Bread Time

Today we baked bread from the dough we made yesterday.


Flouring the dough.

Putting cornmeal on the pizza peel.


Making the loaf

Towering Achievements

Reuben has just started building with blocks. Development every day!

Random images from the last few weeks

The cart in front of me out of which the couple was performing an intricate scanning and bagging that left me to believe that most of the items were not being purchased.
The sign above the cart which claims that this is an express lane and that only 15 or fewer items should be purchased. Hmm. Perhaps they only purchased 15 of the items in their cart!


I rode the new elevator at Harvard Square! Yay. I doesn't smell like urine, yet. It is bigger, and it moves faster than a sloth with a hangover.
First real snow coats the top of the evergreen out of the window.

First snow

A light dusting a few fat ago.

Ragged Edge of Silence: Chapter 1

I am reading The Ragged Edge of Silence: finding peace in a noisy world by John Francis. Each chapter has an exercise, so I will chronicle my responses here.

Chapter 1: Beginning

Exercise in listening to sounds

I am sitting in my dining room with one window cracked barely open to let in sound. Rain and cold also vie for entry into the house, and I can feel a cool, damp New England winter's breeze at my chair. I welcome the fresh air and the moisture. I will turn off the constant hum of the humidifier that battles with the forced air heating to keep our living space livable.

The most prominent sounds are the rain pattering against the windows and siding of the house and the regular whoosh of tires on wet pavement. An occasional bus hums by on Mass Ave, a few blocks away.

The wind chimes on the back porch ring, bell-like, in the wind. They rise and fall from clear to faint. And the wind gusts blowing across the window screens and through the mostly bare branches of the trees. It follows the contours of roofs and sighs at their sharp angles.

Running water in the gutters and on the pavement now appears in a traffic lull. It is almost the sound of a stream in the forest bubbling over rocks.

Now, faintly, a train in the distance adds a rumble to the assembled sounds, and a siren fades in and out.

A lone horn calls out in the distance, a driver letting others know of their misdeeds.

And the siren continues to hover in the background with the hum of distant traffic. The hum pulses. Perhaps the gusts of wind bring sound in even intervals or the beating of my own heart opens and closes my ears.  

Barbapapa

I looked online to see how much Barbapapa books would be. Shockingly, they range from 20-100 bucks! I loved those books when I was a kid, but replacing them is not in the budget.

Rose meets Zeus

This was outside a local store tonight.

New Books!

Books are a constant in this house, and our recent trip to St. Louis and Seattle infused our house with some new ones. Rose is currently sitting on the toilet reading The Family Book that Gwen gave us. Rose is adding much more detail than the story has, creating her own story for each page and building on each type of family represented.

Kids, what kids?

Haven't posted pics of the kids for a while:

Rose and Hazel playing in the "boat."
Reuben is in the stage of putting everything in his mouth.

Flying Home

This is the Rockies from the plane window. The snow-capped mountains were picking up sunset's colors.
Ah, Boston skyline as seen through an iPhone camera!

Seattle to San Fran and then on to Boston. The first leg was ok, but the next was one of those times that expands my understanding of the word patience. Beautiful scenery as we passed over the mountains, though.