So so

Honestly, June was a mixed bag in regards to meeting my goals. I did much better about not having snacking between meals and also did a better job of limiting my portions at meals...well, except for any meals that involved gravy. But with the flurry of end of school activities, school getting out and James being gone for five days, I did not do so well on the walking: I only walked ten times this month, far short of the three times per week goal.

On to July. Same three health related goals, and I have to work harder on getting the walking done in the mornings even with Aidan home from school. At least with the weather being warmer, I eat less, so the snacking and portion control should be fairly easy to achieve.

Unfortunately, I have lost my knitting mojo in the last few weeks. Once the flurry of getting gifts completed was over, I fell out of like with knitting. Usually I kick start my knitting passion with a new project but this time I am balancing it against my desire to finish a project that has been in progress for months.I bought a skein of Lhasa Wilderness yarn from Bijou Basin Ranch just to try out knitting with Yak down (the yarn is 75% Yak down and 25% bamboo). It is hard to imagine that such a soft fiber comes from such a large, fierce looking animal! I do like knitting with it and I like the pattern, so I can't really explain why the project has languished; it might be due to the fact that there was no deadline for completing it.

So I am now setting a deadline for completion: July 31. I am quite sure that I will give the scarf to a friend as a birthday gift and having it complete before the event would be wonderful. And until the scarf is complete, I am not casting on another project - that is my line in the sand to get this project done.

Gorgeous gorges

We spent this past weekend camping near Ithaca, a town on the southern tip of Cayuga Lake, which is one of New York's Finger Lakes. It is a beautiful area with deep gorges cut by the rivers flowing into the lake. The campground at which we stayed was to the west of the city near Taughannock Falls State Park so we went there first on Saturday morning.

Taughannock Falls is a 215-foot drop and is one of the largest single-drop waterfalls in the eastern part of the U.S. I took this photo of James and Aidan at an overlook on the rim of the gorge:

The water flows through a long gorge with cliffs up to 400 feet. Because the walls of the gorge are so steep and the sun intensity varies from one side to the other, each side of the gorge is a different micro-climate from the other side.

We drove down to the base of the gorge where we hiked to the falls and walked along beautiful Cayuga Lake:

We drove into Ithaca to eat lunch at the very quirky and very delicious Ithaca Bakery, which is more than just a bakery. James and I had sandwiches while Aidan chose to eat chicken that had been cooked over a grill outside. All three of us enjoyed our choices and we got giant chocolate chip cookies to go.

Our next stop was Robert H. Treman State Park, just south of Ithaca. Here is just one of the park's twelve waterfalls

We wanted to hike the Upper Gorge Trail, but it was closed due to repairs about 3/4 mile in. Even the portion that we did get to hike was stunning:

Before we returned to the campground, we went into the village of Trumansburg to Salmon Pottery, a craft gallery and studio. We admired (but did not ) Mary Ellen's beautiful textured pottery, and we were quite taken with the goldfish sculpture out front:

As we strolled through Trumansburg, I saw a sign in the window of Good to Go Market that advertised Cilantro-Jalapeno Limeaid. Yes, you read that correctly: limeaid with cilantro and jalapeno! I was intrigued by the combination and had to try it...and it was delicious. The drink was refreshing with just a little kick in the back of the throat.

We spent the rest of the day at the campground where Aidan splashed in the campground pool and made (of course) new friends. After a hearty and delicious breakfast on Sunday morning at Falls Restaurant, we drove home. We didn't get to see or do as much in Ithaca as we would have liked but since we are only about a 90 minute drive away, we will go back.

Dreading THAT conversation

An almost word by word account of a conversation that Aidan and I had the other day:

Aidan:  When women are pregnant, are there wires?

Me:  Wires? What do you mean?

Aidan:  Wires! (and he moves his hands around his waist as though he was holding an inner tube)

Me:  No...why do you think there are wires?

Aidan:  We were watching Cheaper by the Dozen at school* and the mom was pregnant, and she said "My wire snapped!" so they had to get her to hospital to have the baby.

He somehow heard "water broke" and understood "wire snapped"! I declined to pursue the topic further; that discussion will come soon enough.

