Liam is Six

Yes, Liam's birthday was about a month and a half ago--but it's been a busy time! Here are some shots from the party. He chose Woodland Park as the setting, invited a bunch of his buddies from school and the neighborhood (unfortunately a lot of them were out of town), and chose 'boggarts' as the theme for his party. A boggart is a mythical creature that can assume the form of any creature, object, vehicle--pretty much any noun. We weren't really sure how to work that theme, but Amy did some research and came up with some great ideas: masks for all the kids to impersonate various animals, and boggart charades--we worked together to come up with a list of fun nouns for the kids to impersonate. Since most of the kids can't read yet, we made photo cards for each object, each kid picked a card, pretended to be what he/she saw, and the other kids had to guess.

We also had a pinata (shaped like a parrot, of course), played duck-duck-goose, and the party favors were all magic tricks, in keeping with the mischievous nature of boggarts. The Wolverine cake and ice cream were delicious, and a good time was had by all.

Hard to believe Mr. Little Guy is growing up so fast!

Hops!

Last year I planted two Cascade hops plants in our backyard, and this spring I planted rhizomes for 3 more Cascades, 1 Chinook and 1 Centennial. The vines grew well, particularly the two oldest, but we also got substantial production from two of this season's Cascade vines. In total, I think I harvested about 6.5 pounds of hops (this total is approximate because although I was fairly meticulous about weighing towards the beginning of the harvest, other pressing matters prohibited me from weighing every bag that came through the door). We borrowed a food dehydrator from one of the Seattle Farm Co-op members, I dried the hops, and froze them. Last week I brewed my first batch of beer with the dried hops, the results should be testable within about 3 weeks.

On the Importance of Swimming

I realized the other day how misrepresentative of our daily lives our photo collection is. We tend to photograph the unusual, infrequent, exotic, and celebratory, while neglecting the events, hobbies and pasttimes that consume most of our lives (how many people take pictures of themselves washing dishes, or folding laundry?) This got me thinking about swimming. Since Amy taught me how to swim properly--as opposed to the I'm-not-really-going-to-drown style of swimming I excelled at previously--it has been an absolutely critical part of my life. I swim 2-3 times a week, and it provides exercise, meditation, and a remarkable transformation of my state of mind. Above all, it is where I solve problems and puzzle through personal conundrums, but not by thinking about them overtly. The solutions tend to come in a state of consciousness I think of as "swim thoughts" a sort of thinking-without-thinking. It's hard to describe to non-swimmers; but I've heard runners refer to something called"the zone" which I think is quite similar.

In any event, today I actaully brought the camera and took a picture of the pool I swim in so frequently. One of these days I will get someone to take a picture of me swimming in the pool, but today I felt like it would be kind of weird and imposing to ask my fellow swimmers. In any event, here is where I spend a lot of quality time--my lane is the farthest on the right.

Liam's 1st Day at Kindergarten

Liam had his first day of kindergarten today! Here are some photos from the momentous occasion. Each 'K Kid' was assigned one or two 2nd or 1st graders to be their buddies for the day. The K Kids were met at the gate by their buddies, holding signs with the K Kids' names on them. The photo of Liam and Lochlan together (which is a bit blurry) was taken right after Loki spontaneously gave his bro a huge hug--unfortunately I wasn't fast enough to capture that--and you can see Liam nervously clasping his hands. In the 'Liam heading in' photo, the woman in white is his teacher, and the girl to Liam's left in the stripey shirt is one of his buddies. Liam actually had two buddies, both girls, and he entered the school with one on each arm. It was very cute. He had a fantastic day, and really seems to love the school.