A Riddle

Q. What happens twice a year and is accompanied by the most gawd-awful noises and ugly facial expressions?

A. See above pictures for the answer.

p.s. Thank you grammy for your scissor talents!

The Back Door Yard, First Day of Spring

Stay tuned for updates. First days of summer, fall and winter will be posted. It has been such a long and particularly tiresome winter and as the snow melts and the seasons pass I am curious to see what kinds of changes take place on our fraction of an acre. Humor me, it could be interesting. We won't really know for another 9 months, but all we have to do is sit back and enjoy spring, summer and fall. How hard could that be? 

Game Night

Here's what the end of Scrabble game looks at our house. Ethan was pretty proud of the collection of words we came up with and so we recorded it for posterity on the family blog.

A Poem for Late Winter 2009

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson, 1891

Grampy the Daredevil

Bob Spugnardi, circa 1948

The passage of time is never more acute then when you find a black and white photograph of people you love in a time before your memory. This is one of my favorites. My dad the daredevil and a few of his most trusting friends from the neighborhood. It is the essence of boyhood and it makes me smile to think of my dad this way – playful, daring, in flight! When I asked my dad if he made that jump he replied "Sure, I made that jump... I always made the jump". 

A rare day in February

Isabella takes advantage of a sunny day in February.

It is now March... and it has come in like a lion. It is cold and snowy and windy and it seems like a long three weeks until I get to say "ahh spring". Jim keeps interrupting the snow-day activities (yes, the kids are home from school again) by letting us know how much snow he shoveled today. It's true. the arrival of spring will be hard earned this year. It is moments like the one captured above that get us through winter life in a northern town. I'm glad I caught this one. I can't wait for March's bi-polar personality to shift into lamb-mode.

from isabella (my mom would agree)

Yeah.