4/52 - Cat Stories, Big Rock Candy Mountain

Anders's class recently did a narrative writing project. The original assignment was to tell the story of your "favorite family moment", but for some reason Anders took his story in a different direction.

The above was the final product but as part of the process, they drew panels to tell the story.

Every time I see those drawing, I get a little twinge in my eye. Somehow, he really captured it.

Anders was only 5 when Max died, and at the time he didn't seem to have a particularly emotional response to it. But apparently it made a bigger impression on him than we thought.

As a result of Anders' project, the bulletin board with the stories was change to "The Most Memorable Family Stories".

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Speaking of cats... Here is Anders's letter to Santa from this past year.

This is the letter he wrote in school, that in turn was sent to the newspaper for publication. He didn't put "texito (tuxedo) cat" on the list he made at home, so this was news to us.

Max was a great cat, but we have been enjoying our pet-free lifestyle. We're not ready to get another pet just yet.

Anders: I want a tuxedo cat for Christmas.
Corinne: I think you're old enough now that you can take care of it.
Anders: (blank look)
Corinne: You know, feed it, give it water, empty the litter box.
Anders: Well, you can help me with the litter box.
Corinne: No, I think you are old enough. Are you sure you want a tuxedo cat this year, or maybe you want to wait a year?
Anders: (contemplative look) I think I'll wait a year.

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For at least a year now, Anders has been asking to build a Big Rock Candy Mountain. This song was recently brought back to pop culture via the O, Brother Where Art Though? soundtrack, but Anders's primary inspiration came from the John Deere Earth Mover Action video. It's a mountain where you use construction vehicles to mine and transport candy; what's a kid not to love about that?

Gingerbread to the rescue!

And now, the finished product!

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

36/52 - Old Friends, New Wildlife, 1st Grade!

We see lots of wildlife around us on a daily basis; we practically have deer living in our yard fulltime. But it's still a nice surprise when we come across some of the less common creatures.

Coyotes are no stranger in our parts, but they are animals that we mostly hear and not see. (And boy, can they make a racket at night.) But recently we have seen a lone coyote out during the day and wandering through the lawn. We're guessing that it's a younger animal, perhaps born in the spring. We're glad to see him around! He should feel free to eat as many mice and gophers as he likes.

On a different day after some irrigation work outside, I walked back to the house only to find that somewhere along the way I had unknowingly picked up a hitchhiker: a praying mantis!

He seemed perfectly content just sitting on my shoulder. It even looks like he is posing for the photo.

After our shoot, I dropped him off back out in the tall grass. Hopefully that's where he wanted to go.

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We happened to notice via social media that a college friend of ours from the East coast was going to be at a library conference in Portland, so we made plans to join him for dinner after his arrival. After he took a brief diversion - public transit in a new city is hard! - we took him out to a few of our favorite eateries in Portland while we refreshed old friendships.

Salt & Straw

Great to see you, Tom!

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Each September, the town of Bingen WA hosts a Huckleberry Festival. In addition to the huckleberry ice cream and huckleberry pie, they always put together an engaging lineup of live entertainment. This year we enjoyed a raptor demonstration, a jazz band, a juggler, a swing trio, and a fire dancer/juggler pair.

The entertainment that made the biggest impact, though, was the evening rock band, LiveWire. While primarily an AC/DC tribute band, in their first set they did a veritable tour of 70s and 80s rock: Journey, Foreigner, Guns N' Roses. But the one that really stuck with Anders was their performance of Hot Blooded by Foreigner. (Thankfully, he doesn't really know what the song is about.) We stuck around for the beginning of their second set as well, but by that point it was getting late so we headed for home.

Before the show we had explained to Anders the concept of a tribute band, and that LiveWire was an AC/DC tribute band. But apparently we had neglected to mention that the band's first set wasn't actually AC/DC songs. The next day at home, Anders kept asking for us to play AC/DC. But when we did, he got upset: "Dad, I wanted AC/DC!" What he really wanted was Foreigner and Journey. I'm afraid he might be confused about AC/DC's music for some time. He did notice that the font on the side of his AC/DC Hot Wheels vehicle matched the one that LiveWire used on their drum kit.

Several days later while he was laying in bed, he made the following observation:

Dad, I've noticed that in music they use the word 'tonight' a lot more than the word 'today'.

