Fun Finds

We got a chance to hang out with my Mom in person (!) yesterday, which was awesome. We have been extra careful with her since she has a few covid risk factors, but it had really been too long. Turns out that Rappahannock County Park is almost exactly halfway between Charlottesville and Winchester so we met there.

Melina and Diane were SUPER excited to see their Nana. And the park itself turned out to be a really fun discovery. It has trails, a nice spot to get in the river, tennis, basketball, a skate park, playground, etc. It’s even a designated “dark sky” area so we’ll have to go back sometime at the new moon and do some stargazing. We’ve probably driven past it 50 times over the years and never stopped.

Speaking of things we’ve gone right past and never known about, the girls (especially Karen and Diane) are have a really good time with geocaching. I think they are up to twenty “finds” at this point, all around town. Diane even has a special backpack that she brings on the excursions, filled with all sort of little treasures that she can “trade” with the adventurers who have been there before (and after). We even got Pop Pop to join us for one outing.

With their abundance of free time, Melina and Diane have also found a way to get cookies whenever they want. They figured out that while we won’t buy them cookies very often, we have a really hard time saying no to them baking cookies. They have made snicker-doodles, chocolate chip, jam-filled thumbprint, and Mexican wedding cookies.  Well played kids.

Our daily nature walks continue, and while their hasn’t been as much wildlife lately (too hot!) we did find our first egret at the lake. And the deer seem to be losing their fear of humans more and more by the day. They are brazen.

In the spirit of “finding fun” I’m also including these two photo-shoots (from our weekly Zimet family challenges):

First was me goofing around with macro shots of raspberries and blackberries (this went on longer than you might think is humanly possible)

And second this photo-shoot with Melina and Diane. Because it was every bit as fun as it looks 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

41

I turned 41 this week. I feel like I can remember a time when that would have seemed old. But now I just shrug and think “that sounds about right”.

Karen really rocked the whole birthday thing this year and made me saltenas and a tres leches cake. I married well.

The girls were both very sweet to me too. Diane painted a hedgehog statue for our garden, and Melina got me some bow-ties (which I’ve never owned before). She thought I’d look nice in them. Very sweet on both counts.

Formal-wear aside, poor Melina is having a challenging week. She’s got hormones flooding her adolescent brain and forcing a nasty Jekyll/Hyde effect. You know, if Jekyll constantly sang showtunes and gave hugs from behind, and if Hyde left mean (but hilarious) notes everywhere:

We love her very much.  But this had better be early onset teen angst and not a build-up to the real thing <shudder>.

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Blackberries are everywhere all of a sudden, and we’ve been picking/eating them while we walk. Diane got a particularly big batch this week, and wanted to make ice cream. So she and Karen made blackberry sorbet, garnished with lemon balm. Pretty swanky.

Note: this bird and Diane are competing to see who can eat more berries. Diane is winning.

Every time I think we are going to run out of fun things to do, someone (usually Karen) comes up with something new. This weekend she decided it would be fun for us to try geocaching. Basically, you use GPS to try to find containers that other people have hidden and left hints to find. Sometimes they have a log to write your name in, sometimes there are little goodies. It’s a low-stakes global treasure hunt. I think we are about 5-10 years behind on this one, but WOW there are a lot of things hidden, even just around our neighborhood.

Note: here we are after discovering our first cache!

One more thing I have to mention this week. Diane is so insightful. She comes up with really smart ideas/explanations/concepts that other people (including me) just don’t.

We watched Independence Day last week and had this exchange:

Movie (Jeff Goldblum): the aliens are using our own satellites against us!
Diane: <turns to us> they (the US Army) are going to have to destroy the satellites!
Karen and Zach: <dumbfounded> Ummm…yeah, that’s a really good idea.

Note: none of the screenwriters thought of this. I’ve probably seen the movie a dozen times and never thought of that. But…duh. We can’t destroy the aliens, but if the aliens need our satellites to coordinate a global attack, we can certainly take out our own satellites.

Here’s another gem from tonight:

Diane: I caught a firefly in my hand!
Zach: Awesome, is it lighting up?
Diane: No.
Zach: I wonder why that is?
Diane: It’s probably so his friends won’t fall into the same trap.

I mean…probably not, but if fireflies were smart and cared about their friends, that’s exactly what they would do.

