Our Ben

Sometimes things happen that are too hard to type about. That happened to us recently. We lost our beloved golden retriever, Ben. Ben joined our family when he was a little puppy, Thanksgiving of 1995. He left us on April 26, 2008. We miss him terribly, but have many great memories of the 12+ years he was with us. I hope to post some of the memories of Ben later, it's still a little bit difficult. In the meantime, here's a picture I took a few weeks ago.

Earth Day, 2008

Our family tries to live as if each day were Earth Day. But we're not ones to turn down a celebration, so we try to honor Earth Day on April 22nd of every year. Our annual traditions include reading the book Common Ground and taking some pictures of tree hugging. Last year we hugged some trees in Philadelphia, this year we stayed home. The children did paintings of our planet, then Jacob and Lauryn picked up trash alongside our road. We were surprised at how much we found on a relatively short stretch of our rural road. We were disgusted to see that the majority of what we found were cigarette butts. Yuck. To round out Earth Day, we have Chase in his appropriately colored cast. He has a radial fracture in his arm from a soccer incident. And he has the cast to prove it.

New Science!

I've been a little slack about posting for the past few weeks. Chris and I actually had a few days away, in NYC. It was a working trip for him, but still fun. Did you see us on the Today show? Also, the D&B performed on Fox and Friends.

Now, back to reality. We've just started a new science curriculum. It's from Winterpromise and studies bugs and plants. We thought this was the perfect time of year to start this study, since bugs and plants are everywhere! We have an ant farm and butterfly garden scheduled to arrive on Monday. We'll post some pics of their progress.

Here's a picture of Jacob and Lauryn studying the caterpillars they found in the yard.

Earth Hour - March 29, 2008

We heard about Earth Hour and thought it was a great idea. It started in Australia and basically the idea is to turn off all electricity for an hour. If everybody did this, it would supposedly save enough electricity to light up the entire USA for a year - ok, I'm making this part up because I can't remember what the website said exactly but you get the idea.


I read somewhere else online that turning off the electricity for an hour is actually useless, but I disagree. Our family did it. We set up candles and all sat around the kitchen table. We did not stare at any screens, we focused on each other. We played cards. My 15 year old did origami by candlelight - in the presence of her 4 siblings and parents. If any of you have a 15 year old daughter, you know how priceless that was. So we say, "Hoorah!" for Earth Hour. We're thinking about doing it once a week. That's a lot of origami.

Easter 2008 pics

We had a great Easter this year - a little chilly, but no snow on the ground like last year! We are really enjoying our new rector, Mother Joy Rose. As we go through her first year with us she's doing a wonderful job of melding her traditions with the traditions of our very old church, St. Paul's (affectionately known as 'Piney Parish'). This year for Maundy Thursday, we had a chocolate seder, which was enjoyed by all with the exception of Chase and me since he was really ill with an earache and fever. Easter morning was bright and sunny. After the service, the Rite 13 class, including Reid, continued the tradition of hiding eggs for the younger guys throughout the cemetery that surrounds our church. The first year we were there, I thought that tradition was a little odd, but now I see how fitting it is, the symbolism of new life among the graves - isn't that what Easter is all about?

Spring Break, Arnold Style

Today is the first day of Spring Break for our 2 highschoolers. It's a little chilly, but we don't care - the sun's out and we're ready to be OUTSIDE! We also like the tradition of planting on Good Friday. We planted some tomatoes and our first basil plant of the year. They'll spend some time in the sunroom until it warms up a little. Then they'll move out to the deck. It sure did feel good to get our hands back in the earth, though! We are ready for some warm weather.

Pi Day Pie

No description necessary. Maybe I should add that we made this pie 2 days ago.