Nature in the Country, Nature in the City

Real quick update:

Holden is starting to wind down on his regularly scheduled classes.  Above is his latest zoo school where they learned about prey and predators.

He had his last Lower East Side Ecology class on Friday where they studied Urban Biodiversity.  They caught insects in a nearby park and then brought them back to the classroom to inspect them under a microscope.

And of course we had to stop by our favorite donut shop for National Donut Day.

On the weekend we had a great barbecue on Saturday with some new friends.  A girl from Ella's school also has a weekend house in Woodstock so we had her family over for dinner.  It was so fun to entertain friends for dinner again, something we rarely get to do in the city.  And they turned out to be super nice people.  It's fun to start to make friends up north now, too.

On the first Saturday of each month the Woodstock Land Conservancy leads a walk with different themes.  You may remember that we went on the tracking walk in the snow a few months ago.  This Saturday the walk was called "Eat Your Invasives" where we were led by an herbalist who taught us about the local invasive plants and what they can be used for in cooking and medicine.  This ties in nicely to a class Holden and I are taking this Friday in Central Park on foraging.

At the end of the class we got to taste some pesto and tea the teacher had made out of local invasive plants (weeds!).  They were delicious!  We'll be trying them at home.

The weather is still spotty here.  Not too cold, but a lot of rain lately.  Yesterday was beautiful, so Holden and I decided to take the long way home from swim class walking through Central Park.  We discovered a new area that has been under renovation for a long time but is now back open to the public.  It never ceases to amaze me how beautiful the park is and how far from the city you feel when you're in it, even though traffic is just a few yards away from you.

Did It Ourselves

Holden had the first of a two-part class last Friday down at the Lower East Side Ecology Center.  I reached out to them a few months ago and asked if they did classes for elementary age kids.  Usually, they bring their instructors into schools to teach about topics such as Urban Biodiversity and East River Ecology.  They do offer after school classes at their space on the shore of the East River, just under the Williamsburg Bridge, and said that they could do something for homeschoolers there as well.  So I booked two consecutive Fridays for a group of about 30 kids.

Holden's wearing goggles for some reason

It was a gorgeous day to be at the river and the class was fantastic!  The kids got to pull up oyster cages and see lots of marine life and then take it into their classroom and inspect them under a microscope.  They learned how to test the water for salinity and turbidity (and why those are important).  They discussed why the health of the river is important to our own health and what pollutants there are.  There was history, science, math, social studies...all wrapped into one!

We return tomorrow for part two.


Today Holden is back at the Bronx Zoo for his weekly zoo school class.  This week they will be learning about predators and prey.  Luckily, my good friend offered to take Holden this week so that I could catch up on a long list of to-dos (not the least of which was catching up on this blog!).  We are leaving at the end of this month for a big trip (I'll leave those of you who don't know in suspense!) and so I've got much to do to get ready - in addition to my regular job description as catch-all for this family.

We had an amazing Memorial Day weekend up in Woodstock.  The weather was beautiful and Holden brought his friend Simon up with him.  While we didn't have time for a long hike (there was a short one though), we did finish a lot of the things we wanted to get done before summer and visitors coming.

Here are some before photos of the back house.  We've been using it as storage since we bought the place but had always planned to turn it into extra sleeping space.

It wasn't horrible, but a blah beige color with ugly linoleum flooring.

Now it's fresh and bright and clean and has a beautiful wood flooring!  And the best part is we did it all by ourselves.

Yes, that's Kevin using a nail gun with a compressor.

The kids slept out there and absolutely love it!  Kevin and I felt like we were on vacation by ourselves with a quiet house at night, sleeping in and having a peaceful cup of coffee in the morning.  All without little ones running around.  And of course the kids love the independence and privacy.

Kevin and I walked into the house after the last piece of IKEA furniture was assembled, high-fiving and congratulating ourselves on all of the hard work we accomplished on the back house, only to find a pool of water under our washing machine!  Old Kevin and Gretchen would have grabbed the phone and called a plumber.  But we have a new sense of confidence when it comes to DIY.  Instead I pulled out my phone, searched a few sites, and before long had Kevin pulling out the machine, finding the leaky hose, heading off to the hardware store to get a new one, and replacing it all by ourselves.  Ten bucks and we were back in laundry business.  Seriously, it's such a good feeling to figure it out ourselves.

Simon and the kids got to see lots of wildlife - a snake, frogs, woodchucks, and even a mama deer and a brand new fawn right in our front yard.  The crazy thing is that it was Memorial Day weekend last year when we saw the exact same scene.  Perhaps even the same mama deer.

See in the background?

We enjoyed several barbeques including using the BBQ as a pizza oven.  And on our way home to the city on Monday we stopped just north of the city at our good friends the Van Engens, for Sharon's 40th birthday party.  A great end to a perfect weekend.

Work Hard, Play Hard

Work hard, play hard.

That is our family's philosophy (without ever really having discussed it).

The work part came last weekend in Woodstock.  Spring seems to be when we work on the house.  Summers are spent at the swimming hole, winters on the ski slopes, but spring is when we fix/clean/plant/paint/improve the property.

 

Kevin and I are feeling *really* proud of ourselves.  Before moving to New York, we were not at all handy.  When your father-in-law is like MacGyver and can fix anything at all and make it look effortless, and he lives just 8 minutes away, why would you ever learn to do anything yourself?  So once we no longer had our free handyman within driving distance, we started doing small things ourselves.  First we watched videos on how to replace the light fixture in the guest room.  Then I read articles on how to replace a toilet seat and install a European-wired chandelier.  But this weekend we graduated to installing wood flooring.


Here are the before pictures of the back house.  It had some nasty, stained linoleum.

I can't tell you how many YouTube videos I watched, but what I can tell you is that there is nothing you can't learn on YouTube.

Our local hardware store rents tools so we were able to rent a circular saw to cut the end pieces.  In just a few hours we had beautiful, new wood flooring down in the kids cabin.

This weekend we'll finish the quarter rounds along the edges.  We figured out the hard way that we're going to have to rent a nail gun for that.  Once those are in I'll get a nice photo of the finished flooring.

Our garden is going bonkers.  May is its heyday.  And I can see that this weekend when we go up the peonies (my favorite!) will be in bloom.  You couldn't keep me away.

The weather in both Woodstock and the city have been gorgeous and we've tried to spend as much time outside.  It's a fairly short window between being too cold to be out and being to hot and humid.

Holden had Zoo School this week and his sword fighting class in Central Park, and I joined my buddies on my friend's rooftop for some cocktails at sunset.

I even took Ella's book club out to Lincoln Center for lunch to enjoy the sunshine.

The current president of the Parents Association at Ella's school asked me if I would join him as co-president next year.  It's a two-year term and honestly, I don't think I totally know what I'm in for.  But we ran and were elected and now I'm committed to figuring it out over the next two years.

My first executive action was to host a Moms' Happy Hour last night at a bar near her school.  Middle school is different from elementary school in that the kids get to and from school on their own, so you don't have as much opportunity to meet the other parents at drop off and pick up.  I had no idea if anyone would show up to a happy hour but I thought it would be nice for us to get to know each other better.  I sent an invitation to the 8 email addresses that I had for moms at the school and told them to forward it to their friends.  We had at least 60 moms there last night!  The place was packed and everyone was so thankful to have an opportunity to get to know each other.

I think I have this president thing down better already than Trump.