 

Back at it

Somehow it’s been a month since our last blog post. I’m going to attempt to get caught up all in one post. Here we go…

We went to Ocean City!

We took two wonderful weeks away to hang out in Ocean City. We even got to bring Zellie! Thank you Georgia and Jerry for saving summer 🙂 If you are interested, our Ocean City pictures are all here.

Melina and Diane are still cooking!

Melina is a really good cook when she puts her mind to it. And Diane is a top-notch sous chef and cookie/cupcake/cheeseboard decorator.

Note: these outfits weren’t for anything in particular. The girls are just funny.

We spent a night making this!

 

We found lots of cool fungus!

Note: yes, that squirrel is eating a mushroom.

Melina and Diane made a carnival!

Note: they had games, tokens, prizes, everything. And they thought it up completely on their own. Super cool.

We went blueberry picking!

Note: and even more importantly, we made blueberry pie.

The girls created a new hero – “Super Dad”!

Note: there was also a comic book. What an awesome Father’s day present!

We found all sort of cool critters!

Note: the deer and bunnies seem to be losing some of their fear of people. Not sure why. Diane got close enough to almost touch a bunny this week. This deer was really close too, and we had Zellie with us. Weird. Also, one of those critter pictures is actually a pineapple. We found it floating in the lake, in what I can only assume was a pina colada experiment gone horribly wrong.

We watched (tiny) fireworks!

 

Diane built a blanket fort!

Construction was preceded by this conversation:

Diane: can I build a fort in the basement today?
Zach: yes, but you need to keep it in the playroom.
Diane: why?
Zach: well, when I have meetings people can see what’s behind me, and I don’t think it would be professional to have a blanket fort.
Diane: you can just tell them I built it.

Because you know, I could just say at the start of all my meetings “don’t worry about the blanket fort guys, it’s not mine.”

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So there you have it, our month in review. All in all, a pretty good time. I’ll try to get back to more regular posts now!

Bubble of happiness

Baker Butler had a “parade” this week. The teachers and staff went through neighborhoods in a motorcade, waving to the kids. This is the kind of thing that should have been dopey, but it actually ended up feeling really special. Melina and Diane were SO EXCITED to see their favorite teachers, Karen teared up, and I got to see my buddy Mr. Charles (the custodian). Maybe the highlight of our week. We are lucky to have such caring educators in our community.o

We are still taking walks every day, and the wildlife around our house keeps changing. There seem to be fewer waterbirds (nooooo!) but we are getting all sorts of cool dragonflies and damselflies:

 

We are also starting to see turtles laying eggs, and (one of our favorites) tiny baby frogs!

 

The girls are finding creative ways to entertain themselves now that school is out. A few favorites: baking, painting rocks for the nature paths, archery, and (apparently) balancing coins on toes:

Outside of our little bubble of happiness, this has been another pretty lousy week for our country. We’ve been trying to use the nationwide protests as a learning opportunity for the girls. But this is hard stuff to explain. I feel like when I try, I end up making it overly simplistic. Which is a shame. Because the simplistic messages (racism is bad!) only seem to apply to “other people”, not us. Karen is MUCH better at this than I am. She spent about two hours with the girls participating in a Zoom seminar about systemic racism. 

The quote I’ve heard that makes the most sense to me is this: “White privilege doesn’t mean your life hasn’t been hard. It just means the color of your skin isn’t one of the things that makes it harder.” I know I said simplistic isn’t good, but that feels succinct and hard to argue with.

Here’s to hoping the next generation makes the world a better place. I think they will. After learning about everything going on this week, Melina felt inspired to make this Black Lives Matter poster. Feels like a good place to end the post:

 

A little bad but mostly good

It happened again.

Zellie got bitten by another dog. I think it’s the fourth time. It got her right under the eye. Some stupid guy was walking his stupid whippet (this may be redundant). He said “he normally doesn’t like other dogs but it looks like he wants to play” and before I knew it the emaciated little bastard bit Zellie.

Note: This also tells me that Devo had it backwards. When a whippet comes along, it’s going to be a problem.

So I was pissed, but Zellie kept things in perspective. As long as she gets long walks, a nice place to rest, some sunshine, and the occasional dog treat, life is good. She hung out the rest of the day in the front yard with a bloody face, happy as can be.

