Happy Winter Solstice!

We're enjoying a wonderful, snowy winter solstice. We've got 6-8 inches of snow in the front and back yards, and everything is covered!

Plum tree

Lonely swing

Back yard

View from the deck

Pond, what pond?

Happy dog

This Week in the Garden

More snow!

First Snow

Last night we enjoyed a really beautiful bike ride around town during the first snow of the season. It was quite chilly, but we bundled up and used our human-powered engines to keep warm. We started with a couple errands, to get a movie and a few groceries just up the street. Then we kept riding to enjoy a tour of all the pretty Christmas lights decorating the neighborhoods. Of course we wanted to participate in decorating the darkness, too, so before we started our ride, Don rigged up some battery-powered twinkle lights on the bikes. All the people we passed seemed to enjoy our festive lights. By the time we got home, it was snowing quite a bit, and we were ready to go inside, build a fire, and warm up. Happy first snow!

First-Class Farmers

I just finished typing up a lease for a new farmer we'll be working with next year. He's a really nice guy - the neighbor of the farmer who has been farming our land for the past couple decades. We've used this same lease with farmers for our family wheat farms for a long, long time. My favorite part is this:

"The Lessee agrees to perform all work necessary to carry out the terms of this lease and to farm said premises in a first-class farmer-like manner, planting the same crops in proper season, according to the standards maintained in the community..."

First-class farmer-like manner! It doesn't get any better than that. I'm keeping this clause in the lease until someone makes me change it. It reminds me of my grandpa, a first-class farmer himself. Here's to you, TR. We love you.

Climbing

Remember this cute photo? Yes, Ben is very high up. Really high up.

Well, we just found another photo of the same tree.
Ben's friend Dan is at the top.
Very big tree.
Lucky for me I hadn't seen it before.

But wait...pull back with the camera.
Oh my.
See that speck at the top of the tree?
Yes, that's still Daniel.

Some things a mother just shouldn't see.
Never should have let him start climbing trees at age two.

* Photos by Ben & Andy

Winter Blooms & Berries

A few garden flowers and berries still seem happy as winter approaches.


Lavaterra

Calendula

Candytuft

Nasturtiums


Evergreen Huckleberries

Frisky Yoga

We just found a couple more fun photos of Ben and friends from camp. They worked for several days together learning yoga from wonderful staff member Abbi, the yoga goddess. You can tell they're having fun demonstrating their new skills, as well as their strength and concentration.


* Photos by Andy & Emily

Buy Nothing Day

Join us for this wonderful annual celebration: Buy Nothing Day!

*
Relax,
sleep in,
avoid the stores,
contemplate simplicity,
spend time with family and friends.

Enjoy the day.

One-Car Family

Goodbye, RAV4.

Hello, Xtracycles!

Well, it only took us three seasons - spring, summer, and fall - to decide that we no longer needed our second car. So we said goodbye to the RAV, and we're doing just fine with our one other car and our bikes. We haven't really driven the second car for months, so we thought it was time to let it go.

It's easy to cycle in the summer, but we wanted to test our resolve during the colder, rainier months of autumn. We still love it. There are plenty of days when it's clear or just a little rainy. We bundle up a bit more and pedal on our merry way. We're also learning to enjoy bus rides along the many routes available to us all around town. Next fun challenge: snow!

Hooray for no more insurance, gas, and repair and maintenance for an extra vehicle! Hooray for cool autumn days, riding along streets with pretty fallen leaves, warm clothes, and rain gear!

Life is good.

Important Uses for a Dining Room Table

Planning and adjusting parts of the bass neck

Rough-cut bass body lined up with the neck

Fort Worden

Last month, we went to Fort Worden for the weekend with a small group of homeschooling friends. We had fun exploring the forts, the trails, and the beaches of Port Townsend. A friend took this cool picture of Ben.

Northwest Harvest

We love volunteering at the Northwest Harvest food warehouse with our Seattle Homeschool Group. We have been helping there every month or two for the past couple years. We're never quite sure what foods we'll be helping with on any given day, but it's always lots of fun. This month we helped sort and pack about 4,000 lbs of soups and tortillas, and 1,000 pounds of coffee. These items will be distributed to area food banks all across Washington state. As you can see, the teens are all clustered together, working side by side. The parents are there too, just at the other end of the tables. We all enjoy working and chatting together.

Here they're sorting and scooping coffee into smaller bags.

A few of them finished early and are waiting for their next task.

Yes We Can

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place
where all things are possible;
who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time;
who still questions the power of our democracy,
tonight is your answer."
President-Elect Barack Obama

Birthday Pie

Last week, we had a gathering of friends over for an early celebration of Ben's 15th birthday. We've been celebrating birthdays with this group for more than a dozen years. It's always casual, relaxed, and fun. This year, Ben made his own birthday apple pies, with the help of his friend, Tanner. Delicious!

Fun on a Rainy Day

It's always fun to bake cookies, and today Ben and Manon thought it would be fun to bake a really big cookie. They were so proud of it, they wanted to pose with it.

Proud Cookie

Serious Cookie

Hilarious Cookie

Always...Patsy Cline

If you're in the mood to see a great show this weekend or next, you can see my sweet husband performing in Always...Patsy Cline, a musical at the Knutzen Family Theater in Federal Way. It's a really fun performance, and of course, the music is great!

Apples to Applesauce

Earlier this week, we took a bike ride to the library to pick up some books that were waiting for us. On the way home, we passed a local park and saw a huge apple tree with many tiny apples littering the ground underneath it. We were curious about the apples still up in the tree, and sure enough, when Ben climbed it, he found lots of larger ones just ready to drop. So we did some old-fashioned gleaning.

He picked a bunch and dropped them down to me. I caught them and gathered them into bags for the ride home. We offered a few of them to others as they walked by on the trail, but mostly people just smiled and walked on. It was great fun, and we're both glad we took the time to stop and rescue the apples so they wouldn't go to waste.

At home, we filled a drawer in the fridge with apples, and then, later this weekend, I spent a little time making applesauce. Yum!

Tools of the Trade

There was much excitement at our house a few days ago when the package of guitar hardware from Stew-Mac arrived. Ben had purchased a bridge, fret wire, a fret board, and a truss rod, and he was quite excited to get a look at it all so he could start measuring everything and move on to the next steps in the bass-building process.

Today's Harvest

Tomatoes


Scarlett Runner Beans


Blueberries & Raspberries

Luthier at Work

All week long, Ben has been hard at work building the neck of his bass guitar. Here's what he's done so far:

After measuring and cutting the many pieces of wood needed for a striped neck, he glued and clamped them together. Many of these sturdy, well-worn clamps are from Ben's great grandfather Roger's woodshop.

When the gluing was finished, we went to our friend Kevin's home workshop where Ben got to use a really nice planer and high-powered sander to create the right thickness and smoothness for the neck. Kevin has a wonderful workshop, and he's really generous in letting Ben make use of it. Thanks, Kevin!

The planer helped even out the width of the neck. You can see by all the shavings how many times he needed to run it through.

After the planing comes the sanding.

Lots of measuring to get it just right.

Then more sanding.

Here you can see the beautiful woods Ben chose.

From the center outward: 1/8" cherry, 1/4" maple, 1/4" walnut, and 3/4" maple

Nice work!