Tag Archives: ericiv

day 2136: scenes from a very active mother’s day.



sure mother’s day is about mothers. but when you have a very active almost-six year old it’s also about having fun while running and playing and swinging and climbing!

and attempting to fly kites even when we are all pretty sure there’s not enough wind to keep them aloft.



somewhere along the way, odin learned how to “pump” on the swing to keep himself going without any help from us pushing.

sadly, this means he no longer needs his mamma to push him on mother’s day treks to the park ;-(

he’s a little happier about the milestone than we are.



in keeping with the name, odin informs me that the monkey bars are way easier to play on without shoes, so it’s all the easier to wrap your toes around the bars and keep your footing.



i’m sure there are more than a few who may cringe at the thought of letting their children have fun climbing trees.

we’re not one of those people 🙂

risks aside, it’s a fantastic way to hone eye-hand-feet coordination while generating a “real time” strategy and tactics for getting up and, as importantly, down.



of course, being mother’s day and all, it is important to stop and smell the lilacs.

day 2136: getting familiar with our new baby chicks.



over the next few weeks we’ll take a little time to get our new baby chicks used to us. odin has been feeding them a lot so they like him best 🙂

this is a black australorp.



and this is an ameraucana, known for laying colorful bluish green shelled eggs.



this is a fine, fluffy light brahma.



and a shot of our other ameraucana.

no shots of our buff orpingtons this time around, but i’m sure you’ll see them in the future 🙂

day 2135: odin gets some chickens!



we’ve been talking about getting chickens for quite some time, partly for fresh eggs ( although there is certainly no shortage of farm-fresh organic eggs in the area ) and partly to have fun with odin learning about where food comes from – know your farmer, know your food! caring for chickens and collecting eggs is nothing new to odin since he’s lucky enough to go to a school that has a couple of birds right on the school grounds.

so after years of talking, we finally went out to chett’s feed and seed and bought some chicks! two ameraucanas ( they lay blue-green shelled eggs ), two australorps, two orpingtons and one light brahma. if all goes as planned we’ll pick up a couple of barred rocks soon.

for the next 5 weeks or so, they’ll stay in a brooder under a heat lamp as slowly ween them from a toasty 95F to ambient temperature.

odin quickly took to letting the chicks smell his hands and soon they were eating away from them.

he’s going to make a fine egg farmer.

day 2120: odin earns his first bike.



it all started with a book – “henry and beezus”. in the classic beverly cleary book, which we read the book to odin over the winter, henry huggins has one misadventure after another while attempting to raise money for the bike of his dreams. after finishing the book, odin decided that he too wanted to save up money to buy the bike of his dreams.

so, he promptly went to bluedog cycles, picked out a very stylish ( and spendy ) kona and set about saving money by doing a variety of chores around the house. and every so often he’d take a jar of money to the bike shop to put towards His Dream Bicycle that was sitting in the window with a “sold” sign.

we all decided that when spring arrived odin could have a rummage and bake sale to, hopefully, earn the balance left to be paid. at last spring arrived and after much deliberation he selected some Very Special Things ( including his first bicycle that he learned to ride without training wheels ) ) that were not quite as special as His Dream Bicycle, and helped make cookies and brownies and hotdogs on The Big Day.

within 4 hours he made enough money to buy His Dream Bicycle.



so, we excitedly went to the bike shop and pete, bluedog cycle’s proprietor extraordinaire, was happy to accept odin’s final payment, delivered in a kickapoo coffee tin.



of course, after earning His Dream Bicycle, it was time to have The Very Important Talk regarding the Do’s and Dont’s of bicycle ownership, which was all the more important when the bike has derailleurs and handbrakes and whatnot. all Very Important Stuff and odin recounted for hours the New Knowledge that had been bestowed upon him.

the whole experience was a great reminder for all of us that something as simple as a buying a bicycle can be A Great Adventure.



the eric update – day 2000: the day santa visited us in the sauna on christmas eve.

day 2000: the day santa visited us in the sauna on christmas eve.

two thousand days.

it really is hard to believe that two thousand days have gone by since odin was born so soon on the fourth of july in 2004. everybody loves round numbers and more than a few have noticed that day 2K was approaching , and on christmas eve no less. a funny and appropriate cosmic coincidence since odin has been the greatest gift we could have ever been given.

i had thought it would be nice to take a supermegaawesome photo on day 2000, but mother nature had different plans and i spent much of the day removing a wintery mix of snow and freezing rain that she dumped on us in anticipation of friends visiting for a christmas eve party with great food, drinks ( this being wisconsin, some even brought their own stash of raw milk as their beverage of choice ) and, of course, saunas for all.

after a very rich evening of listening to children run and laugh through the house, odin and i finally got a chance to enjoy some quiet time in the sauna, throwing steam while recounting the adventures of the day.

“poppi, i love you.”

and then, we heard it. faintly, at first. sleigh bells.

“HO! HO! HO!”

“MEEEEEEERRRRY CHRISTMAS!”

wait, what?

i sprung from the sauna bench, grabbed my robe, ran to the changing room, flung open the door and who did i find standing there? santa claus, himself. complete with the beard, the red suit, sleigh bells in hand. The Real Deal.

odin ran out into the sleet, in the buff, and shouted MERRY CHRISTMAS SANTA!

santa wished odin a very merry christmas and turned away, walking back to the street, ringing his sleigh bells while exclaiming, “MERRY CHRISTMAS! HO! HO! HO!”

a very magical sauna indeed. day 2000 will not, i believe, be soon forgotten.

merry christmas to all. thank you for following odin’s adventures and believing in miracles.

wherein odin extols the virtues of organic valley eggnog and orange juice.

wherein odin extols the virtues of organic valley eggnog and orange juice. from Eric C. Snowdeal III on Vimeo.

last week when i mentioned that eggnog season had begun and that folks should try eggnog and orange juice, the response was the typical skeptical “raised eyebrow”.

then i remembered that last winter ( maybe around the new year ), odin and i shot a test video that was going to submitted to a promotion that organic valley was running where folks could upload videos on their vision for an organic breakfast. for odin, that vision includes eggnog and orange juice 🙂

so we shot this test video featuring a cameo with pushkin who, i think, was pretty sure odin was going to dump some yummy eggnog on the floor.

for whatever reason we never got around to doing a re-shoot in the morning during breakfast, but the test footage turned out amusing in its own right.