Lionden Landing

We have spent the last two weeks up in the frozen North   I love being up here because everything is walking distance so I don't get cabin fever even when it snows.  Froggy turned even the most mundane outing into an adventure by tromping through the snow.  She became a variety of characters as she climbed and tumbled over the giant mounds of snow.     This is moonrise over the hill where all the kids went sledding.  It was a gorgeous afternoon.  But ended too early for me. Sunset is 3:30ish in the frozen north.  It makes for a very short afternoon.  The kids kept playing long past sunset till it was too dark to climb back up the hill.

Every year we go to the beach.  It has been a fun time seeing the change in how Froggy approaches the ocean from year to year.  At first she would not touch the water, then she played at the shore and ran when the water touched her toes.  Last year she was brave enough to play games with the surf but still not comfortable coming out past the breakers with the grownups. This year she was just a bundle of adventure.  Each day brought more adventure and new experiences.  She rode a boogie board.  She jumped the waves with the grownups even asking Daddy for "phtat waves" (ie ones that make you go "phtat" afterwards because the wave washed over you).  We played "Foam Fighters" where she attacked the foam left behind from the breakers. She even made friends with an older boy and tried holding her own against the waves as they crashed into her.  She got knocked down several times and came up sputtering but smiling.  Every time he talked her into...

This week we took a mini-vacation out to the Shenandoah Valley. While most people would do some sort of geology (tons of caverns) or waterflow / nature study (waterfalls and the national park, we are often a bit different. We decided to study "Endangered Animals - What does that mean?" It worked really well since one of the big themes in our Parsha for the week is avoiding cruelty to animals. This unique choice came about at the Wild Animal Safari . They have all sorts of animals from around the world but the signage is created differently or something. Despite our many trips to the zoo here the subject has never come up before. Yet here, she wanted to know each animal's 'status in the wild' We talked about the difference between common, vulnerable and endangered while we were at the park. We also touched on why some animals become endangered. We followed this up later with two good books on the topic ( Endangered Animals and The ABC's of Endangere...