*Why were they watching a movie at school? Because in the last week to ten days, they did nothing but play; work was long over. I guess the point is to have them in school for the requisite number of days but not necessarily learning anything.

Then and now

As of 11:30 this morning, school is officially over for Aidan. He brought home artwork showingphotos from both his first day of 4th grade on September 4, 2011 and his last day, today:

It is hard to read but under each photo is written his height, in inches. He apparently was 55 inches at the start of the school year and grew a full inch since. (This doesn't square with the measurement of 53.25 inches that was recorded at his ten year checkup last month but since we aren't using it for any official reasons, I think we are okay.)

Fourth grade was good for Aidan. And now he can say that he is a 5th grader!

High flying Father's Day

Yesterday was Father's Day in the U.S., and we took advantage of the gorgeous weather by visiting Highland Forest, one of our favorite county parks. We packed a picnic lunch, and enjoyed the  gorgeous view from outside Skyline Lodge:

It was breezy up on the hill, which is one of the reasons we chose Highland Forest for our outing. Aidan bought a kite when we were in Lake George and he had not yet flown it. He and James put the kite together and soon had it ready to fly:

It took a few times for them to get the hang of getting it airborne:

But soon Aidan was an old pro at kite flying:

We then went on a hike. Highland Forest is a great place to hike, except when an unexpected and sudden thunderstorm arrives, but yesterday the good weather held. Aidan was looking for fossils in a soggy creek bed when James spotted these animal tracks:

I hope the raccoon and the coyote were not there at the same time! We probably covered about 3-4 miles during our hike and were grateful to get back to the car and water.

Dinner came from Jack Stack Barbecue out of Kansas City, MO. James had received one of their catalogs, so I decided to order a dinner from there for Father's Day. I ordered beef brisket, pork tenderloin and two sides, and it arrived packed in dry ice on Friday. All we had to do was heat up the food, which was perfect since we were tired from hiking and kite flying. Dinner was delicious! And there is still plenty of brisket and pork leftover, so we will have it for dinner another night. I think James would agree that it was an excellent Father's Day from start to finish.

Gifts

For the first time in quite a while, I completed two knitting projects just a few days apart. Both projects are gifts, so I was under a bit of a deadline.

The first item is a baby hat:

Our neighbors across the street, Dave and Lauren, had their first baby last week. Although we don't know them well, when we found out they were having a baby, we wanted to give them a little gift. They knew they were having a girl but I absolutely refused to make a pink hat, both because I am tired of knitting pink items (see below) and because pink should not be the only color a girl wears.

Riley's hat is knit from Knit Picks Swish Worsted, which is a 100% Merino superwash wool, meaning that it is machine washable. I did not want anything that had to be handled delicately; new parents have enough on their hands! The color turned out to be a bit more autumnal than I anticipated, but since the hat has great stretch and turned out a bit bigger than I thought a newborn size would be, she should be able to wear it in the fall. We will pair the hat with our favorite children's music CD, Catch the Moon.

The second item is an end of year present for Aidan's teacher, Ms. Sheridan, who is an amazing teacher. Although she hardly looks old enough to drive, she is a pro - she firmly but gently commands the attention of her students and leads them to do their best work. She is, by far, the best teacher I have seen in Aidan’s school career. When I gave Aidan the choice of knitting her a present or buying one, he asked me to please knit something for her. How could I refuse?

I chose an infinity scarf, which can be worn in one long loop:

Or doubled around the neck:

OF COURSE her favorite color is pink; it seems that every other project I knit as a gift is pink and just about every teacher Aidan has ever had has preferred pink. Since it had to be pink, I went with a vibrant pink, and the yarn is decadently luscious: Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca Silk, a blend of 50% alpaca and 50% silk. Ooh-la-la, it feels soft and luxurious, and hopefully will help Ms. Sheridan keep warm during our rather brisk winters.

Saucy

We like to eat. Whether it is trying new recipes or enjoying old favorites, the one thing our food has to have is flavor, and I don't think there is a spice out there that we will not try. Bland simply does not make the grade in our house.