 

The rest of our week was really quite nice.

The girls decided to paint a bunch of the seashells and rocks that had accumulated in our basement (does that happen to everyone?) Diane then distributed their artwork along one of the trails near our house, to make things a little more magical.

 

On another walk, the girls come across a field full of brand new dragonflies drying their wings. At first it was fun just to watch them. Then Diane figured out she could catch them. Then we figured out we could pick them up!

And by the end we figured out that they had no fear of humans whatsoever:

 

I was able to scratch the “fun with electronics” itch twice this week. Bonus points for not even spending money. The first time was fixing the sound in the 4Runner. Somehow the two front door speakers had gotten disconnected, which is easy to fix except you have to take apart the doors to get to them:

The second time was setting up an outdoor movie. We went super low key, and just hung a sheet on the shed. But it was still pretty awesome.

Note: we watched High School Musical 3. The girls danced, Karen drank wine, and I plotted how to make the setup cooler. Our friends the Medders hung out from a respectable distance.

More odds and ends…

We got a hammock this week. While deciding which one, I probably read a dozen Amazon reviews that said some version of “I’ve always wanted a hammock and it turns out they are really cheap and I’m an adult now”. Good point.

 

I had this exchange with Melina yesterday:

M: Can you help me? I’ve been trying for the last 5 minutes. I even wrote on my feet!
Z: Sure. What am I helping you with?
M: Math.
Z: I don’t think you are doing math right.

 

We found some strange birds on one of our walks. They were pretty big, but had weird tufts of hair all over. After a little bit of head scratching, we figured out that they were fledgling grackles.

 

Diane has a bed with a trundle in her room. So two beds. She has decided that she likes to pull out the trundle and sleep under her bed on the floor. She has done this every night this week.

This seems like a decent place to end for the week.

 

 

 

Shark and Bear

This was the last week of school.

It’s already been a strange imitation of elementary school for two months – they have been learning, but it just doesn’t feel like “real” school. Still, not having that extra bit of structure during the day is going to be hard for the girls. Camps are canceled too, which is what they (and we) normally look forward to over the summer.

My first thought was that they are going to have a summer “like we used to have growing up”. Meaning that you get kicked out of the house every morning and you just play in the yard/woods until it’s time to eat. But when I was growing up, there were usually other kids to meet up with outside. We have kids everywhere in this neighborhood but they can’t play together this summer. So once again – a strange imitation of something familiar. Fortunately, the girls have each other.

Having school just end felt too anticlimactic. Especially for Melina. Diane is going into 3rd grade, so she is comfortably in the middle of her elementary school experience. But Melina is transitioning into middle school – she is now a Sutherland Shark and not a Baker Butler Bear. So we went over to Baker Butler and took some “graduation” photos. Note: the cap is a black plastic folder duct taped to construction paper.

Note: The girls’ bus (#99) happened to be parked on the side of the school

Later that day, Melina and I had this exchange:

M: Can you believe that I’ll be going to college in 5 more years?
Z: No, you won’t.
M: 6 years?
Z: Nope.
M: But (counting on her fingers) 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 12th, right?
Z: What comes after 10th?
M: <laughing>
Z: <now also laughing with Melina> I don’t think you need to worry about college.

This was a notable conversation not because of her terrible math, but because she was laughing too at the end, clearly in on the joke instead of feeling offended. That feels like an important social development. Should serve her well in college, whenever that is.

…

We saved a bird this week:

At the end of our morning walk, we saw a cat watching birds. Then, we saw two cardinals. One cardinal was on the ground, and the other was dive bombing it. The cardinal on the ground was chirping and trying to hop away – and given the choice between us, a cat, and the other bird, it decided we were the smallest threat. It hopped really close to me and was favoring a wing. I hovered over the top of him, which kept the other animals away. After a few minutes like this (my hand was 6 inches away from him), it seemed pretty clear that he couldn’t fly. Melina ran back to the house and got a shoe box, and we put him inside and took him home.

The whole way back Karen and I explained that he was hurt, and that he would probably not make it. We didn’t want the girls to be devastated when it happened. Melina said she was going to name him, which I promptly discouraged. I heard her lean over and whisper to her sister “his name is baby”. Crap.

