Ice and Snow

As I have said before, our driveway is very steep and in general not fun. When we have ice (like today) It quickly becomes impassable. We cope with this by parking at the bottom of the hill and trying not to have to leave the house.

With the kids though, it is easier to load them in a sled or put them in snow pants and have them slide down the hill. Better than risking them slipping and falling and cracking their heads on the ice.

Of course eventually it will all melt, but in the meantime the kids love the chance to slide on the ice.

Sushi

When hubby and I were dating, many a night would be spent at Sushi Chalet. We loved the all you could eat buffet. It made the drive over there worth it. Now that we live in the hinter-lands sushi is hard to come by and with 3 of us eating it (Girlie won't touch it, Boyo can pack it away) it is nothing to spend $50+ on a meal (not counting the happy meal for Girlie).

Guess how excited I was to see one of my favorite bloggers doing a cooking guide to sushi taught by a real sushi chef!!! After all importing the materials has got to be cheaper than $50 a pop, right?

Ok I teased you enough. Here is the link to Pioneer Woman and her Sushi chef, Cody.

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/

Put 'em to work!!

It snowed. Well, it was actually on Monday that it snowed, but still. When it snows I have to park at the bottom of our steep driveway. I also usually get stuck doing the shoveling out. Hubby claims it is because I am home more than he is. We won't discuss that bit of logic.


Anyway after walking down the hill in the dark and icky for 3 days, I cancelled school and told the kids to shovel.


They did.

It may not look steep but where the driveway looks like it ends, it actually drops about 6 feet and does a turn.

At last it was warm enough to melt away the last traces of snow. Yay for 50 degree weather!!!

Hopefully it will be that warm tomorrow as we do the Klondike Derby with the cub scouts. I'll try to take pictures.

More on the CSPIA

Well I bet you are tired of hearing about this. I even had someone me send the the snopes.com report. Well snopes was wrong. They didn't do their homework.



Yes you can resell used clothes, books, toys and what-have-you for kids but, and this is a big but, the seller is liable if any of those things don't meet the new testing requirements.

Also all the little shops that make custom or specialty or not hasbro/mattel type products have to test their stuff and this is financially impossible for many of these businesses.

Here is a great little movie that explains the problem http://ceska.typepad.com/little_ida/2009/01/craftsbury-kids-cpsia-interview.html

Then check out this http://nationalbankruptcyday.com/archive/cpsia-cultural-genocide-another-win-for-congress/ This law will create "cultural genocide" for the Native American culture. If you can't raise your children and dress them in a way that promotes your family's beliefs and culture, then the next generation will not learn the culture and it will die.

For the Native American's (or any group that dresses children in a non-walmart way for certain events or reasons) how are they suppose too allow the kids to participate? Well if they can make their own or if they have heirlooms in which to dress the kids, then they are fine. But for people who don't have means to make their own or hand-me-downs. They are out of luck.

And along those same lines, my family does medieval re-enactment. Luckily I am blessed enough to be able to sew and make our stuff but what about the parents who have more money than time or don't have the skills. What are they to do?

Thanks for the pic Ursus Boyo is in Red

This law has such far reaching consequences that haven't even really been considered. Please write your washington people and ask them to fix the law!

Remembering Big Al

I was thinking about my grandfather today. He passed away last year.

When my sister and I were born, I guess he didn't want to be called Grandpa, or pop-pop, or any of those sorts of names so we called him Big Al. At over 6" tall in his prime, it sorta fit.

Anyway as I was saying, I was thinking about Big Al today as Boyo was trying to convince me that at 7, he is old enough to make a bow and arrow and all he needed was flint.

Do we have any flint Mama? Oh it's a rock, do you think there is any out in the yard?

I'll put a coat on (cough, cough, wheeze)

I said no. He went off to another project from the Dangerous book for Boys So far in the past 40 minutes, aside from the previous conversation, he has made a paper water balloon and was banging out Morse code on the floor to see if I understood him (nope).

So how did all this make me think of Big Al you might ask? Well, Big Al was an impressive man and while he had his faults (seriously old school thinking, caveman mentality on some topics). He was always up for trying new things.

At 70 years old he went on a canoe trip with my family and instead of coasting along and relaxing (like the rest of us), he paddled the entire time and made it to camp 2 hours earlier. A few years before he died, he bought a new computer. In his effort to learn how to work it (as it was different than the one he had previously) he reformatted the hard drive at least 2 times that I know about. Big Al was all about learning. When he heard that it was important to continue learning and taking classes as one gets older, he took it to heart, by taking celestial navigation at least 3 times before he passed. He never gave up.

Big Al was the product of a mother from Denmark and a father from Sweden. Both fresh off the boat. While he didn't teach us much about Sweden or Scandinavia in general, the genes were there. It wasn't until I met a boy from Sweden in high school that I learned that the "humpf" of Big Al's was a Swedish thing. Then hearing my baby boy do it at a year old, and knowing he hadn't heard it from Big Al, I knew it was carried on the genes.

I know Big Al didn't have much use for us girls, but he was happy to see Boyo. I wish he could have lived long enough to see Boyo now that he is "interesting." (Big Al would have let Boyo outside to try and find flint even though it is snowing and the ground is frozen. That was how he rolled.)