California!

The free range family got an unanticipated break from the Teasdale spring (wind) with an early spring trip to California.  Mom had a work trip to Marconi State Park on Tomales Bay just north of San Francisco.  Dad and I were able to come along.  We spent a week in Point Reyes National Seashore going to the beach, hiking and looking for birds while mom worked.  We saw 90! bird species in our week.  My favorite bird that we saw was the common yellow-throat.  We saw this while Virginia rails squawked in the background at us.  Dad and I stayed at the Point Reyes youth hostel. . . .my first time at a youth hostel.  My favorite part of the hostel was eating popcorn at night while trying to solve riddles with our new friend from the hostel, Mark.  Dad and I had such a good time at Point Reyes that we didn’t take a single picture.

On Friday afternoon, we picked up mom and showed her our favorite Point Reyes spots, spent one more night at the hostel and then headed for San Francisco for a week of fun in the City by the Bay!!  One of the first sites we saw was the steep and windy Lombard Street.  We drove down this crazy street and over to Coit Tower in the distance.  We went to the top of Coit Tower and enjoyed incredible views of the city.  Also, at Coit Tower, we saw some really cool murals painted in the 1930’s.  Here is a link to these amazing WPA (Works Progress Administration) murals:

Coit Tower Murals

Our first night in the city, we went to the San Francisco Ballet.  We took the train from our hotel and popped out of the BART station right at this spot.  We enjoyed the historic street cars (like this one) traversing the city all week.  The ballet was at the beautiful War Memorial Opera House.  The ballet was made up of three different programs by three different choreographers.  My favorite was the third piece.  I really liked the music  (Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring) and the dancers in this piece.  Here is a link to Program 3.  There are some videos about each of the pieces we got to see.

San Francisco Ballet Program 3

The Coit Tower murals were just some of the amazing art we saw while we were in the city.  Before we went to the ballet, we spent a few hours at  MOMA (Museum of Modern Art).  This museum has some beautiful architecture, like this glass-enclosed walkway that mom and I are on.  My dad’s favorite part of this museum was the Diego Rivera pieces, linked here:

Works by Diego Rivera

Both my parents and I liked this installation by a Chinese artist Gu Wenda, Babel of the Millenium.  The piece has human hair from all over the world woven into it to form the letters in this made up language.  Very cool.

Babel of the Millenium, Gu Wenda

We also spent a fun day at the DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park.  The DeYoung had some amazing artwork as well.  We found the collections and exhibits in this museum to be super-inspiring.  We also liked the incredible view of Golden Gate Park and the city beyond from the top of the tower at the museum.

We spent a great day doing some water front activities.  Here is my mom at the Aquarium of the Bay.  My favorite part of the aquarium was seeing the pipe fish and the seahorses.  There were also huge Chilean Sea Bass swimming around in the aquarium.

On this same day, we took a bay cruise under the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alacatraz Island!  There were beautiful views of the city from the water.  My parent enjoyed the heck out of it, but I got seasick!  Can you see me looking a little green here?

Our favorite day of the trip was this one where we rented bikes and rode them from Fisherman’s Wharf over the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito and over to Tiburon where we took a ferry back to the city.  Here is my mom on the Golden Gate Bridge.

And here are the two of us enjoying the view and the beauty of this amazing bridge.

Since I’m used to navigating Teasdale traffic, we decided to get a Tag A Long bike for me.    I loved being a “backseat” driver, bossing my dad around and riding no hands.  He enjoyed having me on the back to help him get up the hills.

One of the most magical parts of the trip were the Cable Cars.     We rode these cars through Chinatown to Market Street and back to the waterfront at the end of everyday.  They were a great way to see the city and such a cool piece of history.

We learned that there are cables running under sections of the city that are turned by giant flywheels at the cable house.  The gripmen who operate these cars propel them by gripping the cable in the street to go uphill and on the downhill and relying on the brakeman at the back to keep the cars from careening out of control.

Take a 36 second cable car ride.

Here is a 2.32 minute cable car ride for you enthusiasts!

We visited Chinatown not long after the Chinese New Year and got to enjoy some of the remaining decorations.  We had a great dinner one evening in Chinatown, smoky black mushrooms served in a flaming pot while enjoying seeing the exotic other dishes brought out to other diners.

