"Father"- Son Campout

Last year, when Tony was traveling around, doing rotations all over the country....and mostly not here, Jon had to miss out on the Cub Scout Father-Son campout. Sad. (It turns out, the boys dodged some unseasonably cold weather.) Still, they were sad to miss it.

This year rolled around.

Tony is here.

...but working some more intense hours, with only occasional weekends off. Naturally, the weekend of the campout wasn't one when he would be available. Big brother to the rescue! Anthony stepped in as his "Dad". (If there is something Anthony has been pretty willing to do, it's camp.) I bought them a 4-man tent (our other tent is ginormous), since they were going to be hiking in a bit.

That's the cool part of this particutlar campout....

The took the MARC to  Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, hiked to their campsite, went to a Waffle House for breakfast, and then took the Amtrak home. My kind of camping...minus the sleeping on the ground part. In my defense, now that I'm eight months pregnant, I can barely sleep in a bed. 

So, I'm not really out looking for adventure.  I'll leave that to the boys for now. :)

Shamrocks and Other St. Patty's Nonsense

To "celebrate" our last snowy day, I made a snowflake cake.

I used the recipe that came with the pan - an almond cake - and it turned out beautifully.

We put some sugar "snow" on it and ate it. Time for Spring.

Of course, it did defy us and snow this last Sunday...but not the cancel school kind of snow, just the annoying, make Annalia's daffodils look sad for a few days kind of snow.

My flowers have all recovered. :) ...and now it's Spring...for reals.

My St. Patty's Day banner from last year was coming apart.

Cozy helped me fix it. She was so serious about clipping each shamrock on "just so". I'm not quite happy with the result...but happy enough not to redo it.

Since my the end of Irish Dancing at our house (for now...Cozy might be more enthusiastic...and less crippled), our St. Patty's Day celebrations mostly involve wearing a little green (if you remembered...or claiming that you have on green undies if you didn't) and eating an amazing meal of corned beef, cabbage, mashed potatoes, etc. 

This year, Tony and I got to double the celebratory eating, since a friend hosted an 

Irish-themed dinner that week. So, take everything that we ate with the kids and add on bangers and mash, an amazing beef stew, and multiple desserts. I'm hungry just thinking about it. Dang it was good.

Maybe next year I can find us a parade or something?

We've also had some spring visitors to our bird feeder...

...a family of deer.

If you count legs, you can see that there's a doe and three fawns/yearlings.

I thought the squirrels went through a lot of bird seed. They can't even compete with deer.

Jonny thinks we should put up a salt lick too.