disgusting icy brown chunk in the wheelwell of your vehicle. Prone to dropping off in carports and garages. Best kicked off if possible in roadside parking spaces rather than at home.

Outside at our place

From daylight to dusk and through into the night. Ridiculous games, obstacle courses, conversation and laughter. Friends over, various combinations of siblings. And the smell of baking bread, to boot.

Gravelling a trail

In a week Fiona, Sophie and I are running races in Kaslo at the first annual Sufferfest. Today we decided that our nature walk should be a run along the creekside trail that makes up parts of the kids' race and the 25k trail run I'll be doing. It was a trail we'd never done together, and I had only ever done part of it. It was a lovely memorable outing. We crossed the darling pink covered footbridge. We saw a snake, which Sophie almost stepped on before it bolted. (Can snakes bolt? Or does bolting require legs? Anyway, it was outta there!) We stumbled on a little stone labyrinth in the garden behind a church on the edge of town, which entranced the girls. We found a pitchfork within and through a growing birch tree. Saw a neon orange fungus, and a bright orange and black woolybear caterpillar, and sparkling light-blue pools of glacier-fed water in the creek, huge steep slopes of lush moss, dark passages through quiet old cedar forests devoid of understory.

But the most memorable thing was the gravel. At the trailhead on the south end of the river where we did our turnaround, we found the little lean-to shelter above. The sign reads "Please help. If you are walking the trail towards the bridge, please take one or two bags of gravel with you and empty bags at the designated site." In the shelter are a dozen or so strong bags made from recycled blue jeans, and a couple of metal scoops. And to the side of the shelter, a very large pile of gravel. Obligingly we decided to turn our run into a walk and carry some gravel. We filled a bag each. They get heavy fast! And we didn't know how far we'd have to carry them.

At first the trail was wide and flat. We followed the signs that said "River Trail" and "Gravel" with arrows pointing us helpfully along. Eventually the trail became narrower and steeper, precluding the passage of the ATVs that would have made moving the gravel easy.

As we walked along we noticed a fair bit of gravel underfoot to prevent the trail from getting soggy and messy after rains and to provide traction on the steep slopes. It's clearly maintained by a very dedicated group of volunteers.

Our shoulders started to get tired from the straps of the denim bags, but we carried on. Everyone was sporting fairly new shoes. Fiona has some little Salomon trail shoes that she hasn't used much yet. Sophie has some new Nikes that were the least rigid, built-up youth running shoe I could find urgently last weekend after we realized she'd outgrown her old runners and was planning to run next week's race and join the school's cross-country team. I was in my recently purchased New Balance WT100's. So it was good to be doing a variety of types of walking, climbing, running and carrying to break in our various footwear. We probably carried our gravel for almost a kilometre.

And suddenly we arrived at the Designated Site. There was a tarp and a pile of probably a couple of hundred pounds of gravel. Trailbuilders' work parties are every Saturday morning, so I'm guessing this is the gravel that has been carried in over the past five days. Not peak hiking season by any stretch, especially with all the recent rain, so an impressive pile considering. As expected there was another little lean-too inviting us to leave our denim bags, and asking anyone heading back towards the town-side trailhead to carry any bags they found there back to the Designated Site there.

The entire trail is clearly being gradually gravelled in just this manner. Every week I expect that the small pile of gravel is spread a bit further along the trail and the lean-to and tarp are moved another 25 metres up the trail. An amazing amount has already been done. And it's thanks in part to people like us carrying small bags of gravel. Day after day, kilo after kilo.

As we walked on, having deposited our denim bags as instructed, we admired the progress of the gravelling. It may take another year or two, but I have no doubt that the entire trail will end up gravelled. We thought back to the mountain of gravel at the trailhead and how it is gradually being removed and spread along the trail. The work of hundreds upon hundreds of people, a few at a time, willingly and optimistically, can indeed move mountains.

Flight

We were out for a walk and rockhounding session today when we chanced upon a bunch of paragliders on their way down from Idaho Peak to the ball field in the park at the lakeshore. First came a big tandem glider with a woman on her first flight with an experienced flyer. We were able to vicariously enjoy her exhilaration and euphoria at the experience. We watched them pack up the glider, folding it up cell by cell, packing it into a rucksack. Next came smaller solo gliders, with some pretty nifty landings -- beautifully controlled, almost like dancing out of the air onto the field. We watched long enough to see a few more launches off the top of Idaho.

In my next life I want to do this.

Photo day

It was family photo day. A strange day. Strange beginnings, strange light, strange weather, strange happenings.

It started for me at around 6 a.m., in the back of the van. Erin and I had driven her to Calgary for an extra lesson. All her maniacal practicing has left her sorely in need of some instruction, so we squeezed a trip to Calgary in during her three days off work. We decided that since it was summer, and there were just the two of us, we should save motel money and just sleep in the spacious back of the van. It worked really well. Neither of us being six feet tall, we were able to stretch out quite comfortably after stowing the third-row seats and flipping the middle-row seats out of the way. With Thermarests, pillows and sleeping bags, we were quite comfortable. We know the highways to Calgary well and were pretty sure we'd be able to find good (free) places to "camp" in the van.

As it turned out we had great luck finding places. I followed a hunch, turned off the highway, and almost immediately stumbled upon something just right. The first night we ended up right alongside the Kicking Horse River. Beautiful, and with a washroom with plumbing nearby and trains rocking and squeaking by in the night. We were utterly alone and it was a fabulous spot. Last night we were at Halfway Creek, close to home but a welcome spot for two people just about nodding off in transit. Someone else had snagged the spot right on the creek but we had a private mossy treed area and the sounds of the creek. So that's where we awoke this morning.

