Day 4.360: Towers and Daddy-dinners

Exile #2 has been laid-low with a migraine attack for the last couple of days, so I've been holding the fort. This has meant some unexpected time with E5N1 in the afternoons.

This afternoon, we built a tower as tall as me from Magnatiles, then did some balls-and-rods building.  Then finally, we built this tower out of basically all the Duplo we have.  He helped a lot until it was about two-thirds complete at which point he lost interest - and instead built his 'sequence' containing all the different colours of single blocks he could find.  Of course, by that point I had to press on to find out how tall it would be when I ran out of blocks.  The answer is almost exactly the same height as Exile #3.

I've also been in charge of dinner for the last two days.  Yesterday, I completely wimped-out and went out for Chinese take-away.  Today I managed to make pizza and salad.  Considering I used to do almost all the cooking for a few years when we were first married, with a fairly wide repertoire, it's sad to realise what a Daddy-cliché I have become!

Day 4.359: All Lego - great and large

One of the things we fitted in during the Christmas period along with all the walks and things that I blogged about was the step-by-step construction of Hagrid's hut from a Lego set that Exile #3 received.

She and Exile #4 did the first half in a few sessions and then, on Monday, all five of us sat down to finish it off.

Here is the finished article (so cute!):

The rest of the magic (including the light-up cooking fire) is inside:

And you've got to love the facial expressions:

E5N1 joined in the process as far as his patience allowed and absolutely loves the box of 'real' Lego that we now have, but today he suggested a building project with the 'big Lego'.  So, I taught him the joy of 'interlocking' as the Lego folk call it, or as E5N1 puts it 'stopping the lines'.

He was very pleased with just how strong (and large) it turned out.

Day 4.358: Wolf Creek Falls take two

It was a bitterly cold day today (and back to work and school) so here is some more from yesterday!

It seemed like a long time ago that we discovered Wolf Creek Falls Preserve - a pocket of Mohawk Land Conservancy land opened several months after we arrived in the area.  In fact it was about fifteen months ago on Day 3.251.  Visiting in winter was quite different, but thoroughly enjoyable.

Here are the kids on the trails and the dry-stone walls that once held sheep in their fields:

And here are some details (the ominous skull above the barn door of a neighbouring property, the small picnic table where the kids seem enormous compared with last time, moss looking like tiny trees and bronchioles and a delightful old can perched on the wall of what looked like an old water trough):

E5N1 was in a running ahead mood.  Even with the openness of the winter woodland, he sometimes nearly disappeared:

And the creek where we took a group picture last time was slightly more challenging to cross on this occasion (happily, we did manage to stay dry).

These photos and a couple of others are also here.

Day 4.357: A walk in the dark (in the lights)

As a special event for the last day of the holiday lights in Albany, it was a walk-through tonight. Having failed to get there earlier in the season, we went to investigate.

This is some of what we saw:

The only displays were the ones around the lake (and the sponsors' displays on the exit road).  I assume the other loop was considered just too much to expect anyone to walk.

It's a shame really as walking the lights turned out to be a great way to see them and although one member of the family declared it 'a long walk' when we got back to the car, I suspect even he would have been happy to walk around the whole park seeing the displays.

This one caused some confusion:

Exile #3 told me that she thought Santa was doing jazz-hands while two figures danced in the background.  Exile #2 pointed out to us all that they were marionettes.  Obvious really!

I hope that there will be better opportunities to walk the lights if they are back in the park at the end of this year.  The drive-through is all very well, but I think we'd take up the offer again - as long as the weather is reasonably cooperative.

Day 4.356: 13.1

"13.1" is the answer to yesterday's cliff-hanging question, but really it is more significantly about something else that happened today.

We had a slow start despite not having a particularly late night, so we were not far past breakfast when I left under blue skies to the university campus in Albany to run my first half-marathon.

I had a good time.  The weather started off amazingly kind - warm and bright - although the wind got up during the run and caused some issues.  Still, I had a good race.  I ran it 5 minutes faster than I'd set out to do.  Actually that meant nearly hitting my first 10K race pace and running much faster than my first 5K despite having to keep the pace up for 13.1 miles.

I saw friend, colleague and marathon runner T there who has had his blog name at least since Day 17.  I also managed to thank Jen in person, through whose blog I had found out about the race while reading one of her restaurant reviews.

When I got home E5N1 was still in his pajamas, but Exile #4 was dressed and willing to step outside and point a camera at me in my race gear.

It seems I ran 98.7 miles in December.  If I keep this up* I can hit 400 in January.




* Yeah - I won't be attempting that!