I was happy to purchase a new fan from the kitsch stores in Chinatown.

We did a fun alley walking tour as well and one of our stops was the place where they make fortune cookies.

A highlight of the trip for my mom was sampling Dim Sum (Chinese dumplings).  We got a Dim Sum takeout lunch here at this spot in Chinatown.

Mom ordered lots of dumplings filled with meat and vegetables from the woman at this Dim Sum shop and. . .

. . .we took them to this square to enjoy while watching these intense card games that were going on.  It definitely felt like we were in another country.  We didn’t hear anyone speaking English.

But, our favorite dinner (on a trip with LOTS of great food) was our last night at a simple Thai place right on the water.  We watched the ferry traffic move huge numbers of people from the city back to Oakland at the end of the day and enjoyed stunning view of the city and the Bay Bridge.

All in all, we had a great time and loved every minute of being in San Francisco.

By Anna and Carrie

Locks of Love and My New Look

Locks of Love

I had been thinking about cutting my hair short for a while.  My friend Elie said she might give her hair to Locks of Love.

Locks of Love is a organization for kids that can’t grow their own hair.  Most of these  kids have a disease called alopecia areata which causes their hair follicles to stop growing.  Most wigs are made for adult heads.  Because of this, wigs that are made for children cost between $3,500 to $6,000.  Locks of Love makes wigs for kids, and they give them to kids who can’t afford them.

I decided to cut my hair and give it to locks of love.

Here is my NEW look!

Camping with the Murphys

Spring is beginning to spring in southern Utah.  This means wind and lots of wind, but it also means spring camping in our favorite protected nooks in the desert.  Our dear friends, the Murphys came down from the great white north, and we headed out to our favorite spot off the Burr Trail to go camping.

Because when you are car camping, you CAN bring it all, we brought the giant hula hoops that we had made out of poly pipe and electrical tape.  Very cool project and super easy to make and mega fun to have in camp.We spent a fun day hiking Calf Creek, a popular hike near Boulder, UT that ends at a beautiful waterfall and winds along a stunning riparian area on the way.

The girls had a great time running up ahead, hiding and jumping out at us as we passed.

This was four year old Erin’s first hike without the hiking backpack support and she totally rocked it!  Six miles and she didn’t end up on dad’s shoulders until the last 1/4 mile.

The temperature drops about 20 degrees when you reach the waterfall, making it a pretty magical desert oasis–a little cold for swimming in March though, even for our hardy crew.Because this spot is our traditional Easter weekend camping spot, the Easter bunny managed to find us there a week before Easter.  He hid some candy-filled eggs in the wash for our annual Easter egg hunt.

Hunting for eggs is serious business, as you can see!

It was a fun week, great to have the Murphy’s in our old stomping grounds again and so fun to feel winter’s grip loosening!

Anna’s Peaceful Eggs

You guys all know I have chickens.  I thought I would show you some chicken pictures.  This is a picture of my chickens when they were youngsters.

  I started giving my chickens lots of love.Starting from the left, these chickens are Lava (Red Star), Igneous (Barred Rock), Company (Araucana), Quetin (Speckled Sussex).

This chicken’s name is Lucky.

Here are some of the chickens on  their outdoor roost.  You can see their chicken coop in the background.

This is Basalt and Speckles in the front.  The two white ones are called Whiteout (Pearl -White Leghorn) because they never stay in.  They have the same name because we can’t tell them apart.  The one running is Featherstone (Araucana).

This chicken’s name is Grock (Silver Laced Wyandotte).

Here I am with Featherstone.  Featherstone is my favorite.

My chickens lay beautiful eggs.  The Aracanas lay the green-blue eggs.  The deep brown-orange eggs come from the Red Stars.  The white ones come from the Pearl -White Leghorns.  The light brown ones come from the others.

My chickens and I can’t wait to see the Murphys.  They are coming soon.

My chickens are definitely free range.

Welcome 2012!!