“Baby” spent the morning in our laundry room, in the shoe box, on top of a heating pad. We put some shredded tissues in the box with him too, because the Internet told us to do that. My home office is the basement now, so I heard the occasional chirp. After a few hours we decided to go outside and open the box. Expectations were low. But as soon as we opened it he flew right out, and up to a high tree branch! We think he may have just been stunned. The girls were thrilled to have helped him, and Karen and I got to breathe a big sigh of relief.

Graduation and cardinal-saving were pretty big highlights, but this week was filled with so much more!

We got to take two really nice (socially-distanced) walks. The first was a creek adventure with our friends the Gleasons:

And the second was a lake loop (plus mulberry picking) with Pop-Pop:

We also spotted our Osprey again this week. He perched up in a tree across the lake, and we decided that Karen and Melina would keep an eye on him while Diane and I went around the lake to get a closer look. Even with 4 people, two cell phones, and an osprey that didn’t change trees, I’d say it took about 20 minutes for Diane and I to find him once we got to the other side of the lake. He could be watching us every day and we would have no idea. He was way up in the tree and it was hard to get a good look at him, but at one point he started cleaning his talons and I got this shot:

Nature is awesome. In addition to our cardinal and osprey encounters, we are continuing to find more cool bugs. The dragonflies are starting to come out (this one is a calico pennant), and we also found a cool horned passalus beetle in the yard. The beetle was especially neat because I see these all the time but never realized they had a big horn (don’t notice it looking down, you need to be on their level).

This week was also our 16 year wedding anniversary. We kind of felt like we already celebrated when we did stuff for our 20 year dating anniversary a few weeks ago. But we got out our honeymoon photo album from Costa Rica and showed the girls the neat stuff that we did and the fun places we stayed. Maybe in 4 years (20th wedding anniversary) we will go back with the kids and re-visit some of our favorites. All the Costa Rica talk also made us hungry for the “desayuno típico”, so we put that together for breakfast. So. Darn. Good.

So here’s to the next 16 years – to bears, sharks, birds, friends, family, and whatever adventures are waiting for us!

Karen’s note: in more depressing news, we have had to cancel three trips so far during this pandemic. Our big trip to Mexico that was supposed to be in June, or *backup* trip to the Eastern Shore to make up for cancelling the Mexico trip, and also our trip to Portugal and Spain in October (our flight was cancelled and we were forced to make the decision this weekend). It is devastating, all the other wonderful stuff we have been doing definitely helps to soften the blow.

 

Abundance

The theme for my little brother’s photo challenge this week was “abundance”. This was a good one – can mean so many different things to different people. So here’s our week of abundance (with photos from the challenge at the bottom).

We have an abundance of trails in our neighborhood, which we’ve been giddily exploring. But it was hot yesterday, and the kids (ok, mostly Melina) weren’t their usual happy selves as we rounded the lake. Their was an abundance of complaining. We were almost ready to call it quits when we saw a red tailed hawk perched in a nearby tree. We took that as a sign to explore a path just past the hawk that we hadn’t tried yet. And it was awesome!

The path starts out by crossing a creek with stepping stones. Whether it was the heat or a complete inability to balance, the girls decided it would be better to take off their socks and shoes and walk through the water. They did not put their shoes back on for the rest of the day – and we walked a LOT.

There were lots of turns and creek crossings, but the coolest one was a fallen tree. People have leveled off the top a bit so that it’s easier to walk on, and there are stone steps wedged into the upturned root ball. It felt like we were in a jungle.

At the end of the trail we noticed a big dog staring at us through the woods. I was a little nervous because (a) I thought it might be lost, and (b) I didn’t know if it was friendly. Karen looked on NextDoor to see if anyone had posted about a lost dog. Turns out lots of people had seen this dog on the trail before, and it lives on a nearby farm. People said that it comes down to the creek all the time…with it’s goat friend. So there you have it – an awesome trail with creek crossings and log bridges, patrolled by a resident farm dog and his best friend the goat.

