Fiddleheadin' with Daddy

The crisp spring evenings and warm sunny days bring one of my favorite spring events: fiddleheading.  I love eating them but I love picking them even more!
The event starts off with either a late evening or early morning phone call from my dad.  He calls to say it looks like it could be a fiddleheadin' day and I should meet him at the boat landing. 
This year, we took Searle along (Searle and daddy do a lot together) and I was glad for that because I can never get the boat to do what my father thinks I should be able to make it do.  This year, daddy yelled at Searle instead of me!  It's fun to go with Searle, he tells the best stories. I marvel at all he has experienced and his vivid memory of each event.  I'm always telling my students to take the time to listen to their elders as they are the best storytellers and they will never experience the life their elders had.
We were all bundled up in our winter coats and I even wore my mittens on the boat ride to our secret spot.  As soon as we got there, we each grabbed our buckets and the "plunks" were soon replaced with a soft fiddle head bed for the rest to land on. 
It didn't take long to fill our buckets and just as we were about finished, we realized our secret spot wasn't so secret after all.  A wet dog, that looked just like Izzi, came running over at me and then I saw the dog's owner paddling in a canoe right to our spot. Soon after that, another man and his daughter walked over towards us with garbage bags picking fiddle heads. 
With full buckets, we headed back to the boat and began our ride back to the truck.  Searle kept me entertained with a few more stories, one being about the time Paul Lovett flew his airplane right under the bridge and another about the time he had a confrontation with the Indians.  Yes, we called them Indians in the boat. 
These are the days I love.  A boat ride, good company and good stories, no bugs, fiddle heads for supper, and the time spent with daddy.  I already can't wait for next year.

 Daddy and Searle tying up the boat.

 How many you got?

 Beautiful!

 Another one of daddy's finds (paddle). Every time he goes fiddleheadin' he finds something!

Yep, this is the part where Searle didn't get it just perfect and Daddy let him know!  I'm quite sure Searle wouldn't call it being yelled at.

Surviving a Maine Winter (And Enjoying It!)

Believe it or not, this picture was taken just a few weeks ago, during Christmas vacation, while enjoying one of our year round sports in the winter-goecaching. Notice my Chobani and my cute little 31 lunch sack I had made just for geocaching! I don't go anywhere without a snack.

Now onto the real post:

According to my colleague and friend, Debbie, I'm an "outdoor girl." She's right. I love to be out in the fresh air and my day isn't complete until I get a little bit of sunshine on my face! I'm also somewhat obsessed with exercising outdoors, maybe even exercising in general. No matter the season, you will find me outside exercising. In the spring and summer, I'll jog in the rain and I've been known to bike on a misty day. Accidentally (and I don't recommend it), I have even been seen biking in thunderstorms! In the fall, I relish the crisp autumn jogs on "my" dirt road and biking in warmer clothing. When the snow flies, I am anxious for big snowstorms that provide a great cushion for snowshoeing or skiing. If the winter is like this year, I continue jogging. This weekend, I jogged on Saturday in several inches of snow which prompted my decision to ski on Sunday.
Debbie's facebook post inspired me to create this post the whole time I skied. She said she wouldn't be going out night snowshoeing because it was too cold and I replied she just needed to dress for the occasion. Here, I will share what I wear on a five below zero day so I can get my daily sunshine and exercise!
These pictures were taken after my 5-mile ski and I promise I will only disrobe to the last layer. Here's what I looked like right when I got back. Note my outer layer-a windbreaker, a hat, and unlined wind pants. See Boomer in the background? He and Daisy go, too. They have little neck warmers and they run the whole time.
The first thing I did when I got inside was get a mason canning jar (why do they call it mason? I'll have to look that up), put 8 ounces of skim milk in it, a squirt of chocolate syrup, put the lid on, shake it, and put it in the freezer. I'll come back to the chocolate milk later.
Here's what I look like after taking off my first 2 layers-remember, I only dress in this many layers when it's below zero and the wind is blowing. Otherwise, for winter activities, I usually only have on 2 shirts, one windbreaker and one fleece.

