Write My Life

Each winter we take the girls on a trip to play in the snow. This year instead of heading to Yosemite, we headed to the gold country in Calavaras Country. We rented a cottage in Murphys and drove north past Arnold to the Spicer SNO-PARK. At Spicer, there are lots of unofficial sledding hills and areas for play.

Our children prefer to have their own spot so we often find places that are less crowded. At Spicer if you just walk a little bit off the path, you can leave the crowds of people.

The snow was packed so it wasn’t the best for building a snowman or tossing snowballs. We did do some sledding, though.

Our greatest snow achievement this year was the grand ice cave we created on a hillside at Spicer SNO-PARK.

It started as a simple igloo or tunnel that Jackie dug. She used her hands to dig snow out of the hill or she climbed into her hole and dug snow out with her feet. Mike joined in, helping her made a deep hole. It got so deep that Jackie could put most of her body into it.

With effort and a few tools (tree bark and a broken branch), Mike, Jackie and Jennifer created a tunnel leading from one hole to the other whole.

Jennifer was the first to travel through the entire length of the cave, going in on her end and coming out on Jaclyn’s end. She was thrilled.

We were able to open the hole a little wider and Jackie traversed the whole cave as well.

For our snow play adventure, we stayed at a cottage in Murphys, CA. The Church Street Cottage had two bedrooms, two bathroms, a kitchen, dining room and living room. It was so nice to have all this space for relaxing after playing in the snow. We relaxed by drinking hot chocolate, eating meals and reading books. The cottage allowed dogs, which gave us the opportunity to bring the dogs along on the trip. They enjoyed relaxing as well.

As strange as it may seem, I enjoyed taking time to cook our dinners. What isn’t strange is how I enjoyed having Mike do the dishes after our meals.

When Grandpa Gormish received a hand-held GPS unit for Christmas we were all able to go Geocaching together. Typically, in geocaching you use a GPS unit to find a hidden container, also called a “cache.” The container will have a log book and maybe some trinkets to trade.

To use the GPS unit to find a cache, Grandpa and Mike found the locations of several caches from the geocaching website. With the coordinates, we were off on several trips. We tried three main areas: local neighborhood parks, Mt. Tamalpais State Park near Muir Woods and Wunderlich, a local county park. Success varied. While we were generally able to find the coordinates and general location, we had less successful in finding the actual cache. In several neighborhood caches, we only found one. Jennifer found it. It was very well hidden and magnetically attached under a picnic table. City parks run the risk of the caches being stolen so you can never be sure if you found it or it was stolen. In Wunderlich, we are positive we had the right area but the place was full of great hiding places among the trees. We never did find the two we searched for there. Woody parks run the risk of not being able to be located due to weak GPS signals and/or the multitude of possible hiding locations.

I better post this before the new year begins…

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all!

And Happy New Year!

In northern California we had forests and the beautiful coastline…both within a short distance of each other. In one day in Marin county, we visited the Redwood trees at Muir Woods, the rocky coastline north of San Francisco, the ocean and Stinson Beach.

While I prefer mountains and trees, the girls (Jennifer, for example) enjoy the beach more.

The holidays always inspire me to bake cookies. I always find the time to make several of our family favorites including Neopolitan cookies and Snowman cookies. One day Jackie has a friend come over and we made and decorated butter cookies. Here are some of their creations:

We were still in the process of cookie making when Elizabeth arrived so she, Jackie, Jenny and I made the snowman cookies.

This weekend we have a special visitor for the weekend – Cinnamon, Jennifer’s classroom bunny. Cinnamon has found a home in Jennifer’s room. She has a cage and also a gated area for a little more roaming room.

Jennifer’s care and love of the bunny is sooooo cute. Yesterday I said, “She’s so fun to pet.” Jennifer sighed and said, “Mom, there’s more fun to taking care of a bunny then that. There’s feeding it and picking up its poop.” I wonder how many days this excitement would last with a permanent bunny???

With some days off school in the fall, we took the opportunity to visit friends in Hanford and take the girls to Sequoia National Park and King’s Canyon National Park. The main features of the trip were seeing the Giant Sequoias and hiking.

One the first day in Sequoia NP we climbed to the took of Moro Rock (a steep 1/4 mile staircase climbs over 300′ (91.4 meters) to the summit of this granite dome), hiked to the General Sherman Tree (274.9′ (83.8 meters) tall, and 102.6′ (31.3 meters) in circumference at its base), hiked on the Congress Trail (a 2-mile paved trail through the heart of the sequoia forest, and hiked the Big Trees trail (a 1.2-mile loop around Round Meadow.)

On the second day we visited King’s Canyon NP. We hiked the Grant Grove trail to see the General Sherman tree. For a longer hike, we hiked along the ridge in the Grant Grove area.
We ran into a problem with food as it was fall and most places to acquire food where closed. Our lunch on the first day consisted of food we had acquired in Hanford from our friends.

In the last year, I have cooked more and more than ever. I’ve learned lots of new cooking techniques and cooked lots of new meals. Most of this has been due to the PBS show, America’s Test Kitchen. I have borrowed all the videos from the library and tried probably hundreds (not kidding) of new recipes from their videos and books. What I love about ATK is that they will try the same recipe hundreds of time with different ingredients and cooking techniques to get the best. Mike calls it “Cooking for Engineers.”
Mike loves all the new foods. He complains that he doesn’t enjoy going out to eat anymore because my cooking is better. Who wants overcooked pasta or dry chicken from a restaurant???

The girls are a little more dubious at times. They have some new favorites but often they have to pick around the onions, garlic and veggies. After watching many episodes themselves (they can quote the banter of the chefs and editor) and tasting many ATK dishes, they decided to make grilled cheese sandwiches the ATK way. In typical ATK style, they tried to make grilled cheese in several ways including using various combinations of cheeses. The even learned some things themselves such as not needing to butter the inside of the bread. It was fun to have them experiment (fail and succeed) and learn in the process.