Kathryn and I went for a nice walk on Friday. We heard and saw Canada Geese circling around our ponds looking for open water. We saw robins on our property. On our snowshoe hike we followed a set of raccoon tracks where he went exploring during the warm weather.
We saw otter slides in the snow along the stream.
We had robins and killdeer on our property this weekend!
Kathryn made a dozen eggs which Kathryn, Eric and I colored on Friday night.
We heard red wing black birds this morning and although we still have considerable snow on the ground the birds offered a sign that it was time to order trees. I made two orders this morning. Oneida County Soil & Water Conversation District (SWCD) annually offers a tree and scrub sale and annually I have gotten white spruce and white pine seedlings to plant. This year I am trying Norway Spruce and I bought pussy willows and white birch for landscaping. At Christmas I received a gift certificate to Miller’s Nurseries and utilized that to purchase additional lilacs and grapes.
There is a kid’s book called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day or something to that effect. Alexander tells a story of all the bad things that happened to him during the course of a day. Something like “I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there’s gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”
Last night Kathryn had an upset stomach and went to bed at 8pm immediately after Eric. Overnight she threw up about every 45 minutes through out the night and it didn’t stop until mid-morning. I have been giving her ginger ale and diet coke to sip, rubbing her back, picking up towels and etc to launder.
At 11:40pm Eric woke up with growing pains in his legs. I rubbed his legs continuously for 20 minutes until the Tylenol took effect. Then he slept through the night.
It rained hard last night and it was very windy, but no freezing rain. This morning it was raining really hard. I had let Scout out earlier but she wanted to go out again. She stood at the open door, looked at the rain and went to the other end of the house where, I later found, she messed on the hardwood floor. Fortunately it cleaned up OK.
I am stayed home from work to take Eric to pre-school and the babysitters and take care of Kathryn. If I am lucky I will squeeze in a little snooze somewhere to add to the 2 hours of sleep I got last night.
If I remember correctly Alexander’s book ends with his Mom telling him “Some days are like that.”
We had some fun this weekend playing in the snow: sledding, making forts, and throwing snowballs. The new snow was so deep and fluffy that we made our own primitive rope tow.
Here Eric returns from a long run.
What good is a fort without an escape tunnel? Whoa, Dad – You better make that tunnel a little bigger!
Armed and dangerous.
With our deep snow the dogs are having a hard time deciding where they can comfortably use the outdoor toilet facilities. Here Scout is trying to make a decision.
Trey and Scout ask me if we are going to take those snowshoes for a walk. Trey is 95 lbs and Scout was recently weighed at 65 lbs.
Trey says – Did you catch my good side?
Scout strikes a profile that only she can achieve: 50% Golden Retriever 50% Newfoundland.
That’s What I Am Talking About! The dogs breaking trail.
Wednesday I was home from work tending to Eric and his stomach bug while Kathryn went to work. Before she left for work she urged me to take the dogs for a walk. We had received 12-14″ of new snow overnight and my old snowshoe trails had been filled in. It didn’t take long for the dogs to stop romping and fall in line behind my snowshoe track.
I always take my camera with me on walks because, well, you never know, but on this day I made a conscious decision not to. I figured with all the freshly fallen snow and it being so deep that I wouldn’t see anything.
On my return loop back to the house I saw where a turkey had landed in the snow. The snow was so deep the turkey sank in the length of it’s legs and it’s wing beat was recorded in the snow. It was so clear that I could see nearly every feather of the 2.5 foot span. It must have happened within an hour as there was no snow filling up the image.
It looked like this, but way bigger, but of course you will have to take my word for it because I didn’t have my camera.
🙁
My canoes, patiently waiting for spring and the creeks to flow…….
I returned home from my trip to Melbourne FL to work on a proposal. I flew on SouthWest Airlines from round-trip from Albany to Orlando It was my 1st experience flying SW. I certainly appreciated the 3 hour direct flight although flying out of Orlando at the end of school vacation week is a little crazy.
I had a long pre-screen wait and then, of course, since I always trigger the metal detector with my artificial hips (something I had to read several metal detector reviews to figure out when I first got the hip), I required a “Male Assist” in the vernacular of the Transportation Security Agency (TSA). In most airports one is temporarily held in a separately roped area just past the walk though screening gate. In Orlando it is a plexiglass holding cell with air holes drilled into the plexiglass. In most situations I don’t mind the separate screening and I certainly understand the purpose. In Orlando it was hot, I was in a holding cell with no air movement and I was there for 10-12 minutes before a “Male Assist” deigned to take me out for screening. Usually the TSA person asks if I know what caused the alarm and I tell them I have bilateral hip replacements. It doesn’t change the screening process, but I suppose it eases their mind when the screening wand starts beeping at my waist. This TSA dude didn’t want to hear anything. It certainly adds a distinct flavor to the travel journey.
Parking at Albany leaves a little to be desired too. Parking spaces were in high demand. After considerable circling I got a spot on the roof of the garage. On my return flight I got into Albany around 5 and drove out to Mom’s and stayed the night with her. We chatted and watched a college basketball game. I made a breakfast of bacon and eggs on Friday AM, I did some grocery shopping for her and ran home in a light but sloppy snow storm.
Kathryn has had a pretty good cold and has been miserable so I ended up picking up the house and doing 4 loads of laundry. I got Eric from the babysitter and Eric and I ran errands: stops at two different pharmacies, the bank, eye glasses, library and my office before picking up a fish fry on the way home.
Today it is sunny so I shoveled the deck this AM and plan on taking the dogs for a walk this afternoon as they have been diprived of any walks between Eric’s illness, K’s vacation, my trip to FL and K’s illness – so they are more ready for some exercise. Trey has been blowing his coat in preparation for spring. Eric and I brushed a ton of hair out of him this AM while Scout was outside on the deck.
Our WinterCampers.com website has been hosted by Yahoo for several years and maintained by Mark. However, as competing time demands have increased for Mark, coupled with increasing Yahoo fees had to seek an alternative for the web site. We transferred the web site to Dreamhost and re-engineered the site using WordPress. The goal is to reduce costs and use a web tool that will permit more people to blog and contribute content to the site. It is still in a rough draft stage, but you can get sense of where we are headed with this at www.WinterCampers.com.
