Magic School Bus? - Take Two

Look at the license plate...Special Ed, indeed....

R U Stressed?

Pick up at the after-school program on Friday found a table full of young children eagerly stuffing cornstarch through a funnel into balloons. What were they making?

 

Stress Balls.

 

Um....just how much pressure are kids under these days? Is society so crazy and life so busy that a bunch of Kindergarten and Elementary students need a stress ball to relieve their worries?

(and think about the stress that these things cause: parents worrying about a rubber bag of white powder exploding in the house....)

 

 

 



School Picture Day

 

How LittleNortherner looked at six in the morning just after he dressed himself for School Picture Day. Unpolished and unrepentantly not a morning person...

 After school - no more tie! (and getting ready for the official start of Kitchen Hockey Season - opening date of Oct.1)

 

 

 

Paint Job

 

This weekend, NorthernMommy had a race in Massachusetts, and NorthernDaddy decided to surprise her by re-doing the stairwell to the basement laundry while she was gone.

--

Before: standard builder's-grade white paint job, some coats hanging in the way, and some archery equipment cluttering up the wall (and some stained cement block at the base of the stairs)

 

Shortly after NorthernMommy pulled out of the drive and headed south, the crew (NorthernDaddy and LittleNorthernConstructionDude) had removed the coat hooks and gotten rid of all the clutter. A quick trip to Lowes sourced all the supplies, and the work continued.

--

The idea was to put up a base coat of blue and then try that fancy sponge painting technique with a lighter color wash. That didn't work out as planned. Really, it didn't work out at all - the paint/glaze mix that Daddy measured out wasn't light enough, and the sponge technique is all but invisible.

--

What did work? LittleNortherner with a paint roller. He was quite excited to try his hand at painting a wall. He did an excellent job - for the areas he could reach. (NorthernDaddy was not ready to let Little up on the ladder that was leaning across the stairwell to the high side of the walls!)

The coat of bright white paint on the cement block turned out nicely, too.

--

LittleNortherner is available to be hired out for interior painting.....

 

 

Magic School Bus?

 

NorthernDaddy brought home plans for building a most excellent LEGO tour bus. It was fairly easy to build, and it turned out quite interesting with all the random colors that Little used. For a bus built out of scrounged parts from the block bucket, the bus was cool...

--

...Until LittleNortherner added wings and a giant front pusher bumper. Wings! And then he started calling it the "Magic School Bus".

Below: the absolute best idea that NorthernDaddy has ever had about LEGOs. A scoop dedicated solely to the task of removing LEGO minefields from the living room floor. Thirty seconds of work with a $1.35 dustpan clears all of the shrapnel and punji sticks from the floor - wicked awesome!

 

 

 

Paper Trail

Kindergarten is a great thing. It is teaching LittleNortherner about different subjects (math, writing, science, etc.) and helping him to refine his social skills (he's no longer one of the "big kids" at school - he's in the youngest grade). It's introducing him to more of the kids in his immediate neighborhood/town, and the new skills he is learning help to build his self-confidence (although, do you really need to do that in a five-year-old that already thinks he is a teenager?!).

--

The thing that concerns NorthernDaddy is that school is starting to teach LittleNortherner about paperwork. Through his experience in the world of employment, NorthernDaddy is intimately familiar with the corporate practice of creating and keeping a paper trail for every single action that is completed, attempted, or even thought about. Some companies complete every daily transaction in the electronic realm, and still require a paper hard copy to be created (go ahead, ask NorthernDaddy if he knows any companies like that...). It's crazy, the amount of paper that is moved around this world.

--

LittleNortherner is learning this: every day there is a veritable mountain of paper that rides home in his backpack. There are forms to fill out, notices to read, daily activity logs to peruse. There are drawings - Good Lord, are there drawings - that spill out of his pack and cover the floor of the car.

 

Today, the papers were super-giant-humongous-sized. There's an easel pad sized drawing of a spider web. There's a notebook sized drawing of.....something. The piece de resistance has to be the 48" x 36" page torn from the daily schedule board. It lets you know that Little is the line leader, some other young person is the "caboose", and a bit of other important news. Apparently, the line leader for the day gets to take home the schedule page.

 

Think about that....it's the most glorious day of school for a kid (who doesn't love to be line leader?), and his or her reward - their reminder of such a momentous occasion - is more paper.

 

(Remember kids, there has to be a paper trail for everything!)

 

 

That, or the teacher has learned a simple new way to clean her classroom...

 

 

 



Hack and Chop

During a conversation with family earlier this week, NorthernMommy alleged that NorthernDaddy had chopped, hacked, and mutilated her rose bush.

--

NorthernDaddy would like to set the record straight.... While there is photographic proof that he did once obliterate a rose bush (it was way too big and dead-centered on the usable part of the yard), the rose bush currently in question is still alive and well.

--

In Daddy's defense, "Rose", as she will be named, was becoming quite the belligerent plant. She was constantly reaching out beyond her boundaries and trying to take what wasn't hers. She had started to obscure the propane tank, was attempting to sit in the Adirondack chairs, and -more than once- tried to beat up NorthernDaddy and steal his lunch money.

--

NorthernMommy left the house one morning for a few hours, and LittleNortherner wouldn't come outside (gotta play Legos), so that left no one to protect Rose. A few minutes with the loppers and pruners, and the plant had been tamed....

 

...not hacked and chopped.

 

(Posing like he did any work....)

 

(In the interest of full disclosure, NorthernDaddy will admit that he has a long-standing hatred of rose bushes. He does not know the root of these feelings, but is quite sure that - if he ever needs professional psychiatric counseling - they will be the reason he ends up in therapy...)