James tried out a new recipe for barbecue sauce back in May when we had our Derby de Mayo gathering, and it was delicious. When the employee activities committee at his company announced a barbecue sauce competition, he was happy to have an excuse to make it again. The recipe is Bourbon Whiskey BBQ Sauce and it calls for almost one full cup of whiskey, so you know it has to be good. While it is not at all (to us) spicy, it does have a bit of a tang but mainly, it just has a nice mix of flavors.And don't forget the 3/4 cup of whiskey!

Since James used the last of our Jim Beam Devil's Cut bourbon to make the sauce, he decided to put the finished sauce back into the bottle:

He had to get it to work SOMEHOW.

The sauce competition was yesterday after work, and the company brought in some pulled pork (and sides) so employees could taste the sauce on meat. There were five entries and when the votes were tallied, James' sauce came in...dead last. He was quite surprised, especially after tasting the winning sauce, which he said quite bland. Another sauce that he thought was quite good received only a few more votes than his, and many people said it was too spicy.

We have learned over time that most people have very different palettes from us; we like depth of flavors and we definitely like spice. Not always hot spice, either, but rich and complex spices. So a sauce that tastes delicious to us may just be too much for many people, as evidenced by James' last place showing.

His sauce may not have won the work competition, but it is a prize winner at our house - bring on the pig!

The Famous New Yorker Wax Museum

The fourth graders at Aidan's elementary school present a famous New Yorker "wax museum" each year as part of their history studies. Each student is assigned a person, researches that person, writes a short bio and then portrays that person in a presentation to their fellow students, friends and families. Aidan's class portrayed people from government and local history, another class portrayed people who changed history and the final class portrayed assorted famous (and presumably infamous) people.

Aidan was assigned the role of DeWitt Clinton - you know him, right? When Aidan started to tell me about him, I realized that I did know one fact about him, that he was one of the main forces behind the creation of the Erie Canal and the first version of the canal was often called "Clinton's Ditch". He was also governor of New York, a U.S. Senator and the mayor of New York City.

We had to provide Aidan with a costume or props for his presentation. Since I am not an expert in historical clothing nor am I a seamstress, we decided to work off the Clinton's Ditch portion of the bio and outfit Aidan with a shovel. We also pinned a "I LOVE NY" button on his shirt, since Clinton had served our state well in his lifetime.

Last Thursday afternoon the wax museum opened. Aidan and his classmates were arranged around the classroom with red circles in front of them, which were pretend buttons that the viewers could press to bring the character to life. Aidan did a marvelous job of remembering his lines and delivering them in a clear voice:

I also viewed our neighbor, Bailey, as Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, and heard the bios of Mayor Bloomberg and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Then I popped next door to see some of Aidan's Cub Scout friends. Most of the students did an excellent job of remembering their lines and I learned a bit more about some of the interesting people in our state's history. It was a better experience, I am sure, than going to the wax museum in Lake George.

Continuous improvement

It is the first day of June (eek!) and time to take a quick look back at the goals I set for May and set the goals for June. In May, I continued with the health-related goals of walking three times a week, not snacking and cutting down on food portions. I did really well with the walking, usually going more than three times a week, and I did quite well on not snacking. Portion control? Not so well. The truth is that I like to eat and I cook really good meals, so cutting back on the amount is difficult for me.

I also had a knitting goal in May, to finish an end of year gift for Aidan's classroom teacher. It is not yet done, but is about 80% complete so I am pleased; it will not be a problem to get it done by June 20, the last day of school.

All in all, I say that May was a success. There may be people who would disagree with me, saying that I did not meet all of my goals. To me, the purpose of setting goals or making resolutions is to bring about change; by setting these goals, I am able to keep the changes I want to make first and foremost in my thoughts, and steadily work towards those goals. So while I may not necessarily achieve each goal completely, I am making continuous improvement - and that, for me, is an achievement.

I will be a bit repetitive for June: walk three times a week, limit my snacking and, once again, try to decrease meal portions. With the end of the school year looming (eek!), that is about all I can focus on this month. In July, maybe I will add a new and exciting goal to my list.