martinzoo

The other day my husband was on the phone and called me in to look at this hawk that had just swooped into a tree in our back yard. He was totally scoping out all the feeder birds. Luckily, we didn’t have to witness him shopping for dinner. He got tired of our yard and swooped into another. But not before I got these shots with my camera.

Don’t forget that the Great Backyard Bird Count is this weekend. Cade and I are planning to do it and I’d love to read about your birds.

Round three snowstorm started hitting us yesterday. We got about two more inches before it turned into yucky freezing rain. This morning the snow has begun again and it’s supposed to continue all day.

Luckily, my timing for grocery shopping has been perfect for all these snowstorms and I have a nice full fridge. And Thursday I began making a white chicken chili, but had to put it on hold because Bruce and Cade decided to try and make a karate night. So that means I have a full pot of chili ready whenever we are. Nice!

Tiffany and Cade decided to make some snow ice cream. I had bought some cream at the store in anticipation of making it, but had thought it would be ME suggesting it, instead of Tiffany.

Bruce was pretty skeptical that it would taste good, and in fact never tried it.

It takes 4 cups of fresh snow and 1/2 cup of cream.

Add 1/4 cup of sugar and a tsp. of vanilla to the cream.

Pour it over the snow and mix with a spoon. Tiffany and Cade decided that they would double the recipe, so they’ve got lots of snow in that bowl.

Cade used every opportunity to snatch a chunk of snow that he could. He said it was like ‘an addiction’!

Mix, mix, mix, we all got in on the mixing. It seems as if there isn’t enough cream in the recipe, but as you keep mixing and incorporating, it gets better and creamier.

And then, the ultimate test; the taste. Verdict; pretty good, but needs some chocolate sauce to make it complete. I took mine straight. I’m a purist.

Peatsy was THRILLED to get in on the action.

But he is totally over this white stuff.

“Quit taking my picture and open the door.”

“Hey! Don’t you know it’s freezing for us pups out here?”

Cade and I are beginning a unit on the Pioneers. We signed up in January to do the online Westward Ho project and have been reading up on the trials and tribulations that faced the American pioneers.

This week’s assignments were to establish our pioneer identities and purchase supplies for our five month journey from Independence, Missouri to Willamette Valley, Oregon. We also made a small replica wagon to store our ’supplies’ in.

Once again, Cade will say that he doesn’t like arts and crafts, but these pictures tell a different story. He was so proud of his wagon. I even overheard him showing it to his Grandma this morning.

I gathered a small box, coat hangers, material for the covered part of the wagon, popsicle sticks, dowel, tape and glue. We began by cutting off the flaps of the box and some wheels.

Then we poked holes through the wheels.

Then we added the wheels using the dowel.

We glued the popsicle sticks to the sides of the wagon.

I should have put down newspaper because you’ll never know how much it bothered Cade to have this drip of glue touch the table. All work had to stop while he cleaned it up.

I cut the hook off of the coat hangers and straightened them out and then Cade attached them to the inside of the wagon to make the hoops.

Then we added the cover. Cade is sewing the back of the cover so we can get the gathered closure that is prominent in the covered wagon’s look.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Almost done….

Ta-da!! Isn’t it adorable?

Here it is close up. Cade kept insisting that if he were a pioneer boy, he would sit inside the wagon for the whole trip and not walk the whole way. I tried to explain that that would probably make him sick. But he insists that it looks to fun to miss out on.

I wish I could actually duplicate the experience somehow. That would really be cool.

Yesterday, Mr. Al, Holly and I hosted a game day at our clubhouse for all of the neighborhood kids who’ve been trapped at home because of all the snow we had.

It was all Mr. Al’s brainstorm. He sent out an email to gauge interest and Holly and I jumped on the bandwagon. He went and got ingredients, made up SIX batches of pizza dough and had everything ready for the arriving kiddos.

I brought tons of games from my closet, including the Texas Hold-em paraphernalia. And we brought out the ping pong table.

Mr. Al got the kids started with making homemade chocolate chip cookies. They had a blast! All the measuring and flying flour and secret snatches of chocolate chips. Delightful.

Mr. Al’s cookie baking venture was a huge success and with all those kids in the house they were snatched up like a bunch of feeding vultures. I’ll tell ya, teenagers get hungry! So Al got the pizza making started.

