When Dad's away...

Daddy went out for a while today, mixing geocaching with Xmas gift-giving in the nerdy way that only he can...and while he was out, Ben and Mommy were busy...

They went shopping for cookie supplies and then immersed themselves in the cookie-making process for hours of fun!

Ben liked mixing the dough up, especially when he got to "clean" the mixer-blades...


After the mixing and such was complete, they decided to add some Christmas coloration to the cookies, so we ended up with some red and green cookies...which they arranged in a "tree", topped with a decorative tree that Ben made in school this week...


Once the cookie-making fun was complete (note huge pile of edible fun), they moved on to painting...


Warning: Art Shot Ahead!!! I thought that this was a pretty cool picture of the paper plate in which they mixed colors of paint to make such colors as "Gurple"...


It looks from the pictures as though they had a lot of fun, and I, for one, am very glad that they did it all in the order that they did...

Mom's Back!!!

Mom was away this week at a conference, and boy are we happy that she's back!

We all slept in a bit this morning, then got up to our hot beverages of choice, and to open some of the Christmas cards that came in the mail while Mom was gone. We got the lights on, a fire going in the upstairs fireplace (the downstairs stove is always going...it heats our house), some Christmas music on the CD-shuffler, and Mom and Ben assembled a "Gingerbread House" that came in one of the magazines he subscribes to.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful (ish)
but the fire, and company, is so delightful
and since we've no place to go, let it snow, let it blow, and be cold...

Thanksgiving Break

This first shot is of Cedar's nose, and has nothing to do with Thanksgiving...except that I'm thankful for Cedar being so cute...


On Wednesday, we went to the Bronx Zoo...WOW!!! You can get so close to the beasties it's amazing...



The tiger was one of the first things that we saw...



If you look really closely, you can see the tiger hidden in the leaves in this shot...his natural camouflage helps him blend in...


One of our favorite stops the whole day was the mouse house...it had rodents from all over the world...from the very tiny to the enorm-mouse...



Gail liked looking this reticulated python in the eye...it was about 20 feet long, and tracked us when we moved in front of the glass...


Ben hitched a ride on D's shoulders on the way out...we stopped by the bird house which was unexpectedly awesome...



On Thanksgiving day, we cooked in the morning while waiting for family...14 people came to supper...Ben loves marshmallowing the sweet-potatoes...



Ben and D and Brad were all quite dashing...


Here Ben can be seen explaining something to his great-grandmother, but I'm not sure what...


This is the spread that we ended up enjoying...it, and the company, was a delight...



Ben loves Captain Ketchup and he loves Brad...the two together make for a great time to be savored...



We all watched "The Pirates of Penzance", a longtime favorite of our family...we can (and often do) sing each and every segment of what must be the best Gilbert and Sullivan play ever...


Ben's Anti-Sarah can be seen here taking an important phone call from the IBWWFI (International Brotherhood of Where's Waldo Fans and Impersonators)...


Friday, Muz and D took us to the Big Apple Circus...it was awesome...here Ben and D can be seen clowning around before the start of the show...



This is a cool shot of D and Ben during a spectacular horse show...the horses were precision-trained, and ran by the guys with about 18 inches of clearance...



Saturday we headed out to Brooklyn to visit Sarah and Cynthia's new place, and had an awesome day! We went to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, enjoyed a festival of popcorn, watched some questionable foreign sci-fi, played Mahjong, and went out to a spectacular restaurant in their fabulous neighborhood...


A pretty shot of a gorgeous part of the BBG...



The bonsai exhibit is breathtaking...some of these amazing plants (pieces of art?) are hundreds of years old...


The various pines were my favorite of the bonsais...



A sweet orchid and epiphyte room held tons of beautiful flowers and plants...



The desert room was also cool, although some of the spiky plants were a little to angry-looking for me...they seemed as though they might be able to jump at you...



In a temperate-climate room, this cork plant grabbed my eye...


There were still some roses in the rose garden segment of the BBG on our walk home...it was a beautiful afternoon and a nearly perfect day...

One more outside Sunday

Ben and I headed over to Lake Placid this morning to try out another new playground...the extensive and incredible one at the elementary school...it's made out of wood, has turrets and towers, swings and slides, bridges and tunnels, and all sorts of other fun features that drove Ben wild during a marathon play session...



There are physical elements designed to challenge kids of all ages, from toddlers to teens, and Ben tried out most of them...some he was scared of, but would hold my hand to get across...he especially loved exploring the crawlways and tunnels that only someone his size could fit into...



The playground was originally built in 1989, but has been renovated and improved upon often since that time...it's a great testament to the people and businesses of Lake Placid that the money found its way into the project, and keeps coming...


Ben really liked the components that moved, and are interactive, like this car...there are balance beams and swinging bridges and an island that moves like a raft on water...



