adventures with perry

madelyn's class has a 'pet' - a stuffed animal named perry - and it was her weekend to bring him home for a weekend of 'adventures.' lucky for us, we had some plans this weekend! each child is asked to take pictures and do a write-up about the weekend and add it to a binder for the classroom. the kids are able to read perry's adventures during free-time at school. 

madelyn was SO excited and got right to work drawing with perry as soon as she got home. 

we took perry to the ymca with us for some basketball and laps on the track.

every year we have been here, i have wanted to check out the maple syrup harvest. several farms offer tours, activities, pancake breakfasts both free and paid. i decided that this year would be the year. not knowing what to expect, we decided to check out one of the free options. it was fantastic! we went to a family farm where their maple harvest and syrup production is just a hobby (even though they process more than 400 trees!). 

perry took a few photo opportunities while we waited for our tour.

and the kids sampled some of their tasty treats - maple and bacon doughnuts, maple popcorn, pancakes (which they offered us for free even though they were selling them) and a maple leaf sucker.

perry and madelyn with the condenser. the steam was so thick that it looked a little like the place was on fire when we first went in.

getting ready for our tractor tour.

i really can't say enough about how wonderful the family was during our outing. the dad (or rather the son) narrated our tour while his teen daughter drove the tractor. he told us all about native american folk lore explaining the discovery of maple syrup, the different harvesting methods (buckets vs. bags, etc.), how to tell if you have sugar maples near your house (they are the maples with yellow leaves in the fall), that sugar maple sap is 2% sugar and has to be condensed to 66% for syrup, and way more that i can relay here.

this harvest was proving to be a low yielding year (because of the extreme freezing), but he still poured sap out for us to sample right off of the tree. it was nothing like what i expected! i was expecting something thick and tan, sort of like pine sap, but, no, it was like slightly sweet water.

while matt and maddux ran into the house to use the bathroom (yes, they let strangers use their home bathroom), he thought it was a great idea to step into what was left of a snow drift. and it wet his pants to above his knee as he sank right through it! we had to take them off when we went to get back in the car and maddux thought it was pretty great. we had all removed our wet and muddy shoes for the ride home.

manning tells me the same "knock, knock" joke every day. many, many, many times a day. here he is with a delivery in the car on the ride home.

but our fun day with perry wasn't over just yet... i surprised madelyn with a trip to see the new cinderella movie! the frozen fever short was not as great as the movie (at least the song wasn't as catchy), but the excited gasps from the girls in the theater when it's title screen came up was so sweet.  madelyn's review of the cinderella movie was that, "there is way too much dying, but i liked it." she was sobbing at least three times during the movie. one time i even had to hold her in my lap because she was getting too loud. madelyn is very sensitive, but even i was crying more than once. it is pretty intense emotionally. it was a beautiful film though. she, and perry, were much better by the time we stopped for some frozen yogurt.

perry joined us for church in the morning too. he even got to meet hamilton, the hedgehog who helps with the bible lesson on the 2- and 3-year-old hallway (i was pretty proud of my little shepherd's outfit for him).

and then she came home to type up her first ever paragraph to add to the book (i don't know why we haven't worked on typing before, but she did it all herself and i was pretty impressed).

we had a pretty great weekend with perry - and each other. love.