Left: I wear a red LL Bean fleece that I've had for about 15 years. It's not very thick, but it does the job. On a normal winter day, I don't wear the outer blue windbreaker. That blue jacket is not lined, so it's very thin. I wore my balaclava and a scarf today-I only wear those on windy, below zero days. The pants in the first picture are just a pair of Adidas running pants. Right: The pants in the middle are the next and last pant layer-a pair of compression running pants. And check out those socks. Mark got those for me for Christmas (or as our second graders say, "I got it from Christmas."). They are compression and they go all the way up to my knee and I love them. I only ever wear one pair of socks in the winter. For any other winter sport, I wear a pair of LL Bean Smart Wool socks. In the middle, I also have my biking windbreaker-just a thin layer and a little fleece neck warmer I made. The two places I can't stand any cold air hitting are my neck and my ankles. Lower: My compression socks!

Left: A wick away moisture type of shirt (an old one from Dicks). Right: Another wick away-Kohls has them cheap when they have sales. Lower: A wick away moisture shirt-from Target.

And that's the last layer! A tank top. I was a wash of sweat when I got home-just look at my hair! But...I never once got cold despite the wind blowing and the cold temps. So, dress in layers and you'll be all set to survive a cold Maine winter. Once you find something you love to do outside, Spring gets here before you know it.

One of my favorite parts of today's ski was seeing a deer on the way out and seeing beautiful Mount Katahdin on the way back. I always have to stop and marvel at its beauty. I'm in awe that I've actually climbed it 5 times and flown through it twice. I didn't bring my camera, so here's a shot from last summer when Brad took me on a plane ride:

Back to that chocolate milk. This month in my Runner's World subscription, they suggested drinking chocolate milk within 30 minutes after a jog to restore the protein in your body. That's what I'm doing. Drank my milk and went down cellar and did a 400 rep challenge with Lisa and arms with Sean. Now I'm off to log my daily exercise onto myfitnesspal to see if I earned a little treat!

Geocaching Adventures and Misadventures

Nikki and I went for a ride to Greenville today to go have a picnic at Kristie and Brad's Moosehead Camp. Of course, you can't go for a long ride like that without mapping out some waypoints along the way to find some caches! And...Nikki's never been, so I thought this would be a great introduction for her.
Our first stop was on the Greenville Road on the ride there. What should have been relatively easy to find, was not found by us! It's listed as "What a spectacle" and I suspect, I must have been quite a spectacle to Nikki as I was tramping through the woods in my flip-flops (yes, I did bring sneakers, just didn't think I actually needed them on this nice wooded trail)! According to the GPS, I was within 1 foot of the cache, but after going around and around, getting gouged by trees and possibly walking through poison ivy, I gave up. I lifted every single log in there and found a spot it should have been under, so I'm quite sure this one has been muggled.
After a rainy lunch at camp, we headed back home and took a side-trip to Dexter for a Reny's fix and what I thought would be a Dunkin Donuts coffee for the ride home. Guess what...Dexter doesn't have a DD and they never did. What dream was I in where I actually drank a cup of DD coffee that I bought in Dexter??

