Affairs of the Heart

This piece of classical music has enthralled me for a month now: Affairs of the Heart. That's just a five-minute excerpt taken from the entire 23-minute song from a wonderful Canadian composer, Marjan Mozetich. The complete piece can be purchased on a CD or downloaded for a couple of bucks.

Solstice Ride

What a gift to be able ride up high on the shortest day of the year, celebrating the start of winter by spinning pedals. I relished my solitude today after several days of single parenthood -- my parents picked up the kids at noon, setting me free to do as I pleased. I rekindled my love affair with my violin (nearly sold it!), ate well, and played with photos, but what pleased me most was two hours in the woods; getting dirty and tired and very happy. 47 seconds of it to help me remember in a week or two when these trails are under a foot of snow:

What Else, Dad?

Ezra is pretty funny right now. A handful, yes, but he makes us laugh every day. I put together a few of the recent video clips to give a bit of a picture of where he's at these days.

• "play trains with Dad!"
  
• learning to skate on the backyard rink
  
• helping mom blow out her birthday candles
  
• composing a song
  
• stretching with his sisters
  
• covering ears as the pipes and drums enter
  
• creative counting during exercise
  
• talking about breakfast

Earth, Observed

A few weeks ago I spent an hour in Google Earth collecting a set of images that struck me as beautiful or fascinating. I could seriously do that for hours...days, even. It felt much like doing photography, only virtually. It boggles the mind to imagine all the beauty of our planet at every scale. Some of my favourite finds: delta near Portland, BC's coastal mountains, farmland in California, and the Pembina Hills near Walhalla, ND. None of these are as cool as the stuff NASA's been seeing, though: Earth, Observed.

Da Kids

Marj descended on us like a crazy prairie Santa Claus this week, showering the kids with presents and adoration. As you can see from the photo at the bottom of this post, Ezra was in love. Anyway, Marj and my mom both let me have it for not posting any pictures of the kids lately. Enough with the orchards and ice already! So, here's a bunch...

Ezra has been in disguise, santa's elf and looking suspiciously like my Grandpa Stoesz. Ivy reads and reads these days, so that's what she's doing in the photos -- right now it's a book called The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. I also caught her working on one of her ongoing projects. Ella's been drawing like crazy lately, and had a very successful gymnastics show last week: