The burning of Prairie Ridge

Well, we all know that Lent is a time for self-reflection, and I thought maybe a little self-reflection might be necessary when I got really excited about an email I received one afternoon with the subject line "Prairie burning tomorrow!" Then I decided, nah, no time for self-refection, we've got a fire to go to!

It was one of those opportunities that just don't present themselves often, sort of a jewel in the rough (or a fire in a field, as the case may be). The occasion was the controlled burn of a prairie at a local eco-system, which helps control invasive plant growth, thins out the shrubbery, and prevents inconvenient lightning fires.

But let me address the most important question: Were the firetrucks there? Why yes, they were! And we ignored completely the "baby" Forest Service pickup trucks and followed Dominic straight to the hook-and-ladder trucks ("Big ire-truk! Big ire-truck! Me drive! Yea!").

We watched from the deck of the outdoor classroom, and we were allowed to get surprisingly close (close enough to identify the numerous rats, mice, shrews and rabbits that scampered from the prairie to safety). The Forest Service and Prairie Ridge staff answered all of our questions patiently (Me: "What kind of invasive plants do you generally see?" Catherine: "Are the animals okay?" Vincent: "Can you set more fires?" Dominic: "Me drive ire-truck?").

In two weeks the prairie grasses should start rejuvenating, so we'll be heading out there again to see the regrowth in action. But somehow, I think it might be a little disappointing, and that all I'm going to hear is "Where big ire-truck? Me drive?"

Disney!

Back from Disney, and the good news is Dominic didn't hit a single princess, although he and Vincent both looked like they were going to gag while Catherine greeted Belle and Aurora. What we learned about Vincent -- who claims his favorite part of the trip was eating Dippin' Dots ice cream (we could have saved a lot of money and done that at the local mall) -- is that the kid is game for anything. If it's fast, if it's loud, if it's scary -- he's in. Meanwhile, in Catherine's case, if it's fast, if it's loud, if it's scary -- count her out.

What we learned about Dominic is that after 20 minutes on your shoulders, he gets a wee bit heavy. But it's better than having him chase the birds. Or the princesses.

We did Magic Kingdom, Epcot and Seaworld, and by dumb luck we were able to catch things like the Celebration Parade and the killer whales performance. We also stopped off in Savannah, maybe hoping to catch a little culture to offset the inane commercialism of Disney (a bottled water was $4!!!), but that was a big bust. Ask Roger about the guy dropping barbells in the gym at 2 a.m.

I'll let the pictures and videos speak for themselves... 

Videos:
Catherine meeting Princess Belle
In Venice (Disney's Venice, of course)
The ubiquitous "It's a Small World" ride
At the Princess Castle (and not at all excited)

And then I poked him in the eye

I love how asking a four-year-old a direct question -- when you KNOW they've done wrong -- never gets a straight answer. Instead their voice rises to levels of earnestness brought on only by remorse (at being caught, I'm sure) and the resulting "explanation" is like something out of a drug-induced dream sequence. I'm convinced that when Vincent "explains" why Dominic is crying, he's hoping I'll get bored halfway through his soliloquy and drop the inquisition.

The latest answer, after I heard a piercing scream from the boys' room and found Dominic clutching his eye:

"Well, we were playing dump trucks, and I was the dump truck, but then we got out real dump trucks and I said, 'Dommie, do you want to play real dump trucks?' and Dommie said 'Yea!' so I got out our dump trucks and then he dumped out EVERYTHING from the drawer and I said, 'Dommie, do you want some chocolate chips?' and he said, 'Yea!' and so I went to get us chocolate chips, and we filled up our dump trucks with them and I said, 'Dommie, do you want some marshmallows?' and he said, 'Yea!' but we were out of marshmallows and then we knocked over the chair and then we decided not to play dump trucks anymore because Dommie wanted more chocolate chips, and then he got out the eggs and ripped off the top and I said, 'No Dommie! Mommy will be so mad!' and he said, 'Yea!' and then we went back into my room and started playing dump trucks again. And then I poked him in the eye."

Partners in Slime

Saturday morning I was home with the boys while Catherine and Roger took the van to be vacuumed out (or something equally exciting), and I asked myself, "Hmmm, what kind of fun activity can I do with the boys?"

The obvious answer, of course, was "Make homemade slime." So a Google search later, we had a slime mixture of Elmer's glue and Borax that absolutely thrilled the boys. And by "thrilled" I mean they started throwing it at each other across the table until Mommy yelled at them to stop. Then they took baths to clean the slime out of their hair. Let's hear it for buzz cuts.

But the point is that the brothers really do get along well. Anything Vincent does, Dominic does, right down to trying to wear his shoes and jackets. Hero-worship at its finest.



It's like Vincent has his own little echo. If Vincent calls out, "Hey, let's be monsters!" we'll hear a tinny "Monsters!" behind him. Or, "Hey, let's be aliens!" "Aliens!" "Hey, let's be cowboys!" "Cowboys!" We probably ought to give singular credit to Vincent for his brother's recent onslaught of vocabulary.

Imitation is flattery, right? I think another way of putting that is that there is nothing as much fun as a big brother.

So, what have we been up to?

Well, a lot! We've had beautiful weather down here, which means lots of family run/walk/bikes along the American Tobacco Trail, or as Vincent calls it, the Kabaca Trail. Kabaca, in case you're wondering, is what people smoke in pompettes, and pompettes make people sick, as he is sure to tell everyone he sees smoking one.