The free range family finds itself hunkered down with the flu this first week of 2012!!  We seem to be coming out the other side of it, but we’ve all had a few days of fevered naps and sleepy reading of our new Christmas books as we ride out the first bug we’ve all gotten at the same time in a long time–another bonus of homeschooling!  We had a festive and fun holiday celebration and hope you all did as well.  We managed a beautiful frozen creek hike on Christmas Eve day along Sulphur Creek in the park.  The second time we’ve done that hike when it is completely frozen and utterly breathtaking WITHOUT our camera!  Christmas morning was its usual grand affair for the free range kid who is showered with gifts by the big Claus as well as generous grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends.  What a lucky kid!   We pulled ourselves together Christmas night and got packed up so we could head to Pinedale, WY the next day to visit our much-missed friends, the Murphy’s.  The Murphy’s moved from here this summer as a result of the major employer in the county, Aspen, closing–one of the many families who left our area due to this, and the most heartbreaking family move for us.

Anna has nearly grown up with Cora, Molly and Erin.  We’ve shared lots of campfires and outdoor pursuits of beauty in nature and music with these girls and their parents Ken and Angie and their absence in our daily lives has left a painful hole.  So, we were thrilled to be driving north to see their new digs and share some simple time.

Pinedale is at the foot of the Wind River Range, a beautiful long stretch of mountains south of the Tetons.  It was a special place for Bill and I even before the Murphy’s moved there.  We had spent a couple of summers backpacking in the Winds and it was at a lake deep in these mountains that we decided to adopt a child and become parents.  Anna Wren was born in our hearts at Baby Lake (our name) in the Wind River Range.  So, even though we’re beyond sad that the Murphy’s had to move away, we’re thrilled that they’ve found themselves in such a beautiful place and in one that is so special to us.

Here are the girls on a walk over beautiful and frozen Pine Creek just a few steps from their house.  We can’t wait until Erin (almost four years old) learns to appreciate what  a hat and gloves can mean for your overall comfort and disposition.  So far, she’s just not buying it!   They have a moose that roams through this park and their neighborhood, which we didn’t seem while we were there, but did spot one on the Daniel River as we headed home on New Year’s Day–a first for Anna.

We were able to spend a few days enjoying the groomed cross country ski trails in the foothills about 20 minutes from town.  It was Anna’s first time on cross country skis and she did great learning how to move on them.  It was stunning to be in the trees and come into the clearings with the winter light bouncing off the snow.

Cora and Molly and, even Erin, are already great skiers and the girls took off ahead of us engrossed in their spy kids game and trying to save the world by keeping the protosaphire from TicToc and Danger Diablo.

It’s tiring work, saving the world, so they took their rest when they could get it.  We brought in the new year with choreographed dance routines, guitar and ukelele tunes and fireworks in the subdivision lawn.  A great visit.

Winter is Here

The Bicknell pond is frozen and that means it’s time for skating.  We had to clear the snow off the pond first.  We do this by skating behind a shovel, thus using the shovel as a snow plow.  It’s kind of tricky because the snow is a little compacted, so you have to push down to get the shovel into the snow.   But if you push down too hard the shovel will catch, and you will get taken out by your own shovel.  Picture pushing hard while skating but being ready to bail in an instant when necessary.  So we began to shovel.

and shovel,

and shovel some more,

and shovel some more.  I’m really surprised that the flames coming off my thighs didn’t show up in the picture, because I can assure you that my thighs were burning.  Did I ever miss Ken-the-human-zamboni.  Ken, you and I would have had the whole pond cleared.  There was really sweet uncracked ice under the snow.  It still is very nice.  And that means hockey!

We skate on a beautiful pond. Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn7lBbMFDrs  to take a tour of the pond.  The sun sets in the valley you see and creates wonderful colors on the cliffs in the other direction.  We really miss the Bicknell Hockey League (AKA the Murphys)!

We got our Christmas tree recently.  We couldn’t believe our luck in finding our tree within the first minute of looking!  When we got it home we were reminded why we normally look a little harder.   We ended up with more of a bush that of course dressed up quite nicely (just like in Charlie Brown).

Anna and I did the Wayne County Christmas bird count.  We had a great time hanging out with some wonderful people.

Anna and Jack.

Anna and Annette were definitely birds of the same feather.

We can’t wait to do the spring bird count.

