Sappy

Guessing time:

It's sweet.  It's super sappy.  It looks awfully sticky.  It involves copious references to "Amber."

Did you guess?

It's a blog post about a family outing!  (Oh...and it's maple syrup too.)  

For the second year in a row we were lucky enough to have Bryan's folks join us on our annual drive to Critz Farms in Cazenovia during their maple celebration.  Purportedly we do this over and over because it's a great way to learn about where our food comes from (they have tours of the sugar house and the sugar bush) and about local agriculture (if you're going to live in the northeast you ought to know about maple syrup, right??), but we've done it enough years now it's probably time to be honest: we do it for the breakfast.

Part of the maple celebration is an all-you-can-eat breakfast with blueberry pancakes, french toast, eggs, maple-soaked ham, hash browns, juice, cocoa, and limitless real maple syrup, with as many ingredients (flour, eggs, ham, etc.) coming from local farms as possible.  The breakfast costs a few dollars, but we talk about it all year long.  Especially about the syrup.  I'm sure we eat more than our admission in syrup alone within minutes.  The rest of the year we settle for the thick gloppy brown concoction  found at Aldi, but for one wonderful Saturday morning we drown our pancakes in runny rivers of real syrup squeezed from amber-colored squirt bottles at each table.  The breakfast is served in some sort of old out-building, but I have to admit, sitting there all together as a family, tummies full, fingers sticky, and cool country air blowing around us, it feels kind of like heaven. 

Katie hard at work on her breakfast.  Bryan's sister, along with her 3-year-old daughter and brand-new baby, were also able to join us this year.  You can see the super cute car seat cover she pieced for her little baby in the background.

I spy syrup eaters!  Amber loved how all the different colors of syrup were labeled with her name: "dark amber" "medium amber" and "light amber." 

Robyn and Grandpa Gordon.  Not sure why Robyn has two spoons...all the easier to shovel it in perhaps?

Playing with sticks while waiting for the tractor out to the sugar bush.  Think it's time to take back the birthday presents and start shopping at the Stick Emporium for this one: I think she could have played like this for hours!

Picture of the girls with their cousin and Daddy/Uncle Bryan.  It was so fun to have another little girl come along!

Last year we nearly froze to death riding out to see how they tap the trees.  This year the early spring hurt the farm (they only had FIVE days of sap flow!) but it sure made it pleasant for us. 

They also have a nice set of playgrounds at the farm.  Grandpa Gordon indulged Katie in pushes long after the rest of the girls had run off to check out the crazy slides at the other end of the park.

I remember one of the first times we came here Amber was younger than Katie and we tried to send her down one of these long slides on her own.  I was pretty sure we'd scarred her for life: glad I was wrong.

Katie deciding maybe this slide is a little TOO ambitious for her...

Robyn just being Robyn.

And, last of all, a cute picture Robyn took of her cousin on the ride home.  Maybe we can convince them to come play again next year: I'm already craving more syrup!

High Five!

Robyn turned five this week.  Weird.  I feel like five marks the end of any illusions we had that she was still a “toddler” (ok…maybe we should have let go of those fantasies a long time ago…), even though it seems like we celebrated her 2nd birthday not that long ago.  (We were living here, in THIS HOUSE, when she turned two…where did the last three years go??!?!?) 



She was a great birthday girl and loved getting to parade her paper crowns from preschool and joy school for two straight days.  It wasn’t her year to do a birthday party with friends, but as luck would have it another fun mom planned a pajama activity at Joy School for the same day, which Robyn really enjoyed. 

Here are five other fun moments from her big day:

1. Blue box dinner.  Robyn got to pick the big family meal for the day and we should have guessed ahead of time that she would choose macaroni and cheese.  She’s a big fan of mix-ins, though, so we were able to make it at least semi substantive by doing one batch of original with peas and a “special” box of white-cheddar shells with chicken and corn stirred in.

2. Look at what it comes with!  Robyn was delighted to get Princess Yahtzee as a birthday present from one of her grandparents.  As soon as the wrapping was off she started inspecting what it included, the excitement reaching a fever pitch when all of a sudden she pointed out the dice tumbler and exclaimed, “Look!  It even comes with a garbage can!”

