Chainsaw Training

I've been trying to call Auntie Geek all day and I finally got through. However, she didn't have time to talk, because she's in the middle of chainsaw training. Wouldn't want to interrupt that now, would we...

Day Trip to Harpers Ferry

During the week, we wake Geek Girl up between 7:15 and 7:30 am and it takes an hour of constant parental harassment to get her fed, changed, and to school on time. However, sometimes on the weekend she'll wake up on her own, cheerfully, at 7 am (unless we have plans and want her to wake up early--then she sleeps like the dead while we grumble).

Yesterday she woke up at 7 am, so we decided to delay our plans to go to the National Gallery of Art and go on a day trip. And amazingly, by 9:15 am, we were on the road, even after our usual Sunday morning pancake breakfast.

Last year we purchased a National Parks Annual Pass and it's nice because we can use it for admission at Great Falls National Park, Manassas National Battle Field, and so many other places, including Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. It took us just under 90 minutes to get there and we started first at the Visitors Center and then caught the shuttle bus down to the lower town.

After walking along the river and looking at goose footprints, we got hungry, so we stopped for lunch and a picture.


We then crossed the footbridge over the Potomac River and in doing so were hiking on both the C&O Canal Towpath and the Appalachian Trail. We walked for a bit and then returned to Harpers Ferry to admire the joining of the Potomac River on the left and the Shenandoah River on the right.


Geek Girl was tired from the walk, so we sat to rest and take some silly pictures.



We had one more stop before heading home and that was to hike up hill to Jefferson Rock. Apparently, Thomas Jefferson found the view from this rock quite impressive.

Here's a picture of all the Geeks in front of a pretty church on the way up the hill.


A view of the rock as we get closer. The sandstone pillars were placed in the 1850s to save the uppermost slab.


Geek Girl and the information sign.


And the view downstream from near the rock.

Fun in the snow

This has not been as snowy a winter as last year. We've had a couple of 1 - 2 inch storms and then last month we had the storm that resulted in some very long commutes home for some unfortunate folks.

The Sunday after the storm, Daddy Geek gave Geek Girl the option of going sledding or playing in the snow in the backyard. She picked the backyard.

I think this is the first stage of digging out dinosaur nests.


Check out these big branches that came down from the trees!


All bundled up and warm!


The snow owl.

Christmas and Chaos

The desktop computer's hard drive died about a week and a half ago. The same day the cold water tap wouldn't run in the morning and the day before our first significant snow of the season. And Daddy Geek was in California for the week. But, we don't think the pipes burst (cross fingers) and Daddy Geek's Christmas project is to install a new hard drive.

But Santa came by on a fire truck! Here's the decorated and music-blaring fire truck going one way down the street -- see Santa in the upper left corner.


And coming back down after turning around in the court. Fireman walked alongside handing out candy canes and fire safety reminders.


This is what happens when Geek Girl (with a little help from her friends) has free rein of the empty basement bedroom. Just a little bit of chaos.


And here she is on Christmas morning, playing with her new HexBug nanos and Zoobles.


Happy Holidays everyone!

Brrrrrr....

25.5 deg F with a wind chill of 17 deg F. I think it's okay to drive Geek Girl to school instead of walking. Dear Canada, you can have your cold winds back.

Rant: Fairness

If you spend any time with 7-year-olds, you'll know that fairness is an important concept. Unfortunately, life is not always fair. But it really gets me frustrated when unfairness is due to the thoughtlessness of another adult.

When a kid has a birthday, they often bring treats to share with their classmates at lunch. This is easily done since the kids sit together by class. Well, today a kid in another class must have had a birthday and brownies were brought in for the class. I don't know if what happened next was by design, or spur of the moment, but then the mother in question proceeded to dole out brownies to kids in the other six classes, if they rode the same bus as her child! That means that some of the kids in Geek Girl's class received brownies, and most of them didn't. Excuse me, what are you thinking lady? If you're going to hand out treats to a table, you hand them out to everyone at the table.

Four hours later, the first thing my kid says to me when I pick her up after school is that something not fun happened at lunch and proceeded to explain to me what happened. Part of me wants to complain to the school or hunt her down, but I'm hoping maybe this mom just wasn't thinking. So, thank you for allowing me this chance to vent and now it's time to move one. (Well, I'll have to complain to one more parent tomorrow and then I will move on, promise.)

Fun with tile grout

What do you get when you mix one part paint to five parts Elmer's tile grout? Frosting! Or at least, something that looks like frosting.

Geek Girl and I went to the National Gallery of Art on Sunday for one of their Family Workshops. We had fun looking at and discussing Wayne Thiebaud's painting Cakes.

Then came the fun part. Icing and decorating a cardboard "cake".

Here is Geek Girl's masterpiece. I helped a little with the icing, but she did all of the decorating herself. Doesn't it look yummy?




We were both pretty hungry after the workshop. Luckily we had Halloween candy waiting for us at home. Where was Daddy Geek? After driving us in he went for a little 11-mile run home. He had a little bit of Halloween candy too.