First weekend in 2012

I have been remiss in blogging, simply as the beginning of the year began with a bang! Not literally, of course, however we had a beautiful influx of guests, including our grandparents!!!

Grammy Ona and Pop-pop Tom drove out here to visit. It is always so much fun to have visitors! They took us out to eat (yahoo!) and then we went to the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum. Here are some pictures from the day:

Let me tell you - the way to go to this museum is with a pilot! And a smart one to boot. Here is Pop-pop Tom watching a live feed from the space station, while next to the Enterprise. Very cool.

So pop wanted to see the jets, and I wasn't sure why, however I followed along. He saw this one, turned around and stated "I flew this one." Which is totally cool! My favorite part was the young man who was reading about the plane who also turned around and asked me "He flew this plane?!" I nodded, also incredulously. It was really neat.

 Here are the two INTPs in my life reading dutifully about something cool. They both seemed wrapped up in the complexity of the machinery. I think they look cute (especially the one on the left - Grammy Ona may disagree though... ;o) )

Speaking of Grammy Ona, she was indeed there. I was moved as they both stood by the Enola Gay talking about the plane and, most likely, its most renowned flight. (You can see Grammy Ona's Purse... pop certainly isn't carrying it!)

I wish I could have captured a picture of the IMAX film we watched "Red Flag" - however you can't quite catch an IMAX movie with a phone camera... that's the point. It was fun to chat afterwards about Pop's days working in Nevada.

Thanks for visiting!!!

Fun with the Parents

Today Mom and Dad J arrived! We are all heading to Paul and Allison's wedding tomorrow and been able to enjoy a fun evening together here. Additionally, we introduced them to "Ingenious" - a game some of you may remember from past blogs.

In a remarkably stroke of luck, in addition to some strategy and intelligence, I (Sara), played a perfect game! Here is a picture to commemorate the experience:

The second game we played was a significantly greater challenge! Boy those parents sure catch on quick.....

Vermicomposting

Today Jon and I bravely "harvested" our vermicomposter. Usually typical vermicomposters have several layers to them, so you can easily harvest the good compost from the composter as the worms go through the layers. You just take the bottom layer off, which has the rich stuff, and meanwhile the worms have already moved up to the next layer and are continuing their wonderful work.

Unfortunately all our worms live in one layer - a kitty litter box, now full of former-food, soil, and newspaper. They are very happily working away at all our scraps, however it was beginning to get full. To harvest the good compost in this situation, you have to dump all the contents of the composter onto a tarp! Yes, worm dirt, worms, rotting food, and all. Now it had been awhile since we had put new scraps in the vermicomposter, so we didn't see too many food scraps (excepting some eggs shells we put back there MONTHS ago. Worms don't like them, but they sure filled them with compost too!). We did however see lots of worms! They are busy in there. Once we got it all dumped onto the tarp (took awhile as it was pretty packed in), the worms seemed in a bit of a state of shock. Soon they were climbing away from the light into their dark heap of moisty dirtiness, and then we removed the rich compost from the sides of the mound. This took quite awhile.

I was surprised how fun it was. Now, we certainly looked odd, bent over a tarp of dirty and worms on our cement balcony in the suburbs, with our head-lamps on our head to shed more light on the mound to get the worms to move inward. However, it felt so much like childhood, playing the dirty, moving squilly worms around, working on a project.... it was just fun and a new experience.

We removed a huge bowl full of fresh compost, dropped the worms and their former work back into their bin, and put a heaping load more of our scraps into the worm bin. I'm excited to see their work again - it's always fascinating how quickly they move through so much food - and hoping the compost will help our plants grow a little bit. However if you are in our area- we have enough good compost to go around!