Fleeting Free Range Fall

It feels as though this has been one of the longest falls we’ve experienced here in southern Utah.  Tomorrow is Halloween and we still have leaves on the trees at our place!!  I can’t remember a year when we’ve had leaves at our elevation this late in the year.  Usually they start to turn and then the wind blows and they are down!  In spite of this, it still feels like this most magical of seasons is fleeting here.

Even though we’ve been super-busy, we’ve still been able to steal some nice days soaking in the color and the amazing light.  Grandpa spent a week with us in September and these are some shots of a drive that we took up near Fish Lake.

You’ll notice we are all enjoying copious amounts of Ginger Gold apples in these shots–these are a yellow variety apple that grows in the park. . .they are incredible.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So Dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

–Robert Frost

Another fun fall day was our annual trip to the pumpkin patch on the other side of the mountain.  We took a couple rides on the hay wagons and collected pumpkins, gourds to decorate with, lots of delicata squash, some butternuts and a beautiful blue hubbard.

It was a blustery day, but beautiful to have snow on the peaks and to search high and low through the patch for the perfect head for Mr. Pumps, our seasonal scarecrow.

Here he is, all decked out in the goodwill’s finest.

Anna isn’t always ready to change her wardrobe selections even when the seasons dictate it.  You can see that she ended up wearing multiple pieces of mine as the day turned colder and colder!

But, she is often right because here she is the very next day in flip flops and a party dress basking in the sun.  This fall has also involved a quick pace to our firewood collecting.  Usually, we start a little earlier and get a bit at a time, but trips and visitors didn’t allow for that too much this year, so we had several weekends in a row where it was all firewood all the time.  Bill taught Anna to play chess in the midst of this.  They had a steady game going on the picnic table during much of the splitting.

And are continuing even now that the wood is stacked and ready for winter. . .

The Free Range Challenge!

You are all invited to join the free range challenge.  I accidently looked in the mirror and freaked out!  I feel obliged to tell those who were wondering that no, I am not pregnant.  I have however, decided to lose some weight.  I challenge anyone out there who has been intending to lose weight, but hasn’t gotten around to finding the time (like me for the last twenty years), to use the free range challenge to start doing it.  See if you can lose weight along with me!  The challenge is for you to lose weight faster than I do.  Don’t tell me about until you have succeeded in doing it!  Otherwise you might have to listen to my insufferable trash-talk.  Just so you know what you’re up against you should know that I have never knowingly lost weight in my life.  That combined with the incredible discipline you all know I have when it comes to doing something I don’t want to, well, now you know what you’re up against.   In full disclosure, I should let you know that I actually exercised this morning.

Sooo, in the Teasdale corner!  Weighing in at a globular 183 lbs!  Bill the-hasn’t-exercised-in-five-years Daly!!!  I took a picture of myself (shown below) so I can capture the before and after effects.

Anna and I have done a couple of rewrites of nursery rhyme classics.  Today we will share with you our takes on Three Blind Mice.  The only parameters were to write about the three blind mice and to use the words early, earlier, late, and later.

THREE BLIND MICE by Anna Daly

Early one Christmas Eve there was an old lady whose name was Mrs. Hinchins.  Her mother gave her a present.  The present was wrapped with pictures of butterflies and birds.  Mrs. Hinchins grabbed the present, opened it, and three blind mice scattered around the house.  They hopped, skipped, and ran.  Mrs. Hinchins ran into the kitchen, got the fly swatter, and tried to smack these mice to death.  Smack!  Bam!  Boom! Crash!  Splat!  Mrs. Hinchins made a ruckus, but didn’t get a single one.  She tried to think of what to do with these mice.

Bam!  Just like that she thought of it.  She decided to go to the pet store to get a cat.  She got her purse, and got in the car and drove to the pet store, paid for the cat, and drove home with the cat.  She skipped in a happy way as her cat went inside.  The cat spotted a mouse and chased it.  It finally got it.  Mrs. Hinchins hopped because her cat got one mouse.  She put out mouse traps when it was bedtime.  She woke up and got out of bed, looked at all of her mouse traps, and found that she had caught a mouse.  She danced in a funny way and then made breakfast.  After she was done with breakfast she made a trap for the last sneaky mouse.  She hid in her closet, then she heard a snap, and she got out and saw the mouse in the trap.

She sat in her chair in the living room, and said, “peace and quiet, finally.”

THREE BLIND MICE by Bill Daly

Stevie woke up with a start.  He tilted his head so he could hear better.  His nose twitched nervously, causing his whiskers to flap ever so slightly, like bees wings fanning nectar.  He was sure he had heard something, and when you’re a mouse you have to check out every noise.  New noises mean new dangers.  He could tell it was still dark because he could hear crickets chirping, but the robins were still quiet.

Stevie nodded his head in self-congratulations for the noise began again.  It was a faint rhythmic tapping that transformed the crickets chirp into a melody.

“Three-four time,” thought Stevie.  “I can work with that.”

He started to scratch the wall beside him in intervals that accentuated every fourth beat.

“Yea baby!” yelled his friend Ray.  “I’ve got a feelin’!  What you got Jose!?!”

Their friend Jose had been lying awake wondering how he was going to get back to Mexico (not an easy feat for a blind mouse).  He was thankful for the diversion and started in with a soulful moan that wove through Ray and Stevie’s back-rhythm like a snake gliding through tall grass.

“Oh yea!  Mmm hmm!” sang Ray in a staccato that spurred Stevie to belt out, “Boogie on reggae measkies!”

“Nn hmm, “  intoned Jose

“I’d like to see you…” sang Stevie

“You can’t seee,” sang Ray with a steadily rising, quavering voice.

“boogie right across the floor,” continued Stevie.  “I’d like to see you…”

“You can’t seee,” moaned Jose and Ray.

“It’s a song!” yelled Stevie stopping the music.  “A song.  You think I don’t know I can’t see?”

“We were just doing back-up vocals,” Jose said in contrition.

“You were late is what you were!  If you were any later we would have been on the next measure. “You can’t seee,” mimicked Stevie while spastically beating his chest with his paw (a gesture totally lost on Ray and Jose).  “I wouldn’t have minded the taunting back-up vocals if you had come in a touch earlier.  You know, like on the beat!”

“It’s called syncopation brother,” wined Ray as he waved his head in the air.

“It’s called late!  Now I’d like to get some sleep if you don’t mind.”

The three mice settled into their nest to try and get a little more sleep.  It became very quiet.  There was an occasional chirp from a single cricket.  All the rest of the crickets had picked up on the tension and stopped chirping to listen.

“Nothing wrong with a little syncopation,” grumbled Ray

Stevie sighed, rolled over, and stared vacantly toward the wall.

Art Journals

Carrie made beautiful art journals for all of us when Anna and I were in Chicago.

She then got us to actually start filling the pages with art.  We started with conceptual designs for the up and coming resurrection of Mr. Pumps.

Anna led the way with using mixed media and poetry.

Anna and I have been using the art journals to illustrate stories that we have written.  I’ll share those later.

The Field Museum is Totally Free Range

The Field Museum rocked!   We went there twice.

It was very inspirational.  Anna spent the first day telling me how she was going to go to all of these places and see all of these things.  We both agreed that perhaps the best way to do that was to become David Attenborough.

The next day I had to assure her that there were still fossils to be found.  She was glad to hear that because she had decided make her own museum just like the Field.  She won’t be starting out with quite the same endowment.  Perhaps one of you would like kick in a few hundred mil.  Above is an awesome display of the evolution from dinosaurs to birds.

Here’s Anna doing her best Parasaurolophus.

Of course we went to the Art Institute.

Here’s Anna with Grandpa.

The Art Institute has a great web page that allows people to make their own web gallery of your favorite paintings.  Check out Anna’s favorite paintings here:

http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/forward/emailref?path=node/14527

Check out My Favorites here: http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/forward/emailref?path=node/14915

Have you had that experience of not getting a famous painter until you see their work in person.  It was Winslow Homer for me.  I’ve seen his paintings in books before and went, “Ho hum.  Kind of drab.”  Well oh my gosh!  This guy is unreal!  Check out The Herring Net in my gallery.  This was painted in 1885!  He didn’t take a picture and go back to his studio to reproduce it in paint.  This is from a snapshot in his mind!  I about started talking louder to be heard over the wind and felt like wiping the salt spray off my face!

Anna became the free range city girl.

and we went to the Shedd aquarium

but best of all we saw family.