We climbed into the front seats and drove the rest of the way home this morning. Unpacked the van. Filed away the half-dozen novels I'd bought at Chapters in Calgary. Put the leftover food in the fridge.

I went for a tempo run. I'm in Week 8 of a 10-week running schedule prior to the Rocky Mountain Half Marathon. I wore my Vibram Five Fingers KSOs, which I haven't in a while since I've been taking every suitable opportunity to run barefoot, using my Nikes for the really wild and wooly stuff. But this was supposed to be a hard fast run and I needed to do it on a trail since the sun was beating down on the roads. I knew I couldn't run anywhere near fast enough barefoot, but the trail wasn't too knarly so I donned the KSOs. Ended up with the beginnings of a blister on my big toe, but that won't be a problem since I likely won't need to run in the KSOs for a while. The trail had a gradual rise and fall to it, and it was hot, and I've been off caffeine for a week, so I wasn't quite as fast as I'd hoped ... but I managed over 6.5 km in 35 minutes which isn't bad for me under those conditions. I'm being very careful not to push myself too hard: it was August last year, in the hope of running a fall Half Marathon, that I injured my hip. I don't want any repeats of that!

After my run I came home, showered, and then we put a picnic dinner in the van and all drove up to Summit Lake where we were meeting a photographer/friend for a family photo shoot. We hadn't got anyone to take pix of us as a family since well before Fiona was born. We arrived. The weather looked threatening, so we decided to get some photos before digging into the food. The photographer pointed us to a bench/dock thing at the side of the lake, and suggested we sit down in a row on it. As we were just moving over about to do so, there was a crack and she yelled "Oh God!" and a pretty large rotten birch tree fell down right on the dock where we'd been about to sit.

We laughed pretty hard about that after we got over the shock. Wondered cynically what it would have been like if we'd been a minute earlier and had managed to immortalize our family of 6 in a photo seconds before we'd become a family of 5, or 4.

So we managed a bunch of photos without any fatalities. And then it poured rain, and thundered plenty, and we drank wine and ate dinner under a gazebo. We wandered around and picked up a few of the hundreds of tiny toads roaming the shores of the lake and watched them climb and jump. Each one is about a centimetre long. And then we came home as the skies cleared. Saw a lovely rainbow.

While Fiona and I were practicing with our new hourglasses (10 minutes, 5 minutes and 3 minutes respectively, assigned to different violin tasks here and there as appropriate), we looked out the window and noticed the sky. It had got seriously dark again. The last sunlight was streaking across onto the northeastern slopes of the mountains, but the clouds were dark and ominous. Such brightness in front of all that mounting nasty weather. The photo above doesn't do it justice.

A few minutes later it began to hail. Sophie and Fiona headed outside with a sieve to catch some, and the dog skulked inside.

Now it's dark. The nasty weather has abated. Surprisingly the power hasn't gone out. We've watched our BSG episodes and it's time to start one of our new novels as a bedtime story.

Old Cedars

Today we went off to do some rock-climbing and Goddess-Questing. First thing this morning Fiona and I met up with another family with young kids and did a few quick climbs at a rock face half an hour south of us. It was my first roped climbing in 17 years, I think! I did okay -- got up a 5.6 pitch of 35 metres or so. Most was easy, though there were a few moments that made me pause and think. It was enough to remind me why I used to like climbing so much; it's cerebral, and the internal conversation with yourself and your body are so much of what it's all about. Fiona Mad-Monkeyed her way up to the second anchor and quite enjoyed herself. She could be a really good climber, I think: she has a great combination of determination, intellectualism, physical agility and emotional resilience.

Goddess Quest was totally cool. A local potter had spent the last few years creating little goddess figurines whenever she had a few minutes and a bit of extra clay. Each one is totally unique in design, expression and symbolism. Yesterday 333 of them were clandestinely placed in 14 different parks and hiking areas throughout a 200 km loop in our region. This morning the Quest began. If you found a goddess you could keep her. Each one was numbered and tagged with website information so that she could be paired up with her name and a quote. We found Goddess #088, the Goddess of Expectation. Publicity had been thorough -- people were out in impressive numbers and by mid-morning almost all the goddesses, even in the out-of-the-way locations, had been found.

Despite the law of diminishing returns, we continued to visit GoddessQuest hiking areas into the afternoon. We met a lot of people we knew (and one reader of this blog, whom we didn't know but do now: hi Ann!) and continued to be amazed at how a few brochures scattered throughout the region, and a couple of preparatory local exhibits in a village of a thousand souls could generate so much interest! We never did find another goddess, but we particularly enjoyed our hike through the red cedar old growth area a mere 15 minutes from our house. I can't believe we haven't done this hike in the past few years. It's short, easy and other-worldly. The ground is springy with centuries of slowly-rotting fallen cedar logs. There is little undergrowth beyond a bit of moss. The trunks are massive, the silence is arresting.

And halfway along the trail is a wonderful bear den. According to our local bear biologist, this den is used every winter, typically by a mother and yearlings or by a pregnant sow bear. It's quite huge inside; I believe we once packed 8 or 9 children inside it at once. Fiona did not want to go in too far. Here she is standing right near the opening doing her best "mama bear protecting her babbies" imitation.

Tonight we're mixing and freezing up a batch of Chai Latté Ice Cream, then settling in for another Battlestar Galactica episode. We're currently nearing the end of Season 3. Season 4 should arrive next week. I'm as addicted as the kids now.