3. I wouldn’t eat that…  Speaking of mis-identified toy parts, Robyn received a set of Legos from her other grandparents.  With the enthusiasm of a new five year old she worked through the entire instruction booklet in an afternoon, gleefully assembling a cute little house, a car, and even a little Lego dog.  A handful of red translucent pieces were included as brake lights for the car, but ended up enjoying a different fate.  They ended up on a little Lego table as…<drumroll please>… Jell-O.  (Are we good Mormons or what? :)

4. Sam I am.  Robyn got to bring a snack to Joy School on her birthday and she ended up sharing her favorite fruit: kiwi.  It worked out really nice too, since it was also Green Eggs and Ham day at Joy School so the kids were all able to have a green fruit with their green proteins.  Unfortunately, kiwi turns out to be one of Amber’s least favorite foods and it sounds like payback may be in the works: Amber told everyone at Joy School she’s going to bring carrots (one of Robyn’s least favorite foods) when it’s her birthday in May.

5. Already?  When it was finally time to blow out the candles Robyn cheerfully announced her wish: “I wish I was turning six!”

She might want to wish the years ahead, but we’re plenty grateful to enjoy them one at a time.  Happy Birthday, Robyn!

Cheerful Cherries: My First Smocked Dress!

After seeing smocking on a smattering of girls' dresses in department stores over the last couple of years (and loving it!) (is that because I grew up in the 80's?) I finally decided to try my hand at it.  I also decided that if I was going to put in time doing the needlework, the rest of the dress should match it in quality, so I used a Vogue pattern: my first pattern with a difficulty rating of "Advanced."  It's taken a bit longer than expected to finish, but the result is one of my favorite projects to date.

Putting together the back of the dress took some surprising effort.  I'd never done a self-lined bodice the way this one was constructed, and it took a few attempts (and some time with a trusty seam-ripper) to understand what the instructions were getting at.

 

Oh puffy puffed sleeves:  Anne of Green Gables would be so pleased.  Isn't the red piping fun too?

I'm actually almost as proud of the inside of the dress as the outside since it has all the nice touches I often skip when we're mass-producing dresses over here: slip-stitch secured lining, raw edges hidden in french seams, a blind hem, etc.

Of course my favorite part is the smocking.  One of the most nerve-wracking moments in the project came shortly after I finished the actual smocking stitches and came to the part where I was supposed to remove the gathering threads that had formed the pleats initially.  I worried that without the surrounding grid pulling it together the whole pattern would just fall apart.

Next fall Robyn goes off to Kindergarten.  Three weeks later (ok...maybe that's just what it feels like sometimes...) all the kids will be in college and it will just be Bryan and me fretting from our empty nest.  Sitting on the couch counting pleats and squinting at the smocking chart, I kept thinking about our girls and about how fast things are going and wondering how we were doing.  Hopefully one stitch at a time we're helping them weave a beautiful pattern out of their lives.  Sure there are mistakes and miscounts, periods of monotonous repetition and parts that have to be removed and redone multiple times, plus some sections that will probably look lopsided even after every attempt to even them out...still, I hope the overall effect will prove to be smocking-like lives: lovely, useful, and enhancing of a larger whole.

As we slowly stitch along with the girls, I often wish there were an easier way to step back and see what the pattern looks like at any given moment.  And, like with Amber's little dress, I worry about what will remain when they start spending most of their lives away from the gathering stitches of home.

Thankfully, the smocking on Amber's dress held together just fine on it's own.  I'm going to take that as reason to be optimistic. 

Photo Op

Sometimes the girls get a hold of the digital camera and start shooting pictures of what life is really like at home.  Sometimes they take so many pictures they fill up the whole 4 GB memory card.  Generally that means going through and deleting hundreds of random photos of socks, piano benches, hairbrushes, etc.  Every so often, though, they capture a real jewel that would have otherwise been lost forever. 

Today I decided to clean off the memory card. 

Today my suspicions that we are actually raising trolls were confirmed.

New Song: "As a Child of God"

In January the Primary children at church generally have an opportunity to learn a new song not currently found in the Childrens Songbook.  For 2012 the theme is "Choose the Right," and I love the new song: "As a Child of God."  Not only does it talk about the blessing of being able to make choices, but it places a lot of emphasis on how choices--even choices made by children--can help a family to be happy.