The biggest challenge for me was finding spots from which I could see and track Ben as he made his way through the playground...a couple of times, I found myself trapped by narrow passages or walls, and I could hear Ben giggling as he scurried away through tiny passages or across lilliputian bridges...I soon found that finding my way to high ground was a help...



He liked the elements made from tires and tire material that had bounce and give...he had some fun playing with a couple of kids who came after, and left before, we did...a 2 year-old and another 4 year-old...


He had a fun time playing a modified version of hide-and-seek with me...I'd close my eyes, give him a minute to lose himself in the tunnels and bridges, and then try to find him...the giggles inevitably brought me to him, although I had to appear confused for a bit anyway...


He was unsure of this bridge, although he had an easier time going up than down...don't know why...



After the playground, we headed into town and hit the best used bookstore in Lake Placid, With Pipe and Book...it also sells pipe tobacco, so the whole store smells like a favorite uncle...we found Ben a great book that I remembered from my childhood, and also got one for me...we then went next door to the Bookstore Plus for a couple of dinosaur books...and then home

we don't have many more outside warm (ish) and sunny (ish) days, so we had fun with this one...we got home, had some lunch, and Ben tumbled comatose into bed for (hopefully) a long nap...exhausted...

Caching with Ben

Ben and I headed out this morning to do some geocaching down in Long Lake...there were four new ones placed by a friend in the last week or so...2 of them were hidden specifically with kids in mind, and the other 2 were also a lot of fun...


One of the kids' caches was near a picnic pavilion in Long Lake...Ben thought the stage was awesome, so after finding the cache, he went up and performed a little dance for me...


On the way to another cache, Ben found this great rock to climb up on...he likes climbing and jumping off of every big rock we come across while exploring the Adks...



The next cache we found was cleverly hidden in a cluster of trees, but Ben spotted it from about 40 feet away...he's developing what we in the business call "Geo-Sense"...this particular cache required us to come up with an original limerick involving geocaching...

There once were two boys from Lake Clear,
who went caching without any fear,
they roamed hither and yon,
climbed tall mountains, crossed ponds,
and in general were glad they live here...

Geocaching with Jamie and Ben
can be dangerous now and again,
we slip and we slide,
lose small bits of our hide,
and have oft poked ourselves with our pen

On the way back to the car, we found someone's abandoned lawn mower...Ben liked riding the thing, and before leaving we marked the spot using the GPS, so that it can get picked up some time as a CITO opportunity...


We left in search of the next set of caches, and found our way out towards the Buttermilk Falls end of Long Lake, which was a treat...with a gorgeous river running by a couple of remote lean-tos and a great array of glacial erratics (which I love just as much as Ben does, although I seldom do the scale-and-leap thing off of them...)...


We climbed over and under big downed trees, and found the caches without a hitch...having a great time along the way...Ben loved his trade...a squirting pen...


I am completely in love with my "back-up" (moving in on primary) GPS unit...it's a Garmin Foretrex 101...it leaves my hands free, runs for 24 continuous hours (weeks of caching) on 2 AAA batteries, and has fun bells and whistles like time until arrival at my destination...


We found this cool gravestone down by the river/lake, between a pair of leantos...no cemetery, just the one stone...Ben asked if we could look at his bones...

Our Pal
Robert Chapman
December 20, 1936
A Real Woodsman
A Native of Hoosick Falls

After finding the 4th cache, Ben and I found this huge Birch tree grown and wrapped around an enormous erratic...he wanted to crawl into the gap you can just see between the tree and the top of the rock...


After a successful morning of geocaching...we headed, of course, to Ben's favorite restaurant, "Woods" (aka the Long Lake Diner) for a spectacular lunch (as always)...the pictures below shows you some of what he likes about the place...tree infor trim around the wall, warm wood paneling, USGS maps of the Adks under glass on all of the tables...


Hand-cut sweet-potato frieds, nice salad on the burgers...


Home-made chips and yummy grilled ham and cheese sandwiches...


After lunch we went to the nice little playground for a quick play to settle our tummies before the drive back to our neck of the woods...Ben braved the climbing wall again, but was nervous about going down the tunnel slide headfirst...next time maybe...

a man's (or little boy's) reach should exceed his grasp, else what's a heaven for?

After the playground, we stopped at the beach for a little fun down by the water's edge...what a view!!!


The Long Lake town beach is in a beautiful spot, and will be a fun visit next year once it gets warm again...although Ben assured me today that he would be ok if we went in...


Our last stop before getting home was Shaheen's Market in Tupper Lake, it has lots of great stuff, including a butcher's department to die for...the only oddity is that they are a cash only store...but knowing this, I always make sure to have some cash on hand so that we can enjoy some great steaks (as we did tonight...)



All in all, another wonderful day exploring the Adks with Ben through geocaching...