By the time we got back to the house the girls just wanted more time outside, so we set up the sprinkler to let them clean themselves off / play. Hooray for an abundance of clean water:

 

Earlier this week we had a bit of a scare. I was in the basement working when the girls rushed down the stairs and said “Mommy needs you, come quick!”. I followed them outside and there was Zellie, covered in blood. It looked pretty bad, but she also didn’t seem upset. On closer inspection she had ripped her ear on a rose bush (she got all tangled up in it and had tried to yank her way out). An abundance of blood had run down her head and all over her neck, so it was pretty spectacular. Apparently this happens sometimes when dogs cut their ears. Not too dangerous, but it’s also hard to get the bleeding to stop. We tried cleaning up her ear and putting some pressure on it, but every time she would shake her head and it would bleed again. This went on for about an hour, and while good-natured, she was clearly tired of me pinching her ear. Eventually we got it to stop using a paper towel and a chip clip, then migrated to a band-aid afterwards.

This was the only bad part of Zellie’s week. The rest of the time she is living the dream.

Karen finally ascended to the top of Mount Sourdough last week. And with a mighty victory yell declared her triumph over baking and yeast-bound mortals.

As the weather heats up we are starting to see an abundance of new critters. The bullfrogs are out in force, and we are starting to see some neat insects. The green one is a six-spotted tiger beetle and the ladybug-like one is a swamp milkweed leaf beetle. Note the red mulberries – we are probably just a couple of weeks away from a bumper crop.

We’ve also had an abundance of the macabre on our walks this week. Small dead animals keep showing up on the path. I think death has a name though, and that name is…Pipski. Aside from Pipski’s murderous tendencies, she also enjoys rolling in grass and playing with Diane.

Back to the photo challenge…

This week I decided to set up a mini “studio” in the basement. That just means a tripod and 2 pieces of poster board. But it let me indulge in some “staged” shots. Here are my two favorites for “abundance”:

GMO

Escape to Tequila Island

 

So that’s our strange (but lovely) life in quarantine this week. Hope you are all doing great!

Karen’s note: after trying and failing to make bread from my active sourdough starter in March, I’d given up and relegated the starter to the fridge for occasional feedings. But last week I did some searches and apparently baking sourdough bread has since become all the rage online for beginners and folks without the typical ingredients and equipment, so there is now a wealth of hints and tricks out there on how to make do with what you have. Honestly, it was easy once I had that info. Yay for the internets! But I have to admit, finally making sourdough bread from a starter was a bit of a letdown. It wasn’t as easy and delicious as the other breads we’ve made, and took a day and a half to make so just doesn’t feel worth it. Oh, well. I did make sourdough bread bowls for soup the other day and that was fun! But I’m back to using yeast for a while as long as I can get it.

Happy Mothers Day!

Happy Mothers Day to Karen, my mom, and all of the wonderful moms in our lives!

We celebrated yesterday, and took a family trip to Chiles orchard in Crozet. We usually do the “pick your own” strawberries there on Mothers Day weekend, but this year we just picked up from their “drive-thru”.

They had a good system in place, so it really didn’t seem that strange. A lot of places are like that. I took my first trip to Trader Joe’s this week and they were amazing. I queued up outside, spaced carefully apart from everyone else in line. They were only letting in a certain number of people at a time, with someone working the door to make sure. Inside everyone had masks, the cashiers had plastic shields, and there were printed footprints to tell you where to stand. Cheerful (but covid-19 related) signs were everywhere. I think if Trader Joe’s managed our national coronavirus response we’d all be much better off.

We are getting used to wearing face masks at stores. It’s funny how quickly things become normal. What will be REALLY weird is when we see people bare-faced in a store and that seems strange. Our masks so far have been basic, but one of Karen’s friends just sent us some much nicer ones that she made. She has actually made thousands so far – really an amazing thing to do for people. I’m digging mine.

This week also marked a major (well at least for us) milestone. Monday was the 20 year anniversary of our first date! We recreated our outing to Beaver Creek reservoir, with the girls and Zellie in tow. The weather was spectacular, the girls were well behaved, we even realized that we brought the same frisbee from 20 years ago! Time flies by. But we just get better looking.

 

A few more fun things this week…

We found a raccoon! This guy was pretty far up a tree, with angry crows flying all around. We’re pretty sure he found a nest. He looked a little guilty.

Diane wore her parrot dress and went running in the wind! (holding poop bags)

Karen made english muffins – from scratch!

Diane made an “obstacle course” for our family on the driveway using chalk!

