All the things

Last I wrote it was winter.

Since then, we did get to go visit Great-George for his 107th birthday and see the NY family in December.

Some of my classes worked on winter agricultural projects:

Tapping and boiling maple syrup...

Inoculating logs for shiitake mushrooms...

Seeding ginger in the greenhouse...

Cooking fish from the aquaculture tanks...

But now it is definitely not winter. And what a full six months it has been. 

School

This was a school year with lots of (often Waldorfy) rites of passage:

Knitting and sewing (scarves in 1st grade, hats in 3rd, socks in 5th, stuffed animals in 6th)...

Ice skating and picnic-table-building and reading competitions and science fairs...

Performances of all sorts -- plays, music, and more...

Camping trips, once spring arrived...

Fifth grade travel to Michigan for a Pentathlon with other schools (Unc and Christy got to go too!)

Sixth grade travel to Ohio for "Medieval Games" and later a "rising ceremony" at the end of the year.

Matzah making extravaganza for passover...

And some schoolwork too...

The older kids and Mike were also lucky enough to go with school classes towards Erie, PA to see the full solstice in April (Oren and Noa and I saw the almost-but-not-quite-full version closer to home)

And (not pictured) Mike got a nice teacher-of-the-year award from his new school.

Not just school

Eytan played frisbee with a middle-school school team this spring, while everyone else played spring soccer in the township league...

Plus a little gymnastics for Noa...

All of which has been really lovely and lucky, but also a lot of logistics and driving... I guess it's just a different kind of rhythm and skill sets than the early days... 

(note: it's Eytan and Li'el in both pictures, but on opposite sides of the frame) (also Li'el is now taller than both Eytan and me)

Recent birthdays have included Oren's and Li'el's, plus Eytan's and Noa's half birthdays

And a bunch of baking and playing when Grandma Kathy came to visit.

I found a recipe for savory hamentaschen for Purim (we also made the sweet kind)

Kids helped with a (Shrek-themed) Purim shpiel at the synagogue

And later in the spring we hosted Saba and Safta (and Nana and Pa) for Passover.

Also, Nana and Pa's house got solar panels!

We managed to host some friends over for brunch and other visits a couple of times...

And had a couple of visits from Unc, one of which resulted in a bunch of eraser-making projects...

Not as many hikes this year as we normally like, but still a few!

Travels

I took my policy class to D.C. in March -- we managed to time it this year with cherry blossom season.

And with kids now bigger, we even got to do a little sightseeing with them this time.

As well as good cousin-visiting time and joint birthday celebrating...

In May, we went to Boston for a cousins-on-the-other-side bat mitzvah and some old friend visiting...

And later in the spring/early summer, I went to a conference in Syracuse.

The end of the school year brought back the regular trying-on of my graduation outfits (which, between COVID and sabbatical, I hadn't used in many years).

And the last walks to the bus stop across the next-door field.

And June brought a long-awaited and activity-packed visit from the Nebraska cousins!

We were also able to go cabin-camping one weekend with friends in Laurel Hills state park, about an hour from us and cooled off during a hot spell.

And Eytan went with a friend for a few days to a medieval fair and an airforce museum in Ohio.

Meanwhile, we've just been trying to catch up on garden and yard and animals, having been gone last year and then busy with school since then.

Oren and Noa are going to day camp 3 weeks, and Eytan and Li'el are trying one week of sleepover camp this summer.  The three older kids also did a swim team this month.

We made it to fourth of July fireworks for the first time since 2019 (!) (and Oren and Noa's first time).

And have been trying new ways of keeping the house a little cleaner (a home version of the golden broom school contest, in this case the red vacuum contest, here being given by last week's winner to next week's winner)

Biggest news in these parts the last couple of weeks has been cows having babies. Brownie's calf was stillborn, so that unexpectedly threw us full-on into milking, and then yesterday May's calf arrived, live and cute. So we're still trying to get our bearings.

Hope you have had good starts-to-summer. Sending regards from all of us to all of you.