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How to Catch a Bear
Jude has become an expert on catching bears. Turns out you just need a sweet spot, some sticks and a few salmon berries!
First- the sweet spot. Jude prefers a park called Swamp Creek. It’s about a mile from our house and he swears it’s just teeming with bears. He usually chooses a spot near the river so when the bears come to get a drink they will unwittingly fall into his trap!
Then you set up your sticks. The sticks fall on top of the bear, trapping it under their weight, rendering the bear helpless and trapped until Jude arrives the next day to scold the bear for being scary and then releasing the bear back into the wild where it will know better than to come around, scaring small children and dogs!
Lastly, you need berries. Sometimes a bear will just accidentally walk into your trap, but other times you might need to lure one to the trap. Salmon berries are irresistible to bears! Place them around your trap and you’re almost guaranteed to catch a bear.
Sadly, every time we return to the bear traps, the bears have been able to escape with the berries and are regularly breaking the traps! Those wiley bears… We’ll get ’em yet!
*note- no bears have been caught or hurt using these methods.
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Summer
06.27.13 | Permalink | | Comments Off on Summer
Family date night: a celebration at Ben and Jerry’s for an excellent report card followed by a meandering walk down to the water at Moss Bay.
Boy, do we live in a blessed place.
Color us lucky.
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Track Attack
While we are wrapping up all of this business with my recertification MADNESS, we are still trying to stick with our family goals of being active. Jude and I have a special connection right now – you know how kids vacillate between one parent and the other at times… Well, he and I are like peas and carrots this week while Gigi and her Daddy go together like bread and butter! It’s been nice to have a little buddy.
Today as we were heading to the track I set the expectation that Jude would run one time around with me -1/4 a mile. I thought he would fight it (he often does) but instead he seemed excited to take a lap with me!
It was thrilling to see him take off and keep running as fast as his little legs could carry him around the track. He didn’t stop once. I was SO proud of his can-do attitude and positive spirit! What a joy! We may be adding a fourth runner to our mix! (I hope!)
After all that hard work, what’s a kid to do but get hauled to the car on his big sister’s back?! She’s no slouch either – she just ran 1.5 miles!
(They just discovered today that Guinevere can give Jude piggy back rides. We laugh because she is only about 4 pounds heavier than he is.)
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What’s Up?
The end of the school year is like a vacuum – we all get sucked into this vortex of insanity! Â Things come flying at you in need of immediate attention while trying to navigate through regular life! Â Add to that my recertification process and we Lj’s have been kind of absent on Littlejohnesque, but we’ve been present in life. Â What have we been up to? Â Well, lemme tell ya…
We’ve gone on lots of hikes and walks through our local parks. Â One of Jude’s favorite things to do on his walks is set bear traps, with berries and sticks, then he like to return to see what the bears have done. Â Thus far, no luck catching one of those pesky bears!
We’ve had awesome sleepovers with cousins and grandparents from both sides! Â Its been a hoopla of socialization for the littlest Littlejohns lately – and they have been thrilled.
We celebrated 14 years of marriage with yummy indian food, a walk on the beach and lots of ooey gooey, long looks into one anothers’ eyes. Â Just as it should be. Â 🙂
We’ve spent a lot of time at track meets watching our daughter blossom into a confident and capable athlete. Â At the beginning of the year she was resistant and scared to truly try, to succeed so we approached it like piano lessons – she didn’t have a choice. Â Our hope was that with continued effort she would see the fruits of her labors, improve and build some self esteem. Â It worked. Â She sees herself as an athlete who might, one day, be an olympian. Â Such an amazing kid. Â And we are so proud of not only her athleticism and skills, but also her attitude and sense of self! Â Yahoo!
There was a picnic at the school, complete with sub sandwiches and a lavender bouquet to complete the picnic. Â The only thing missing was Mama and the ants!
We’ve been running.
…and running.
…and running more!
There’s been tree climbing galore – because what’s a June without some stellar tree climbage?
Jude created his own ‘Camp Read A Lot’ based on the one I had in class. Â I came home to find this little scene, complete with fire and tent, not to mention the happy little boy who had his books open, utterly engaged in his letters and the stories they tell!
And let’s not forget, we had a child spend her last day as a third grader. Â Next year we have a fourth grader and a kindergardener. Â Unbelievable.
In addition to all this, there was my classroom to clean up and put away and all the end of the year magic for me! Â We hosted my class at our house one rainy Wednesday for an after party where 17 kids showed up, it was fabulous! Â And finally, Bradley and I are wrapping up the last of my papers for my pro-cert process. Â By the end of this week we will officialy be in summer mode! Â Wahoo!
