January 4, 2006
A Wednesday Wrap-Up
Wrapping up the past week's thoughts and photos.
The older I get, the more I realize how important
tradition is to me. Not only do I like the old ones, but I love making new ones
too.
I also enjoy reading about other holidays celebrated around the world and how
our shared holiday's are celebrated differently. If you can call sociology
a hobby, then it's one of mine. Sometimes I find interesting traditions
very far away, like
this post by Clare at
The House and Other Artic Musings about Inuit and local New Year's
traditions in his part of the High Artic or
this post by Mar at
Bolets
about children in Spain receiving gifts from the Three Kings of the Orient on
January 6th. And sometimes I find very
different and fun celebrations right here at home, like
this post at
Blue Ridge
Dreaming about a large Polish family's very fun and warm Christmas
tradition just down the road in Western North Carolina. And sometimes blog
friends like Dena
even share their family traditions, in her case baking Greek money bread
called Vasilopita, with me in my comments.
I love that my first six comments of the New Year, in order, came from Brazil 4700 miles to the South, Nunavut 2500 miles to the North, family in Virginia 200 miles away, my wife who commented from her laptop in the kitchen, Barcelona, Spain 4300 miles to the East, and Colorado 1300 miles to the West.
I
haven't posted about Ben's climbing in a long time, but that doesn't mean he has
stopped doing it.
Here are two recent instances where his curiosity took him higher than he
should have been. I think it was particularly creative to stack two step
stools on top of each other to get to the kitchen counter. Ben carries or
drags stools and chairs around everywhere because, for Ben, a step stool = independence.
One of his favorite things to use as a stool is his sit-and-spin. I can't
think of a more unstable thing to stand on, which is probably why Ben likes it.
We take it to the upstairs storage closet at least once a week, yet it magically
keeps re-appearing downstairs.
Ben is speaking very clearly now. When I came home from lunch Amy asked him to tell me where he had been. "To the ice cream store!" he exclaimed. I asked him if the ice cream was good and he said "I liiiiked the ice cream. Ice cream IS good daddy."
If you read
my first description of paddling on the Ararat
River last month, you might recall me
semi-complaining about having to portage my kayak through the woods behind my
house. Crawling through all the briars and over/under the dead trees while
dragging an eleven foot boat ended up being a fairly complicated affair.
Well, one day after posting that story, someone spent an entire day clearing
this wonderful path through the woods behind our neighbors house. Isn't
that ironic? Our neighbor's house is empty and for sell and I have yet to
figure out why someone would have done it. Do portage fairies exist?
The next time I take my kayak out of the river behind my house, I will be able to scoot right through the path, pretty as you
please, no briars, no crawling. Very cool.