Thin Ice

 Simon was thrilled to find some ice at the pond today. The kids are desperate for snow and ice now that it is January.

A few days later, Simon decided to take matters into his own hands and make ice in the freezer.

Saturday Morning

Jordan Lake Hike (New Hope Overlook)

 Is this blog getting tedious? Because we're just doing the exact same things over and over again? Yes. Welcome to life during a pandemic.

This afternoon, it was sunny after a rather dreary week, so we met Jess and Anna at Jordan Lake in the afternoon for a hike. It felt so good to be out of the house, socializing, and enjoying nature.

Our hike is about 3 miles, and takes us three hours because we stop and play a lot.

Alice asked me to take this picture of her, and I told her she looked like a hostage.

Meanwhile, Zac and Simon had their own adventure walking along the shoreline. Simon looked for lures and creature, while Zac practiced his his photography skills.

"You'll shoot your eye out!"

Simon has been interested in slingshots lately.

A few minutes later...

Zac's 42nd birthday

We celebrated this guy's 42 years around the sun on Thursday. The kids helped decorate the cake.

The attempted coup

 And on the 6th day of January, Trump's cult members tried a coup. We watched it live on TV in the afternoon. When I was vomiting on the night Trump was elected four years ago, this was the sort of nonsense I was fearing.

So, here we are. Welcome to 2021.

Back at it

 Online classes started for the kids on Monday, which means Simon is back to his weird giant morning snacks.

Bye, tree.

 On our last day of winter break, we dismantled our Christmas tree. The holiday season is over. On to the drudgery ahead!

Simon in the woods

We don't know what Simon will become as an adult, but I feel like his current interests are foreshadowing something interesting for his future.

Happy New Year: 2021

We are cautiously optimistic as we enter the new year. We have 20 more days of Trump's cruel insanity to survive until Biden is inaugurated (even though Trump hasn't conceded yet and continues to promote lies of the election being stolen from him). But things won't magically get tangibly better on that day. And I know there's a long hard road ahead for the pandemic, as the vaccine rollout has been slow, cases and deaths are skyrocketing (~4k die every day), and now there's a more contagious variant of the virus. The kids aren't going back to school until Jan 20th (if we're lucky), and my own classes are still going to be online for the foreseeable future. So things are rough. But I remain grateful for our health, our jobs, our peaceful community, and the friendships we've been able to maintain through the pandemic. I am glad we have a large house and a large yard and a pond, greenway, creek, and park nearby. I appreciate that we can still hike and that I have a couple of friends who hike with me. I'm thankful for our family that is weathering the storm with as much alacrity as we can summon.

After some morning Mario Kart on the new Nintendo switch, we made gingerbread cookies.

Zac and Simon ended up doing most of the decorating.

How we all feel turning the corner from one rough year to another.

The Last Day of 2020

For the last day of the historic year of 2020, we just hung around the house. The weather was chilly and rainy.

The kids got some 100-peice puzzles for Christmas, and Simon is finally getting the hang of it. He completed this one all by himself.

Alice has been playing copious amounts of Minecraft lately, but I make her take screen breaks so she doesn't forget how to enjoy other parts of life.

A good summary of the year:

While Alice painted, Simon snuck off and did his own craft, with lots of warnings about how nobody was allowed to copy him. He came back with this.

Here's to better times ahead, eventually, maybe.

Cat Pictures

Simon is completely obsessed with the cat. Here are some pictures to honor this very important member of our family.

Eno River Hike: Pump Station Trail

It's been rainy a lot during our winter break, so I planned hikes for us whenever I could. Today we did a family hike at the Pump Station trail at Eno River.

What Alice looks like when she needs a snack right at the beginning of the hike, but she's carsick from reading on the drive:

She soon felt better and ate her banana.

The kids used their new pocket knives for some whittling.

It's a bit nerve wracking to take a winter hike next to a freezing, rushing river, when Simon still wants to climb the overhanging trees and jump across the rocks.

 Simon's giant leap