We decided to try singing the new song for Family Home Evening tonight and were so surprised at how well the girls have already learned it (especially 3-year-old Amber who's been in Primary now for less than a month) that we decided to make a recording to share with "the grandmas." :)

If you haven't heard it yet, it really is a sweet piece with a great message.  I'm grateful each of us has so many chances to make choices and I'm doubly glad that we have the gospel to help us know how to make decisions that will lead to happiness and that we have loving families to practice with every day.  Hopefully the bits of bare midriff and mid-musical toddler-tackle included in our version don't detract too much from the spirit of the song...all I can say is Family Home Evening is definitely not dull around here!

P.S.  Here's a link to the lyrics and music if anyone is interested:
http://lds.org/bc/content/shared/content/images/magazines/friend/2012/01/fr12jan07-as-a-child-of-God-music.pdf

Snow, Sew, and Ho Ho Ho

After an extended hiatus, hopefully we're back to blogging...at least for today...we'll see what happens after that...
 
Some people can't stand the thought of Mexican food when pregnant, or suddenly despise a favorite fragrance.  Instead, for whatever bizarre reason, I developed an aversion to blogging during the first trimester this time around.  Yuck.  Just the thought of uploading pictures seemed nauseating.  Almost as weird?  Suddenly getting queasy at the thought of sewing: a perennial pregnancy problem around here.  That one has reared it's head every time since we were expecting Amber: I'll sit down at the sewing machine and as soon as the needle starts drumming up and down I start to feel seasick.  Other than a few must-happen projects (Halloween costumes and a few Christmas gifts), the sewing table has largely become a resting place for random piles of everybody's stuff.  I've come up with a few theories for it all, but mostly I'm just grateful that my worst aversions seem to be so relatively easily avoidable (there's a pair of pajamas that I still can't make myself wear either), leaving me free to eat enough Mexican for two (and then some) and continue to enjoy life in our wiggly, sometimes unavoidably smelly, world of wonderful little girls.

But, at this point, I think we're past the go-green-in-the-gills months and both the blogger dashboard and my dear little Husqvarna-Viking are back in good graces.  Yay!!

Since it would be insane to try and go back and tell all the tales we missed since last fall I think we'll just jump in here with a couple of recent photos.

1.  It finally snowed here in Syracuse.  To celebrate we took the girls out and fully froze ourselves sledding on Saturday.  I'm still trying to get feeling back in all my fingers, but we loved it!  (It was about -4 degrees outside...I know, I know, sunbathing weather in Minnesota...I'm afraid some of us have gotten "soft" living in balmy climates like upstate new york...)

Amber all rosy-cheeked from rolling around in the snow.  Her favorite part was just playing in the piles of white stuff at the bottom of the hill.

I'm not sure Katie has many memories of snow from last year.  The whole thing kind of seemed to perplex her.

Katie still confused by the whole experience.  Amber getting ready to throw a big stack of white fluff up in the air only to have it all land back on herself. 

Yay!  Someone actually sledding!  Robyn and Daddy did most of the hard-core sliding for our group.

2.  I finally sewed something just for fun.  Since it was snowing too hard to go out on Friday, I took some time cozying back up to my sewing machine while we watched the flakes piling up outside.  I'm not crazy about how the two big-girl jumpers turned out though.  Robyn's has box pleats on the bottom and Amber's has a double flounce: variations I hoped would make the dresses a little more interesting, but I have to admit I'm just not in love.  (Is it the corduroy?  the fit?  the lack of embellishment??  I'm not sure but something definitely screams home-made here...)  On the other hand, I do really like Katie's.  You can't tell very well from the picture, but it looks sweet, even without the sweater on top.  It's the second thing I've made from Butterick Pattern 3405 and I've really liked how both turned out. 

A quick picture snapped on my tablet after setting up the Primary chairs yesterday for the last time.  Weird the things you realize you'll miss when it's time for change!  (After nearly three years in the Primary at church I was released this week.  Just like the kids who graduate from Primary, you'll now find me in the youth Sunday School! :)

3.  And, last, but not least, a few Christmas morning pictures for fun.  (And because my mom might disown us if we don't finally just post some... :)

Robyn busy making breakfast on the new toy kitchen.  The kitchen actually started out as a free bathroom vanity on the side of the road, although it's had so much cosmetic surgery at this point hopefully it's not too recognizable.  (Thanks, Dad, for all your help over Thanksgiving!)