Back on the road, we had a few caches to look for in Guilford. The first took us to this historical covered bridge. According to my coordinates, we we supposed to jump 50 feet to the water to find this one. I don't think so. The coordinates were going crazy and we walked back and forth to find a logical spot, but here again, we left without a find. At this point, I was quite sure Nikki must be thinking I had no idea what I was doing! She even got her phone out and started texting as soon as we got in the car. I said, "Are you telling everyone what a loser your mother is?" (She wasn't, or so she said.)We had several others to check, but it was raining so we settled on one last one, called Deer Crossing. Here the land was posted, but the owner placed it, so it was A-OK to be there! I must tell you, Mark wrote the clues for me last night, and Nikki and I tried to read them. Here's how I read this clue, "Easy peasy-bone of a tree-just look around and you'll find me!" As soon as we rode by the spot, Nikki said, "Hey, I bet it's by that tree right there." I looked in the direction she pointed and headed there as soon as we got out of the car. "That tree right there" that I saw her pointing to turned out to be about 20 feet from the actual tree she was pointing to! So, I was dumbfounded. Here's where I read the clue out loud again and said, "What the heck is a 'bone of a tree'? Nikki said, "I dunno" as Guinness, her dog, was pulling her everywhere except where she wanted to be! I began mumbling, "Bone, bone, bone. Oh, I get it. Bone means dead, so there must be a dead tree somewhere." That's when I walked over to the dead tree stump Nikki had originally pointed out and I immediately saw it and accidentally yelled, "I found it!" Then I moved away and told Nikki to head over this way to find it. And then Guinness helped her out by dragging her right through the geocache site until she let go of his leash and he did a little exploring of his own.



So, we found our first (and last) cache of the day. Nikki humored me by being silly while taking all the trinkets out of the ammo box, we both got our feet dirty, and we laughed a lot. I'd call this day a success, even if we did find just one measly cache! And by the way...there was no "bone of a tree," according to Mark, he wrote, "Base of a tree." Silly me.

Geocaching: Adventures and Misadventures!

I'll be posting a bit about our geocaching days. I have lots of great photos that I've been meaning to post and there's never enough time in the day. Before I begin posting, I wanted to let everyone know what geocaching is. Many of you probably have been geocaching longer than I have, but for some, this is a brand new word. Listen to the podcast I created for an online course I took last semester to learn more about geocaching. Maybe you'll even get inspired to get involved!

VACATION in the summertime!

I'm a little rusty in the blogging department, but now that I have a little more time, I am going to give it another shot! If you read my blog, please leave me a comment so I know someone is reading it.
Today is the official beginning of summer vacation for me. How did I celebrate? With a 24 mile bike ride of course! My legs were fried from biking all those hills to Glenburn yesterday and lifting tons of stuff at school today, but it actually felt good to loosen them up and feel the breeze in my face. It was a time to think about my plans for the summer and decide what to tackle first. I already created a bucket list; I just needed to prioritize it in my mind.
By the end of the ride, I knew what I'd be doing for the rest of the week. Tomorrow will be demolition day in the bathroom. I'm going to take the vanity and medicine cabinets apart and paint them the same brown as I painted the trim. Then I'll be tearing the laminate flooring (I do not like laminate flooring!) and getting the floor ready to tile. I bought the tile last summer and it's sat in the basement all winter just waiting. I can't wait to see how that chocolate brown tile looks on the bathroom floor. I'm not sure where we'll go to the bathroom and we might be "bathing" in the pool for a few days but I can't wait to tackle the tile job.

February Fun!!

I had a writing kind of vacation. I spent almost everysingleminuteofeverysingleday w r i t i n g. But..I did make sure to get out and enjoy the fresh air every day, too. I haven't logged all my exercise yet, but I did snowshoe every day. I had a snowshoe party and we had 10 people here on my trails.

The turkeys visited every day and they have figured out how to fly up on top of the bird feeder and eat from the feeder. That's not what I had in mind when I filled the feeder up! And on Wednesday, I went for a fabulous 15-mile dog sled ride. Wahoo!! It was fun and peaceful and I want to do it every day.

I think finding stuff you like to do in the winter makes the winter a lot easier to live with. I have seen many facebook posts of people so ready for spring. I'm fine with all this snow. I just bundle up accordingly and head out into the woods. Try it...you'll be surprised how quickly spring comes once you find something you enjoy doing in the snow!

"The Writing Project Saves "Good" Teachers"

Donalyn Miller had a lot to say. Here are a few highlights:
"I introduce my shelf children to my classroom children and they all become friends."
"Writing is a record of what matters to us."
"The only way to be a good writing teacher is to write."
Dorothy Parker-"I hate writing. I love having written."
"We are writers, because we write."