Tag Archives: odin

day 3073: christmas tree hunting on a not-so-snowy ridge.

day 3073: christmas tree hunting on a not-so-snowy ridge. I.

it’s the holiday season which means it’s time for another trip to snowy ridge our favorite christmas tree farm! only there wasn’t any snow. boo. at least it wasn’t muddy.

odin picked out a fine looking white pine for our family tree.

day 3073: christmas tree hunting on a not-so-snowy ridge. II.

he’s holding the tree while i lay in the ground with the saw after he gave up trying to cut it down himself. maybe next year! of course he’s totally used to me saying, “oh hey, wait, let me take a picture!”

day 3073: christmas tree hunting on a not-so-snowy ridge. III.

haulin’ the tree out…

day 3073: christmas tree hunting on a not-so-snowy ridge. IV.

time to start the process over again with the second smaller tree that will go in odin’s room.

day 3073: christmas tree hunting on a not-so-snowy ridge. V.

he gave another go at cutting down the tree and almost made it through before running out of steam. i bet he’ll do it next year and this will actually end up being the last year i cut down a tree for a while 🙂

day 3073: christmas tree hunting on a not-so-snowy ridge. VI.

happy to be haulin’ both trees out…

day 3073: christmas tree hunting on a not-so-snowy ridge. VII.

it’s a long walk back to the car so i guess i should lend a hand. but just one. the other one is for the camera.

day 3073: christmas tree hunting on a not-so-snowy ridge. VIII.

then it’s finally time to ride the zipline! they took the tree down and built a bigger platform.

day 3073: christmas tree hunting on a not-so-snowy ridge. IX.

we’ve been doing this for six years and i still marvel at the genious of combining a christmas tree farm and a zipline. it’s a magical memory maker.

day 3073: christmas tree hunting on a not-so-snowy ridge. X.

seeing this treehouse every winter partially inspired our wanting to build a treehouse with a zipline.

day 3073: christmas tree hunting on a not-so-snowy ridge. XI.

as we do every year, we ended our visit in a cabin warmed with a wood fire and enjoyed a cup of hot chocolate and more than a couple of cookies.

thanks once again to the folks who run snowy ridge for all the great memories.

day 3067: odin’s first game as a squirt!

day 3067: odin's first game as a squirt! I.

after making the cut to move up to the squirts and a a few practices running plays odin and his new teammates played their first game today against black river falls.

and whooboy, what a game! viroqua played well through the first two periods and maintained a commanding 4-1 lead. they looked awesome for their first game!

odin struggled a little in the beginning to remember exactly where he needed to be on the ice, but he caught on quickly and made several great defensive plays ( here he’s in blue swatting the puck away from the net after a face-off ).

day 3067: odin's first game as a squirt! II.

as viroqua got tired in the third period, black river falls scored three goals and with literally seconds left in regular play scored a fourth goal to tie the game and sent the game into over time! it was all almost too exciting ( i totally lose cred as an amateur sports photographer by missing the game tying shot )!

day 3067: odin's first game as a squirt! III.

after several heart stopping moments, where it looked liked black river falls was going to win in overtime, virouqa held on with excellent ( albeit somewhat tired ) defense and the game ended a tie.

it was a great game played by both teams. i can’t wait to see how odin’s team progresses through the season. although hopefully not all the games are this exciting!

day 3061: running plays with the squirts!

day 3061: running plays with the squirts!

remember that hockey test test to see if odin had the skills to move up to the squirts? well, he made the cut!

so, now he’s practicing with older 9 and 10 year old kids and they actually practice running plays on his new team ( the 8-9 year old mites mainly concentrated on skating drills and learning individual positions, not necessarily integrated plays ).

i imagine this will mean odin’s already impressive skills with improve really, really quickly over the coming months ( here, he’s in the white jersey playing goalie ).

day 3058: school assembly and stone soup!

day 3058: school assembly and stone soup!

friday school assembly is one of the many neat things about odin’s school. first thing in the morning, the kids all gather together in the gym and each grade take a turns performing a little play or song they’ve learned in front of the other grades and many parents who are able to attend.

it’s a simple and clever way to get the kids to gain confidence in performing in front of a crowd which is a skill that will serve them well over the years.

on this particular day, odin’s teacher was also happy to announce they harvested 835 potatoes from their school plot. they gave the big ones to Jim The Cook and made themselves stone soup from the rest.

They believe this is Completely Normal and The Way It Is Everywhere.

day 3052: preparing seed garlic for a slightly smaller, small mountain of garlic.

day 3052: preparing seed garlic for a slightly smaller, small mountain of garlic. I.

regular readers might recall we’ve been planting and harvesting a small mountain of garlic for several years now. we usually plant around 200 cloves around this time of year in our lovely cropp crop.

it turns out that 200 head of garlic is, well, way too much for a family of three even after you factor in giving away loads of it to friends and family and what we need for seed every year. so this year, we’re scaling back and “only” planting 80 cloves in our home garden.

as always, odin is a super helper and thoroughly getting his hands dirty preparing the garlic and planting the seed.

day 3052: preparing seed garlic for a slightly smaller, small mountain of garlic. II.

experts will tell you the middle of november is way too late to plant garlic, but we’ve never had any problems because we always seem to get lucky with an unseasonably warm streak of weather. this year was no exception, right when we thought we might be too late, we got a nice warm streak of weather with predictions of gentle rain.

perfect ( excepting for what the trend might portend in terms of global warming )!