 



Good Eats

A few years ago, NorthernDaddy woke up and realized just how much money he was spending on bread. Shortly after that, he got angry: how can anyone justify spending four or five dollars on a loaf of bread? Forget the fact that it tastes like styrofoam or stale cardboard (Daddy knows what those taste like. Don't ask.), think about the ingredients needed only costing forty or fifty cents. One-tenth of the retail cost of that store loaf.

--

The store loaves have all kinds of 'extra' things in them, too. Chemicals to preserve, color, and flavor the bread (wonder where they get "styrofoam" flavor?). NorthernDaddy started to research bread baking, and he soon realized that are four ingredients in a loaf of bread (basic home-made peasant-style loaf). FOUR. Water, flour, salt, and yeast.

--

A person might say, "But it's so easy to stop at the store and just pick up a loaf of their bread..."

NorthernDaddy thinks that making his own is just as easy - mixing the dough takes about five minutes, waiting for it to rise might take an hour, and baking the loaf runs thirty minutes. Except for the mixing of the dough, the process is hands-off. You can go do something else while the bread rises and bakes.

--

Cheaper, easy process, better flavor - why not bake your own?

--

All of those words above just serve as an intro to the thought that started this blog post: the NorthernFamily can eat some bread. Hot bread fresh outta the oven? Gone. NorthernDaddy made two loaves tonight for dinner, and when it came out of the oven, he and LittleNortherner had eaten an entire loaf in less than five minutes.

 

NorthernDaddy would offer you some, but it just doesn't last...

 

 

 



Looking for the Lost Lake

LittleNortherner had a Kindergarten Orientation a week or so before he started school. It was a chance for the kids to check out their classrooms and meet the teachers. It was also a chance for all of the newbie parents, who had never experienced all the new challenges and changes in routine that come with "real" school, to check out the admin staff and get a million different questions answered. (Not that NorthernMommy or Daddy were nervous at all....)

 

While all the kids were grooving down in their classrooms, the parents got sent to the cafeteria for their orientation - and to meet the other parents. Normally, NorthernDaddy stresses out for these kind of things - he's not one for small talk. (NorthernMommy does quite well in these situations: she likes meeting new people and she has the social grace to do just that.) The only thing that saved the day for NorthernDaddy was meeting the neighbor. The neighbor lady (Daddy is a little embarrased to admit that he can't remember her name) is the mom to one of LittleNortherner's t-ball teammates, and they live three houses down the road. The really interesting thing - other than her tattoos and piercings - is that she grew up in the house that we currently live in.

 

When NorthernMommy and Daddy bought this house, it had been lived in by - well they don't know much about the previous owner other than that he did absolutely no maintenance. The grass was knee high, the hurried paint job (only done to sell the house) had left splatters, and the garden.....the garden was SOL. FUBAR. Anyone know more acronyms for "messed up beyond belief and beyond hope"?

 

As NorthernMommy and NorthernDaddy worked to clear up the property, they found evidence of a beautifully crafted perennial garden. There were rock walls, slate paths, and decorative features all over the garden - badly overgrown by weeds and in need of TLC, but they were there. They even found a chicken coop after working on the yard for a year. (How does one let it get to the point where you freaking lose a shed-sized chicken coop?!)

 

As they worked in the yard and on the gardens over the years, NorthernDaddy and Mommy often talked about how they wished they could see pictures of what the place used to look like - because, based on the remains, it had to have been fabulous.

 

So, back to meeting the neighbor that grew up in our house.... NorthernDaddy had a nice conversation with her about what it was like back then, and did his best to plant some mental seeds about how nice it would be to see some old photographs of what things looked like back in the day. There was talk of the horses that were raised there, the trees that were planted and how well they are doing, the layout of the rooms in the house and the remodel that was done - all things that the Northerns kinda already knew. The shocker from out of left field was an offhand comment asking if the pond was still there.

 

The pond?

 

What pond?

 

Apparently, years ago, there was a pond dug just off the chicken run. It was supposedly of good size, with a small island (with a tree) in the center. Now, the Northerns were able to find the Lost City of the Chickens (the coop) after some work, but there hasn't been the slightest glimpse of evidence of a pond.

NorthernDaddy has taken on the challenge of finding this pond - this Lost Lake. He's started to bush hog and explore the over-grown area next to the chicken run.  The photo doesn't show it well, but there is an exploratory road that curves around and into the weeds up in there. The lay of the land shows that a pond could have existed here, but the edges and the "island" remain elusive.

 

 

NorthernDaddy is going to keep searching for the "lost lake". If it existed, he will find it!

(If he finds it, it might never be allowed to be re-created: the environmental laws in this Northern state are quite strict!

 

 



Chomp, Munch, Munch.....

Huh? There's food at the fair? Really?

--

Let's go!

 

Artist?

 

NorthernMommy and Daddy are under no impression that their dear son is an artist. Given their own lack of ability to draw and having seen previous examples of Little's artwork, they are pretty sure that he will probably never be compared with Picasso. Or Matisse. Or Scribble Sam. Not even with Louie - that kid that sits in the corner and chews on his crayons as he draws...

--

This masterpiece was in LittleNortherner's backpack when he came home from school today.

 

Daddy thought it was a monster.

 

Mommy thought it was a dragon eating a knight. (Or a fairly accurate depiction of what her tomato plants ended up looking like this year...)

 

It's none of those; according to the artist, it's a picture of the machine that makes doughnuts.

 

 

Maybe...just maybe, if you get the right angle and squint a little and poke yourself in the eyeballs, maybe it could be that....