Barhorst Brewed: March 7-14

We made our own maple syrup! Last year we attended the local maple festival in early March and Bryan came home determined to attempt this magical feat of producing syrup from trees himself. He bought five spiles on Amazon, put four of them in a safe place, and kept one out for the kids to use when playing doctor. Fast forward to this March… We have a friend who works for the parks department, which is probably how we ended up at the maple festival in the first place. Bryan invited Dan and his family over for dinner and dragged Dan outside in the dark to identify which of our trees, if any, were maples. The good news: we have five maple trees. The bad news: Bryan lost the four spiles that he put in a safe place. Not to be deterred, he tapped one tree anyway, rigging an old juice container with wire and a nail in place of a bucket. The next day he found his remaining spiles and tapped two more trees using an oil container and a small pop bottle. Note to our next March selves: we need bigger containers. Maple sap season, as it turns out, is very short, especially if you have silver maples like we do. Our containers collected sap for about a week and then the trees stopped flowing. I boiled down two large pots, each half full of sap, for a long time. Then I dumped the remaining liquid in the smallest pot I own and boiled some more. When it got all bubbly on top like hard candy, I stopped. And voila, syrup. Actually, I might have let it go a little too long, because our ¼ cup of syrup has some crystalized bits in it. Brimming over with enthusiasm, Bryan wants to buy half a dozen sugar maples to plant in our front yard, so I guess I’ll have time to perfect my method in the coming decades.

Theodore loves being outside. He’s a little bit of a problem about it, though, because he’s getting big enough to do things. He learned how to climb the ladder inside the clubhouse and proceeded to climb all the way to the very top rung and get stuck. This wouldn’t be so bad if the top rung didn’t happen to be only inches below the top of the wall. Also, there’s the whole gaping hole thing. Since Theodore is an acknowledged dum dum who frequently makes poor life choices, we decided something had to be done. Bryan built a trap door to cover the hole, and now, providing his siblings remember to put the lid back on after they climb through, Theodore climbs up as high as he can and yells while he tries to shove his head through the space where the ladder still exits the hole. Problem solved?

In an effort to encourage more frequent practicing, or, at the very least, more frequent touching of instruments, I’ve started having Kaitlyn and Olivia send Marco Polos of their progress to Oma. Grandma A recently downloaded Marco Polo, so she’s had a video or two as well. If anyone else needs/wants to be on the Marco Polo Practice list, let me know. :)

An unprecedented thing happened at card club last week: Bryan lost. Now, Bryan doesn’t always win, but he often does and when he doesn’t he’s at least in the top half. He doesn’t lose. Except this time. And whether there were extenuating circumstances or not (alleged misplays by partners who should have known better), the fact remains that he had the least number of points and this will live in everyone’s memory (or at least mine) forever. We usually deem ourselves ineligible to win our own prizes, but for the loser prize everyone agreed that Bryan could claim it. He is now the proud owner of a pair of fish flops that is a little too small. We have a gift receipt so that he can exchange them for the proper size, but when he saw how much the kids loved them he decided to just keep the too small ones.

Our basement renovation is officially started! We have the contractor, we have the loan, and "Mr Basement Guy" has popped in and out several times now. Lines have been drawn on the floor for walls and a lot of alarming noises have been issuing forth under my feet. I believe they've rearranged some of the plumbing pipes down there and we're well on our way to a dedicated HVAC system. Theoretically they'll be completely done at their previous job soon and then we'll see a lot more people a lot more often.

Jacque sewed some snuggets when she was here a few years ago. For those who haven't seen this completely made up product, it's like a Snuggie meets a chicken nugget. ... Kind of. It's a fleece blanket poncho. When we visited the Smiths for Samuel's baptism, I was reminded of the existence of snuggets and spent my entire time (except for the service, of course) wearing one. Upon returning home, I immediately set out to make my own. Well. First I bought too little fabric. Then I was busy doing other things and didn't get around to realizing my mistake for several weeks. By the time I went to remedy the situation, JoAnn was sold out of the original print. Bryan and I looked at solid colors to match, but decided that would be less than ideal. We scoured the shelves for a new Johannah-ish fabric. Bryan tried to pick the most "vegetables and sadness" looking fabric he could find, which turns out to be a surprisingly good benchmark for whether I will like it. Then I noticed that precut blanket panels were significantly cheaper than fleece by the yard, so Bryan had to summon all his energy and caring to look through all of those. He was less inspired by this point, and mostly just suffered through my enthusiasm. I found something okay, but then... I found fabric with a full size princess dress printed on it. It's almost the least vegetables and sadness print there is. After some debate between the okay print and the princess print, I decided on the princess. This was, apparently, quite the upset. I finally got around to sewing my princess dress snugget and it is fabulous. The dress print is my size, so I look like I'm wearing a ball gown when I'm really just snuggled into a pocket of warmth. And it's reversible, with a pink dress on one side and a purple one on the other. My children are so jealous. Now all I need is a couple of snaps on each side to bustle it up when I want to walk. Oh, and a tiara. I'll probably have to get a tiara. :)

Pictures:

Kaitlyn and Gretchen swept out the clubhouse and made leaf crowns: