our family hobbies
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the gentino zoo (by amie).
There are four things our family collects: Legos, books, plants, and animals. This blog post is about our current collection of animals. This is Max. He is our chubby, spoiled, furry friend. You can definitely tell that he’s happy with his life. He lives in Gabe and Noah’s room, and all day, when people are coming and going, he gets plenty of “hellos” and pats. His least favorite days are bath-and-nail-clipping days. Which happened today. Dad’s role in the family is “guinea pig nail-clipper.” You can tell they don’t like him because of that, but immediately after we bathe Max and clip his nails, we give him…
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running and river-ing.
This summer was the summer of running together and exploring the river together. Both of these activities are now firmly entrenched in the culture of our family, and I have David to thank for it. I love family time. But my idea of meaningful family time is endless games of Farkle and Yahtzee at the dining room table, a good read-aloud, or movie night. David’s idea of meaningful family time, on the other hand, is adventure, adventure, adventure. It’s getting outside, being active, pushing ourselves to try new things and discover new places. This has created some tension in our marriage over the years when it comes to how we…
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training.
I mentioned earlier this spring that David decided to have the kids train for a 5K. He didn’t have a specific 5K in mind, which is probably for the best since races have been cancelled for the time being. The lap around our immediate block is a quarter of a mile, and the nice thing about it is the kids can run (little guys staying together or with an older sibling) and we feel safe not being there. We can hear them from all parts and cars drive nice and slow on these streets. Even so, after just a week or two of their running around the block, I felt…
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pip moves outside.
In my last post about Pip the squirrel, I told you about his move to the back porch. Well, he had another move just a week later. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the back porch — no, he loved it. He had no desire at all to leave it, as we learned when various people left the screen door open and he never tried to scamper outside. We learned that Pip much prefers a life of leisure. The problem is, he became a bit too comfortable and began wreaking havoc on our lovely new porch. First it was attacking my hibiscus. Next it was pooping all over the…
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spring garden.
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more about pip.
Here’s a little update about the baby squirrel David’s dad rescued five weeks ago. Prepare yourself for an overload of cuteness! Our friend Carly dropped off her daughter’s old doll carrier for Pip. He enjoys it occasionally, when he feels like being still (which is rare these days). Actually, who mostly uses the doll carrier now is Max the guinea pig. Pip much prefers to be free to scale whoever is closest to him, up and down, up and down. His new favorite trick is jumping. It’s my least favorite of his tricks (that and chewing on my hair). Right after I snapped the above pic…
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soccer and chicks.
Amie is playing soccer with the Downtown YMCA this spring, and Saturday was her first game. She’s never played before and has been very excited about being on her friend Caroline’s team. It was cold and windy on Saturday! Which is funny considering that I’m typing this post on our back porch on an 80-degree afternoon. Amie jumped in there and ran hard for the whole hour. She’s still learning the rules of the game, but did a great job. Noah wanted to play soccer this spring too, but I needed a season to get used to the schedule and to figure out practices and…
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luna.
In our family, when a kid saves up his or her first 100 dollars — from allowance money only; no Christmas or birthday gifts allowed — David matches it. Judah did it a couple years ago, and used a good portion of the money for an epic Lego set. Amelie reached her goal about six months ago, and we’ve been proud to watch her take her time with deciding how to spend it. She finally landed on buying a pet of some sort, so David helped her research different options. He and his brother Joe grew up owning reptiles, so I have a feeling that was a big influence on…
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saturday evening.
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front yard garden tour.
Yes, we are the neighbors with a vegetable garden in our front yard. It may be a little un-orthodox here in the south, but people generally seem intrigued, and sometimes downright inspired. It’s definitely a conversation starter. We still have garden beds in the back with lettuce, radishes and onions currently growing, but they’ll need to go away for the kitchen/back porch renovation, so David’s gradually migrating to the front. Plus we’re thinking of making the back yard more of a place for parties and kids to run free and play (i.e. not consider our raised beds sandboxes), and using this front space for the garden. He started everything from…
