Randoms

I was on a mission yesterday to give my kids the kind of winter day that it's been too cold to have of late. We started with sledding, and then went on to this...

 A snowperson, complete with Mohawk. Finally the temps were right to make for good ol' packing snow.

 That'd be Fisher in his bigfoot costume from Halloween, which he likes to wear in place of a snowsuit and go tramping around the neighborhood making bigfoot tracks in the neighbor's yards to, as he says, give them a scare.

 We even fit in a road trip before nap time. We drove to Newton to check out the Maytag cheese dairy farms. Despite coming inches away from crashing into a deer that came out of nowhere and crossed the road, we had a nice drive listening to music real loud and watching the farms go by. I can't help but belt out the lines to one of my favorite "The Head and The Heart" songs, titled "Heaven Go Easy On Me". It goes like this: "Is it that the good life is a simple one, sittin' in the lawn chair watchin' leaves go by. Readin' good books and playin' songs. Watchin' the wind blow through your front yard. Don't follow your head, follow your heart." Those words fill me with a kind of contentment. Because they're true. Because I have an affinity for wind. Because if you can't be right with yourself just sitting in a lawn chair then nothing will feel right for you. Because it's that simple. The dairy farm tour by the way isn't all that fascinating. You don't get to see the production side of things. Just a real short video and tour. But I'm sure on some level even the clipped version of the cheese making process gave them a new appreciation for when we're walking down the cheese aisle at the grocery store. It's good for them to see where things come from, and how.

After naps Fisher constructed some ramp out of a cardboard box and came up with a game where he dropped a ball down it to try to go into some random items he found--a boot, a jug, a nest. He gave himself prizes, including some foil that was packed into a ball that he found somewhere in a grave of toys. When I said "oh, you get a foil ball" he said "no, it isn't a foil ball" and then ripping it in half, "it's a broken foil ball." Somewhere in those words is a poem. Finally, we ended the evening with a trip to the fish store so we could become fish people.