He then proceeded to demonstrate by singing Hot Blooded and Rockin' Robin, two songs that have probably never been sung in succession in the history of civilization. I think he's going to be a good person to have on your team during a Sing-Down.

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Anders is now a first grader! He actually missed the first day of school, home sick with a mild fever. But he was excited to rejoin his 15 classmates on the second day.

Kindergarten started an hour later than the rest of the school. So last year, Anders rode a dedicated kindergarten bus route which arrived at our house around 8:30am each morning. But starting with first grade, he rides the regular morning bus which stops at our house at 7:13am. That is early, and we are not morning people. Anders, in particular, loves his sleep in the morning. As an example, Anders didn't wake up until 10am on Christmas morning this past year.

In preparation for the earlier bus time, we did shift Anders's bedtime routine 30 minutes earlier when we returned from our trip to the East Coast, before he had a chance to readjust to West Coast time. But man, it's still feels early.

Did I mention it was early? We all look tired.

Despite the early start, he is still loves going to school.

Anders and his 1st Grade teacher, Mrs. Davis

Enjoy First Grade, Anders!

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

8/52 - Birthday Cake, School Lunch, and Alton Brown

We've been long-time fans of Alton Brown, even hosting our own Alton Brown Dinner Parties over the years. So we jumped at the opportunity to see his Alton Brown Live tour.

He used the same crazy props and weird camera angles that were a signature feature of Good Eats.

His live show featured all of the things that he couldn't do on television. As one example, his Food Network censors required that his yeast puppets (see above) emitted 7 burps for each 1 fart. (Who knew?) So for his live show, he reversed the ratio. He made ice cream in 10 seconds with a CO² fire extinguisher, and cooked pizza in a 54,000W, 1 million lumen Mega Bake Oven made from stage lighting, his adult homage to the Easy Bake Oven. The show was great fun.

Sometime between when we bought the tickets (last year) and the night of the show, we started watching Good Eats episodes with Anders. Since we have the episodes from all 14 seasons, we would have Anders choose a food or cooking topic and then consult the Good Eats Fan Page to find a relevant episode to watch. Anders is now also a big fan and thinks Alton is hilarious. Anders kept asking why we didn't buy him a ticket, but we didn't know he was going to be such a big fan! We will be sure to make it an all family outing the next time he comes around.

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Happy Birthday, Grandma Donna! To celebrate, we baked a chocolate cake with coconut butter cream frosting and decorated the top to remind us that spring is on its way.

For her birthday, we gave Grandma Donna a cool picture frame for housing Anders' artwork. The day before the celebration, she and Anders had this conversation:

A: We have a birthday present for you.
GD: What is it?
A: I can't tell you! It's a surprise! ... but the first word is picture and the second word starts with an f.

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Anders's school is small; each grade is only about 12-20 students, and everyone is in the same building from K-12. They didn't have a "hot lunch" program in the school until about two years ago. They have some of the school lunch standards, like hot dogs, fish and chips and the like, but they have worked hard to make their menus more interesting than the average school. For example, currently they have an "International Tuesday" theme featuring different cuisines.

On one Tuesday in February, they featured Thai Chicken and Rice:

A few weeks later, Indian Butter Chicken and Dal:

Parents are welcome to join the students for lunch, so we jumped at the chance.

It's the only place in Trout Lake to get ethnic foods! Besides the school, there are only two other places to eat in town. And at a cost of $3.25 per adult, it's the best meal deal going. I'm sure we will be back.

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

37/52 - Plums, Paddlewheels, and School Tricks

Fall is arriving quickly! Some of our fruit trees are starting to drop their fruit, indicating to us that we should pay attention to them or miss out entirely until next season. The apple and plum trees are loaded, probably because we didn't have them pruned this year.

Our favorite trees to harvest are the plums, one yellow and three Italian. Time to get picking!

Between the three of us, we picked about 4 baskets each of yellow and Italian plums. When we were done, our plum trees were empty.

While we were picking, we found this crazy looking caterpillar in the tree. It looked just like the woolly bears that I was used to from the East Coast, but I'd never seen one with those crazy white spikes.

My instinct was to kill it immediately - after all, what kind of caterpillar is good for fruit trees? - but I decided to hold on to it until I looked it up. Sure enough, it was a woolly bear. And they aren't as detrimental to fruit trees as I had assumed. So this one was spared after all (though I did move him to another section of the yard.)

