Snow

Inertia, motion, and time. The snow keeps falling. I write a second post before the urge fades. Skiing down a narrow trail, fast and dangerous. Every day I'm a little older. Keep going even if it hurts. Quinn won't quit picking on Abbey.

People keep telling us last winter was a gentle one. This one, they say, is more typical. The snow keeps falling. Once in a while it washes away in day of rain, but it always comes back. I like it. Everywhere the snow is fresh and clean and white. It sparkles in the sunlight. Except beside the roads where snowplows and the cars travel and salt melts it and the streets crumble and mud and slush and oil mix together to make an unpleasant icy paste. Leave the cars in the garage please, your mucking up the snow.

Sometimes the sun shines, even in southern Michigan.



And sometimes there's enough snow to build a real snow fort.



I'm in the picture, but Cindy built the fort.



When you live with this much snow, you might as well ski. We've rented skis a couple of times at Harris Nature Center. The Nature Center has nice forested trails along the Red Cedar River. It's really fun in a peaceful and soothing sort of way on the smooth flat trails. The kids learned quickly. The first skiing photo below was taken by Cindy a couple weekends ago when she and the kids went for free skiing. I was running around elsewhere in Okemos.



They had such a good time without me that I'm surprise they took me with them when they went again. Sometimes I ruin things. But I'm glad they did. We had a great time. Most of the trails at HNC are pretty flat, but there is one that goes over some rolling hills. Here Abbey skis down the biggest hill. How will she make that corner?



Same hill, but this picture of me was taken by Cindy from the bottom of the hill after she skied down.



I'd left poor Quinn at the top to fend for himself, so I had to go back to help him down. He wasn't quite ready for such a hill. I think it took us about 15 minutes to complete his treacherous descent.



It looks like fun, but the cold weather does keep us inside at times. At least it gives Abbey plenty of time to play the piano. She's working on three pieces for a coming contest.



And in other news, Cindy and I have been trying to get in shape for another summer of cycling. Cindy has been logging stationary miles on the bicycle trainer we've set up in the basement. My strategy, apparently, is to sign up for a trail run in late April with some of the athletic sorts at work. In preparation for that, I'm alternating days on the bike trainer with days running outside. Of course, just for fun and some added incentive, I've run in a couple of local 5k races. This was the Superbowl Sunday 5k.



I was pleased with my time in this run, as it approached my personal best, but as you can see from my snarl at the finish line, I had to work for it.



Thanks to Dan Carey for photographing the event. All his photos for this event are currently available - follow the link from the playmakers website. I think I'll have to order these from him since I've posted them here...

Christmas and Birthdays

Looks like it's been about six weeks since I last posted anything here. What's been going on? Too many adventures and not enough time to post them all, perhaps.

Well, there was Christmas. Grandma Sharon visited for about week over the holiday, and this time she didn't have to leave early to run home and salvage her house.

We went to the local tree farm (the place where we got our pumpkins at Halloween) and cut ourselves an extra-wide Douglas-fir. I'd hoped we could go there by bicycle, but I guess it was too cold and snowy. We don't have the right sort of bicycle trailer for hauling forest products, either.

Christmas was nice this year, although perhaps a little lonely since we didn't make the trip back to Kansas. I think we'll probably make the trip home for Christmas in 2008.

We got lots of great gifts (thanks, everyone) and the kids have had a great time putting them together, painting them, playing with them, arguing over them, plugging them in, turning them on, getting them wet, shooting them, rolling them, flying them, brushing them, eating them, and scattering them all over the house.





Of course, in the days immediately following Christmas both kids have birthdays. This year Quinn had some his friends over for a party. It was a wild time that included play time in the basement with all sorts of new toys, and a wild romp in the backyard. I pulled all the boys around the yard on the eight-foot-long toboggan we got from one of our neighbors. It was really fun. We have some video, taken on our new video recorder, but it's rather long for posting here, and I don't have the necessary software to edit it. So here's a picture of the boys, and Abbey, at the party.



This year Abbey had a party at Art Unlimited, where she and her friends painted ceramic things. I think they had fun, and their things came out really nice.



And then there was the birthday dinner at Cancun, the best (only) traditional Mexican restaurant in Okemos. We go to Cancun as often as possible, which isn't really very often, but the food is really good. This time the kids got the full birthday treatment, including sombreros. Oh, and don't worry, they didn't come anywhere close to finishing those giant whipped cream covered ice cream dishes in front of them.