Besides that little educational foray, the kids have been learning about the human body, so they did a neat project that involved tracing their bodies life-size on large sheets of paper and coloring them in. Roger thought Catherine's eyes looked a little too Joan Rivers-ish so he took an eraser and pencil to them. Vincent's doppleganger also got a facelift after he got confused and drew the nose above the eyes. At first Vincent insisted that his paper friend have a skeleton so he could carry him around, and I kowtowed to that by taping rulers together for a spine, but after the fifth broken bone (courtesy of Dommie) we bandaged him up. When I asked Vincent where we should hang him he decided that we should hang Paper Vincie on the closet doors the master bedroom, "so you and Daddy can look at me all night long."

Old faces: 

New faces: 

And then there's Dommie. Speech-wise, he has gone from "Uh, should we get the kid tested?" to "Be quiet for just a second, would you?" He came out with his first sentence in December ("Hit rooster!") and now strings together things like "Mommy help me puzzle" and "Dommie candy. Dommie candy. Dommie candy!" The other day when Vincent lost his popcorn privileges Dominic rather gleefully reminded us for hours on end, "Dommie popcorn, Vincie no popcorn!"

So the house gets louder and louder, and in March it'll get louder still! The other morning the kids came with me to a doctor's appointment and when the doctor asked the routine, "Do you have any concerns about this pregnancy?" Catherine answered, "YES. We are CONCERNED that the baby might not be a GIRL" while giving her brothers the evil eye.

And I do have to admit, sometimes, like right now when the boys are running around with their arsenal of guns and swords, I think that it might be nice to have a sweet, quiet little girl.

Colonial waterslides

On Friday afternoon the kids were constructing pyramids and writing hieroglyphics from ancient Egypt. By Monday we had time-traveled to a Powhatan Indian village and Jamestown, where the first settlers landed in 1607 (way before those credit-hogging Pilgrims). Tuesday morning found us scooting down decidedly modern waterslides, and Tuesday afternoon we had skipped back to the 1700s in colonial Williamsburg. I vacillate between thinking that the kids will someday have an in-depth appreciation of history and thinking that they're going to expect to see King Tut at Jamestown.

At any rate, we had fun on our mini-vacation! And now that we're back, it's on to a study of Victorian houses. 

Thanksgiving redemption

I know, it sounds like this post is going to be all serious and stuff. But it's not. It's just to show the "good" stuff the kids did around Thanksgiving (and to show Uncle Luke he hasn't won the Redneck War). Our kids still have class (a little, anyway).

In preparation, we read bunches of books about the Pilgrims and Indians and the Mayflower. One morning when the kids woke up I informed them that we were headed off on a long journey, and that they needed to pack -- but they could only pack the same things the Pilgrims packed, which were a Bible, one set of clothes, tools, cooking implements, firearms, and one toy.

For Vincent, "one toy" translated to: his wooden catapult (to fight the Indians), his nerf sword (to fight the Indians), his wooden shield (to fight the Indians), and a truck. When I pointed out that trucks weren't invented in Pilgrim times, he informed me that he had invented them. So there.

The kids took it farther than I thought they would. They combed through their dress-up boxes for suitable outfits. Vincent found a frilly white shirt, and Catherine pulled out a green dress from Gaga that looked perfect for a good little Pilgrim girl. To this she added her colonial bonnet. Dommie stripped off his clothes and ran around naked.

The Pilgrims also packed food. For 66 days they ate hard tack, a form of beef jerkey, and, if they could cook safely on the ship, soup of dried beans. The problem was, many of those 66 days were turbulent, so lighting a cooking fire on board was out of the question.

So we made our own hard tack. Flour, water and salt. Lots of salt. I turned the kids loose with the ingredients and let them roll out their hard tack and bake it. It was surprisingly decent and, not so surprisingly, horrendously messy. But by the fourth day that stuff was HARD. Like, crack-a-tooth hard. Poor Pilgrims.

But the most important thing we did was to remember the true meaning of the Thanksgiving spirit: Being grateful for all that we have, and remembering that not everyone has these same blessings. So on a sunny Saturday afternoon we went to our church and decorated tons of boxes to deliver to families without the means to have a big Thanksgiving dinner, and then the kids filled them with food. But I had to agree with Vincent when he said, with a slight shudder, that he was glad there was no hard tack in those boxes.

If you're gonna deep-fry a turkey...

Deep-frying must be a Southern thing. It's probably just too cold for some guy to sit around Minnesota checking the temperature of a bird bubbling in peanut oil -- even if he has a six-pack (or two) to keep him warm. Lucky for us that Thanksgiving Day brought sunny skies and temperatures way up there on the thermometer.

And in true redneck fashion, our official turkey-fryer Uncle Luke brought over a new cap for Vincent. Let me specify: a new bright orange hunting hat that read "Life is a Game. Hunting is Serious." And it was with joy that Vincent sat outside with Uncle Luke wearing his new hat and pointing his musket at the turkey as it was lifted from the foil wrapping into the fryer. Bam! Shot by a little redneck.

Uncle Luke redeemed himself later on by reading about 60 pages of a princess book to Catherine while Dominic jumped on his head.

Meanwhile, Dominic proved his complete uncouth-ness by helping himself to a) a drumstick, and b) the bowl of whipped cream. Who needs spoons, forks or plates? Not our kids!