We love Zingo!

I'm not much of a product promoter, I have a lot of brand loyalties and things that work for me but I don't usually waste my words convincing others to try things I like. But Zingo! is different, my family adores this game. The first thing my four year old does in the morning is ask his dad to play a round with him, which inevitably turns into 10 with each successive child joining in as they wake up. It is madness. The game personally drives me nuts and I conveniently find myself busy in kitchen while all this is going on but the excitement and togetherness it promotes is worth it.
There is even a Spanish version and we discovered yesterday a Super Hero one as well.

This game is so much fun that even Fergie the wonder dog plays. Here they are playing the green card side and Fergie has found a matching tile.

Fergie is proud of her good start.

Resting after a serious series of Zingo!

Full circle

We've been Building Big lately and if you haven't been you should be. For someone that doesn't comprehend physics or engineering these documentaries are captivating. The above photo is of the Firth of Forth Bridge in Scotland that was built over the Firth of Tay after the first bridge collapsed. It took 54,000 tons of steel; 194,000 cubic yards of granite, stone, and concrete; 21,000 tons of cement; and almost seven million rivets to build the bridge.

Yesterday, we had a field trip planned to Sloan Museum for some hands on activities involving canals and Michigan pioneers. Little did I know that all we had been doing previously would be reinforced at Sloan. I'm an accidental homeschooler, I've always got big plans and ideas and then I let my child lead. He watches, he does, he learns. Often times more than I realize.


The arched bridges and tunnels in the Building Big series were especially confounding because of the way the weight is distributed.

"Arch bridges are one of the oldest types of bridges and have great natural strength. Instead of pushing straight down, the weight of an arch bridge is carried outward along the curve of the arch to the supports at each end. These supports, called the abutments, carry the load and keep the ends of the bridge from spreading out." NOVA

If you don't have it all just right your bridge is not going to remain intact for long. Below is the finished structure before the supports are removed.

The supports are removed and it appears that his bridge is ready for traffic!

The other exhibits were just as compelling and of course educational but the second best part to building the arched bridge was that the gift shop had a replica of the Back to the Future DeLorean complete with a flux capacitor.


(And yes, that is Back to the Future on the t.v. in the background.)

DNA

I don't believe in reincarnation but I do believe in DNA. A year ago today Buchta died and we spent the next 8 months without a vizsla in our lives. Then Fergie, Buchta's great-niece, appeared and we felt whole again. Whole in a way that makes other people think we are crazy, these dogs are demanding with a capital "D" but they love you in a way that can't be described.

Buchta
January 10, 1999-November 12, 2008

Fergie
May 7, 2009

Buchta

Fergie

Trotting with the turkeys

*10,000 runners
*Course Christmas carolers
*Christmas cookie and candy cane stations
*Costume prizes
*Eight packet pick-up locations (aka "a reason to go to Playmakers")
*Really cool long sleeve tech shirts

It's Turkey Trot time again! I can't remember the last time I ran this race but I've got a crew of us headed there for 09'. This used to be a family tradition when I was in college; us kids would come home from where ever we were living and drag ourselves out of bed very early to head downtown (thankfully my mom lived in Livonia at the time so we didn't have to get up THAT early-it only seemed like it). Often times we had a friend or two with us and mom was always nice enough to let our "friends without families" join us for a hard earned turkey dinner after the race.

I'm sure it has been at least 10 years since I ran through the finish line in Cobo Hall but my memory is sketchy and I think, quite possibly, that I ran in 1999 while pregnant with my daughter. It appears that it has become bigger, better and more organized. There is pre-paid guaranteed parking now and I better hurry and register so I can get a spot! Parking used to be interesting to say the least, you would find a parking lot where someone unofficial would take a $20 from you only to find out that the person didn't even own the spaces.

I have extremely fond memories of prior Thanksgiving mornings spent in downtown Detroit. To me it was part of what the holidays were all about and this was the kick-off. Back in those days Christmas music didn't start until the day after Thanksgiving and Target wasn't shoving Halloween decorations aside to fill in the shelves with Christmas items. This race brings about the true spirit of the season, post-race candy cane and all.


*I hope Vinnie can figure out how to get the turkey in the oven while I'm gone! (Or maybe I better see if our favoite Chinese restuarant is open that day.)

Maiden voyage

Vinnie finally got me a gift for our 10 year anniversary. (We don't usually do the gift the thing but he had to justify the purchase somehow and it was only 2 months late!) Anyway, the kids love to fish and be near water so he had been looking for a flat-bottom aluminum boat with a reasonable price tag on it. Fortunately he didn't have to look any further than New Lothrop and it came with a trailer and sticker good until 2012.

After running the combine all night to harvest beans, Vinnie decided to sacrifice precious bean-time with a trip to the beautiful Shiawassee River.

The crew and captain (Vinnie or Fergie, you decide) were pleased to be on the water.

A bit of rowing for upper body strength.
(I'll turn her into a runner yet!)

Fergie is debating how badly she wants that peanut shell.

Ollie was pleased with his find-a nice wet leaf.

An odd half followed by Guinness

I ran a race today where I received this highlighter colored tech shirt. This photo does not in any way give you an accurate view of the COLOR. I will NEVER have to worry about getting run over by a motorized vehicle while wearing this shirt, unless the driver is literally blinded by it and I do believe that is possible. I had a choice of socks or gloves instead but I can't pass up a tech shirt for $10 that I can wear deer hunting too. Opening day will be extra fun this year; I can chase after the deer in my new shirt.

The race was on this trail:























For an hour and 47 minutes this is what I saw, over and over. The only excitement was somewhere near the end when a squirrel decided to mock me and act as if he couldn't carry his nut across the trail because he was so tired. I managed to avoid tripping over him and went on to finish only to find that the promise of yummy post-race food was false. I'm assuming the race director was not a runner because as I've said before no runner wants another damn banana after the race, or an apple. A 13.1 mile run deserves to be followed with real food and a pint of Guinness.

Thankfully my friends and I found Oscar, he does not believe in post-race bananas or probably any bananas for that matter. I was just going to have water to drink (gotta rehydrate) but then I tasted Mary's* Blue Moon with a slice of orange and was convinced that a Guinness could do the job just as well as water. Run half-Drink Guinness. Maybe I'll start a race under that guise just as an excuse to have some quality beer and there will be no post-race bananas present.

***Hopefully Mary will give a full race report including recommendations for pre-race nutrition and why Paydays should not be on the list if you are not certain porta potty's will be on the course.

I like coffee

I've gone from being a Folger's girl to discovering Trader Joe's coffee which in my opinion competes just fine with those more expensive guys like Starbuck's. After all, you can buy a good grind but if you prepare it wrong you might as well be drinking cheap mud from a Meijer brand drip pot. I do ours up right in a percolator as old the combine that brews right on the stove top. It takes an hour, an hour during which I wish I could train the dog to turn the stove on before I wake up.

This hour prep time means that I typically run in the mornings without ingesting a cup of coffee first and that just makes that first cup even sweeter because my hard work is already done for the day (if you believe that taking care of four kids on a farm is easy compared to running down the road). The exception to this is race days where I get up super early so that I can start and finish the percolator process before my adventure begins; I can't go to a race without a cup of coffee first. Fortunately, even Runner's World advocates the pre-run coffee and for more than one reason. Plus you can't discount the findings of people who get paid to do research on such things as the benefits of caffeine.