Katie with her favorite new toys:  babies who actually have clothes on!  Welcome to Katie's orphanage, little gals!  (I have never seen a girl who loved dollies--even abandoned, naked, marker-tattooed big-sister-cast-offs--so much!!)

More toy kitchen play.

Months ago Robyn started asking for a "swan pillow" for Christmas.  Hopefully this homemade interpretation was close enough to what she'd imagined: none of us could quite figure out what the heck a swan pillow was supposed to be! :)

Sugar plum fairies anyone?

Amber's penguin pillow.

Amber looking cute and cuddly in her new hat.

Playing in Maryland at Bryan's folks' place over Christmas break.  Outside.  Without coats.  On New Year's Eve.  Wow it's been a weird winter! :)

Happy New Year's, everyone!

Deoxyribonucleic…Fractal Antenna?

As you may guess, from the photos below, this post is brought to you by the letter ‘B’, and not your regular sponsor, ‘M’ [Bryan, not Melissa]. I have been hard at work over the last few weeks designing and building a new television antenna and, as any good engineer will agree, a normal antenna just won’t cut it – too boring. Here’s how my latest creation evolved…

Earlier this year I happened to be watching NOVA on PBS and saw an episode titled Hunting the Hidden Dimension (if you like NOVA and haven’t see this episode you’ve really missed out) which was all about fractals. The show got to talking about the wonders of fractal antennas and how they have changed the wireless world – nearly all modern cell phones use fractal antennas (that’s why you don’t have to pull the antenna up anymore to receive a call [As Peter does in the opening scenes of the movie Hook]).

Naturally, during lunch the next day, I decided to do a little searching online about fractals. As it turns out, geeks all over have built their own TV antennas using fractal patterns. I decided to do the same. I followed the same basic fractal pattern most of them used, but designed the rest myself. The result?

I present, exhibit A:

I expect my Mom will want to frame a picture of this and mount it on her mantel as Bryan’s first fractal antenna. This antenna performs reasonably well, better than the rabbit ears it replaced, but still doesn’t quite live up to what I had envisioned – we still periodically lose the signal as we did with the old antenna, though less frequently. As a result this antenna was relegated to the small TV. Back to the drawing board.

Then, a few months ago I remembered something one of my best friends, Matt Pierce (the greatest home teaching companion I’ll likely ever have), told me during one of our home teaching trips. He had talked about – now, try to picture this from the perspective of a teenage boy – the homemade TV antennas (didn’t know people did this) he made from cardboard and aluminum foil. In my mind’s eye I saw a monstrosity of crinkled foil and left over pizza boxes taped to the back of a TV. And who knows, perhaps Dominoes is still delivering great reception at the Pierce home to this day.

So, after my first disappointing attempt I launched a new, more ambitious, effort to prevent the untimely loss-of-signal at critical moments in the latest episode of Terra Nova (I like this show, though Melissa’s not much of a fan). Inspired by my home teaching companion of years ago, I decided to forgo bent copper wire and use aluminum foil. I don’t know how Matt made his antennas, but I concocted a plan which involved visio-designed fractal patterns, I went with five different fractals instead of just one, etched into foil which I mounted on a plastic substrate and covered in a protective layer of contact paper. My first antenna constrained the elements to just 2-dimensions, a mistake I wasn’t going to repeat (though probably not the real, or only, reason my signal strength was disappointing). The result is pictured below:

The world’s first, perhaps last, double-helix multi-fractal TV antenna! If you can’t see the double helix structure, just look closer : )  You’re probably wondering about the performance? We now get 6 more channels than before! (Although, we’re going to delete all but 3 as they are just analog duplicates of digital stations we already get.)

I decided to go all out on this antenna and purchased all the proper hardware. To help keep the antenna attractive looking (though the antenna sits where it’ll seldom be seen) I threaded the wires up through the superstructure and then out the base; the electrical connection is made via zinc screws, nuts and washers. Pictured below: each of the five fractals I used in the antenna design and an alternate view of the completed antenna.  Enjoy!