We had a group of about five or six girls who were really into the baking process and it was as if they were running their own little restaurant. Ingeniously, since it takes a while to spread dough, sauce and cheese, and then bake a real pizza, they came up with a quickie pizza idea to hold over the masses.

They took flour tortillas and spread them with sauce, and covered them lightly with cheese, then microwaved them for one minute. They cut them, set them out and they were GONE in a flash. They looked disgusting to me, kind of like wimpy little pizzas, but those kids loved them. The teenagers at my table dubbed them ‘tortizzas’.

Cade was so happy because his old friend, Jack, agreed to play his Axis and Allies game. And he also played Stratego with a new friend. We were hoping somebody would be into these kind of games.

I was quickly grabbed to deal for the multitudes of teenagers who wanted to play poker. It is becoming my station in life to deal in the poker games. It’s great because I’ve come to learn so much about the kids that are older than Cade. And you know what? I like them. They’re good kids. I had so much fun with them.  At one point I had eleven teenagers ringed around my table. And we all got to practice our math skills, but don’t tell them that…LOL!

Cade came over for the poker playing when he finished his games. He is fast becoming an accomplished little player. Twice, when threatened by an older teenager with an “all in” bet, Cade called and won the hand. There was lots of cheering and fist bumping going on and he gained a lot of respect. One of the girls was even asking Cade to guide her during the game because she had never played and didn’t trust the other teenagers.

We set the back room up with a movie, Tinkerbell, for the little kids. Surprisingly, some of the teenagers came in and watched it too. I think teenagers enjoy the chance to remember the things from their past that were so much fun.

After a long bout with the poker players, I decided to go over and play Bananagrams with some of the moms and kids. We had six players at one point. It was so much fun and everyone was learning spelling and vocabulary from each other. Great fun.

It took hours of baking to get all the pizza dough used up and only a few slices remained at the end of the day; along with a tremendous mess. After five hours at the club house, the kids started to trickle on home. It took those of us left about half an hour to clean up from all that baking. But when 50 something kids show up, and everyone has a good time, I’d say your spontaneous event could be considered a success.

I’m just a little worried that the moms in the neighborhood are going to want this to be an ongoing tradition whenever it snows……hmmmm.

We’ve been blanketed!

Cade and I have kept busy by playing board games, Facebooking, and video games.

This is our new favorite game. It’s called Ten Days in Asia. You have to plan a ten day trip in Asia using planes, trains or border crossings. The cards are obtained randomly so you really have to think ahead as to what will work. It’s a great game for learning the Geography of the whole continent. Cade is about to beat the pants off of me. See that gleeful look?

Sometimes Cade uses his controller as if it is a gun and he actually points it AT the tv. And who says playing video games is NOT an aerobic activity? I’ll bet he burns a bunch of calories jumping around like he does.

Bruce is cleaning off the deck. I had cleaned it earlier in the day when it only had about four inches. But it quickly got all snowed up again. And our little Peatsy needs someplace to go. If you know what I mean.

Bruce loves snow and it shows in this picture. He gets so excited when the forecast starts hinting at snow. Can you see the swirling snow behind Bruce?

The next day, after all is said and done, we ended up with about ten inches. We had some snow-nadoing (snow+tornado) going on yesterday with lots of swirling wind.

After all the work we did on the deck, it’s a white blanket again.

This is a bench in our backyard. Doesn’t it look serene?

The deer came to visit while we were sleeping, but they left a nice trail through the front yard.

Today we’ll probably take Cade out sledding. The snow is not the good kind for making snowmen. It’s about 20 degrees out there, which made the snow come down very powdery. Maybe in a day or two it will compact itself into snowmen-able snow.

Tonight Cade wrote this letter to the President. I really hope that he gets a response because he is completely expecting one. He’s been mentioning the letter all day and he finally sat down to compose it. I always find it cute when kids want to write to important people or celebrities.

Dear President Obama,

My name is Cade. I am 11 years old. I’ve seen you on tv and I hope you care about energy, like I do. I wish you would authorize plants so that we wouldn’t be dependent on coal, oil and natural gas. I also would like to see more wind farms and biofuel technology. I think using the power of the waves would be good too. I’ve been studying this through the Jason Project. I’m a middle school student and I think my opinions are important too.

I hope you write me back,

Cade