Melina measured the PH of water samples from the lakes!

And so much more! We had a good week. Hope you all did too 🙂

C:DCIM100GOPROGOPR1483.GPR

 

 

 

Birthdays, Bullfrogs, Baking, Birds, Bummer

Alliteration!

Our friends and neighbors the Medders celebrated their daughters 16th birthday this week. Since she obviously couldn’t get together with friends, they asked for everyone to send in birthday wishes via video. Here’s our contribution, which was super fun to make!

My little brother Nick started a weekly photo challenge for the family. Which is awesome (thanks Nick!). This week’s theme: “Spring Emerging”. I went with the bullfrog, but the bunny was a close second. I kinda like the iris pictures too.

Karen is still baking up a storm, as part of her quest to thoroughly spoil us in quarantine (she even made graham crackers). But the rest of us are getting in on the act a little too. Melina and Diane proudly made their first monkey bread, and I made my first cheesecake (using those graham crackers). On a scale of 1 to 10 it was probably only a 5, but hey – it’s still cheesecake.

Some new birds to add to our “photographed” list this week: ring necked duck (juvenile), black-capped chickadee, downy woodpecker (female). We keep getting osprey sightings too, but he’s camera shy.

We are a little bummed out about one thing this week: our Mexico vacation. It’s pretty clear that this just isn’t going to happen this year. Karen did such a good job planning this, and it’s a trip we’ve talked about for a long time. But, we are looking at a few short, domestic trips (probably just in Virginia) to scratch the travel itch as best we can.

Diane and Evelyn

We were all itching to get out of the house and go somewhere different yesterday morning, so we drove over to Chris Greene Lake Park. It’s a nice local park about 4 miles from our house, and people usually go there for the small sandy beach or the dog park. But we were there for the trails around the lake. We expected it to be closed off (we were going to park on the road and walk in), but the gatehouse was open with a nice man telling us to make sure we practiced social distancing if we passed anyone on the trails. Not a problem – pretty sure our kids think the minimum safe distance is 20 feet.

It’s a pretty lake, and this time of the year the wild azaleas are blooming. We also saw some fun plants like cinnamon ferns and showy orchis.

Note: apparently you can call it either a showy orchis or a show orchid. Orchis just sounds cooler.

We were hoping to see some more neat water birds, but no luck there. Just a few geese that were mad at us. We did find our first toad of the year though, and also a spicebush swallowtail butterfly (they are everywhere in summer, but this is early). Melina climbed a tree, possibly to distract me from her horrid attitude.

 

But the real highlight of the day ended up being a small duskywing moth that Diane found. She stared at it on a leaf for a few minutes, then offered a finger. It hopped on happily. I took some pictures (shocking, I know) and we started walking again. But the moth really liked being on Diane’s finger and decided to stay there. We walked the rest of the way back to the parking lot (probably 2 miles) with it perched contentedly. Diane was thrilled with this arrangement, and named the moth Evelyn.

Diane set Evelyn down in a field near the parking lot, where she hopped off and flew away happily. This was a relief, as we (at least Karen and I) really didn’t want to take Evelyn home. Diane had lots of questions for us in the car. What do moths eat? What eats moths? How long do moths live? By the time we got home, she was referring to Evelyn as “her best moth friend” and hoping that she “has a long and happy life.” She even cried a little realizing that she wouldn’t see Evelyn anymore. The kid has a heart of pure gold. After a little while she decided to make a sketch of Evelyn:

 

A few other highlights of the last few days:

We keep seeing beautiful blue tree swallows diving and darting around the lake. They have been way to fast to photograph, but one decided to sit still for me (I’m pretty sure out of pity):

Diane also made a second cheeseboard, possibly more impressive than the first. She did not pour the wine (but we’ll get her trained eventually)

Melina and I found a big wolf spider in our yard, carrying an egg sac. Apparently wolf spiders are the only spiders that carry their live young. When the eggs hatch, the baby spiders will ride on her back for weeks.

The girls decided to stage a puppet show for us. Here’s the sign (a little hard to read). The whole thing is gold, so let me just write it down.

Puppet show industries presents:
the owl
By: the sister act
(remember this is not professional)

Note: we’ve seen a lot of birds the last few weeks. None of them were owls.