Rather than try to process all of our plums immediately, we decided to cram the plums into the refrigerator and freezer to save for another day. It looks like we will have some canning sessions in our future.

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Here is the Anders quote of the week.

Donna was describing her latest computer-related woes at dinner one night, when Anders stopped her and said:

Grandma Donna, you should just S-M-I-L-E!

If that's what he's learning in school all day, then we're just fine with that.

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Corinne and I did a quick trip to Seattle for a wedding, leaving Anders in the hands of Grandma. But before we left, we all stopped for the White Salmon Fire Department's Huckleberry Pancake Breakfast.

He ate the whole thing.

While Corinne and I were in Seattle, Anders took a trip down the Columbia on the Sternwheeler with Grandma Donna, Aunt Patsy & Uncle Jim.

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Thanks to everyone who participated in last week's unofficial How to Get Anders To Talk About School idea contest. We had lots of different ideas and approaches.

Focus. Ask about something specific, like "Who did you sit with at lunch today?" or "What letter/number did you practice?"

Trickery. Make something up about their day and let them correct it with actual details: "Too bad it rained all day today. You probably couldn't play outside during recess." Or "I heard there was a monkey in class today."

Patience. Don't ask right after school. Wait until later in the evening. If they bring up something on their own, use that as a launching point.

And if all else fails:

Confinement. Put them in a confined space, such as the passenger seat in a car, and they will eventually spill the beans.

One person suggested asking the teacher for some sort of summary of topics and activities for the week, which seems like a good thing to pursue. Ultimately, the most important thing is that he still loves school. I'm sure we'll slowly figure out what he does there all day. We have discovered that during music they learned the S-M-I-L-E song (see above) and are dancing to the chicken dance. So, there's that.

In the public library; non-fiction section, of course

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

36/52 - Anders Starts Kindergarten

We don't know quite how it happened, but the time has flown and Anders has started kindergarten. It seems like just yesterday when our little Rocket was having his first (unofficial) school photo taken when he was just two.

Anders has been looking forward to this day since before his preschool graduation back in June... primarily because he couldn't wait to ride the school bus.

When the bus arrived, Anders was ready. There was no hesitation or anxiety; he just walked right on.

Corinne and I had to drop off a few things at the school, so we followed the bus to school that day. Anders could barely contain his excitement when he arrived at school. Only 6 kindergarteners took the bus that first morning. For Anders, I think that the bus was the part that he looked forward to the most.

Trout Lake School is a small, K-12 rural school. Each grade has a single class of between 12-22 students. Here in the Gorge, it has a good reputation; in fact, about 20% of the student population lives outside the school district and has chosen to come here. A friend of ours from Trout Lake recently completed his PhD at MIT and had great things to say about how the Trout Lake School prepared him. We couldn't ask for too much more.

Anders' kindergarten class is 16 kids: 6 boys and 10 girls. In that small class, there are TWO other Corinnes: one of the girls, and the mother of one of the boys. (One is spelled differently, and we're not sure about the other.) And we have yet to hear of another Mike or Michael. What are the chances? For the next 13 years, our Corinne will have to share her name with two other people. Having never had to share her name before, she's not very happy about it. I sympathize with her, believe me.

Anders had a great time on his first day. That evening, we stopped by the school again for a quick photo.

Anders drew this picture to capture his new school experience.

Anders is on the driveway (brown/grey), with the irrigation ditch (blue) flowing underneath.

For Corinne and I, we have mixed feelings about this transition. It doesn't seem possible that Anders is old enough to be in school already. It wasn't that long ago that he was just learning to walk and talk.

On the other hand, this is the beginning of the anticipated 'hermit' stage of our existence. The school bus to the full-day kindergarten stops at the end of our driveway, so we no longer have the daily preschool commute to Hood River of the past two years. We work out of our home now, so we have no work commute at all. Basically, we don't have to leave the house until we run out of food. Our biggest problem so far seems to be that our motivation for working wanes quite a bit when Anders comes home at 3:30 each afternoon.

As a final note, we have a request to the other parents out there: how do you get your children to tell you about what happened in school that day? Anders is already giving the "nothing" and "I don't remember" answers when asked about school. He's growing up!

Congrats, Anders! Have a great time. You'll do great.

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders