The kids painted pots and planted “kinderplants” for the local nursery.

An unusual amount of music was played during the party.  An impromptu orchestra formed, rehearsing a spontaneous composition.

There was also some game playing.

And until the rain sent everyone back inside, some outside adventures.

We arrived just in time for a New Year’s party at our house in Holyoke.  The party was so much fun!  Thanks to everyone who made it out despite the snow storm.

We had 14 kids spend the night!  And they all got to sleep by about 22:30.  It helped that we started celebrating the New Year with Greenwich Mean Time and every hour thereafter.

Some people came all the way from Hawaii!

I really feel blessed to have so many good friends.

It was a great night!  We really enjoyed our time with everyone, and although we didn’t get nearly enough sleep or enough time with anyone, it was so great to be there.

As you can see from our visit to the Grand Canyon, the weather was not as warm as it sometimes can be in Arizona. We did, however, get a few nice days when it was sunny and warm.

Our friends and old neighbors from England are now living in Los Angeles and managed to make a trip over to Scottsdale for the weekend. We enjoyed seeing them! We played in the pool at their hotel and went for a hike on the nearby Pinnacle Peak.

On this adventure, the girls’ coyotes had super powers and were occupied with mountain rescue of other injured animals.

The view from Pinnacle Peak is quite nice.  To the west, you can almost make out the Sackett residence behind this pile of rocks.  Just over the ridge, the land drops down into the Rio Verde river valley.  The seemingly endless  Scottsdale has temporarily halted it’s creeping sprawl here and there are many nice trails to explore the desert.  I went running along these trails every day and enjoyed the crisp air and beautiful landscape.

We went blackberry picking together in a field near the canal before they left.

There were many, many ripe berries and we’ve eaten a pie and blackberry pudding as well as fresh fruit.

It seems likely that these cygnets were the same birds we saw earlier this spring.

It is certainly a beautiful time of year here in England.  The wheat has turned a golden brown color and the round bails have started to appear in some of the fields.

Our friends and neighbors here will certainly be missed!  Unfortunately, as Petra noted today, we are getting good at saying goodbye.

In many ways, the kids seemed to pick up almost as if we had never been gone.

It had been a year since we’d seen most people from Massachusetts.  It was interesting to see how things have changed and how they’ve stayed the same.  It’s often true that you don’t notice changes when you witness them happening gradually, but if you see only snapshots from different times those same changes are much more obvious.  At the same time, there are so many things that remain consistent.

We saw some old friends…

and some new ones!

We spent a few days at the beach in Rhode Island with the Perrys, who were also visiting.

We also did some swimming at Puffer’s Pond in Amherst, where the water was as cold as always.  We held an impromptu chorus session on the beach.  It was so much fun to sing together again.

It’s nice to be reminded of the things in life that are truly important.

Friendships…

Hugs…

and families…

The kids were ready to go before we finished packing and spent some time on the swings waiting for us.

It isn’t particularly far to Hartington from Derby, but the kids made themselves comfortable and passed the time singing along to music.

The campground is in a field on a farm, apparently typical for camping in England. Molly brought her hammock, but was unable to find any suitable sturdy trees. The grass does provide a nice, soft surface for sleeping, though.

There were a number of our home educating friends who were there as well and the kids had a wonderful time romping through the meadow.

It threatened to rain just before dinner, so the kids got out the umbrellas. The clouds passed without any precipitation and the umbrellas became dens for some sort of game.

Not surprisingly, there were plenty of ungulates in the vicinity. I estimate that there are about 45 million ruminates (sheep and cattle). While this doesn’t approach the shear volume of countries like China and Australia or the ruminate/person ratios of New Zealand and the Falkland Islands (only 0.7 per person compared to 15 per person), it is a remarkable number of grazers in a relatively small area and they have a huge impact on the ecology and the landscape.

Here we are walking through one such landscape. The remarkable thing about this photo, besides the number of buttercups (apparently they aren’t tasty) is how tall River is compared to Molly. I think she must be having another growth spurt.

This is actually the same River Dove that we explored previously, only further upstream. An idyllic spot for a picnic and a swim.

The water was actually very, very, cold. The kids didn’t seem too bothered by it, though. I managed to get in for a few seconds, but it was too shallow to swim any distance and it was too cold to just lie there, so I gave up fairly quickly.

This patch of mud was nice and squishy!

River walked across the stepping stones to get across.

It is a beautiful time of year in England right now. Everything has been very green recently. Flowers are blooming everywhere.

I can’t resist taking wildflower pictures. This thistle was an amazing color!

Mayflies were abundant as well.

The kids spent a lot of time exploring a tunnel through the limestone cliff that connected the large cave opening with a smaller opening off to the side. Molly sent Sage through with the video camera. Needless to say, a video of a dark cave is not visually stimulating, but I found it fascinating nonetheless. You can hear the camera banging into the rock walls. Conversing while traversing this dark world apparently helped distract them from what might otherwise have been frightening.

One of the kids had a bat detector and we listened to some Chiropteran conversations as well. I think the bat detector works by frequency shifting the short wavelengths used by bats to communicate into pitches that our ears are capable of discerning.

Some of the folk we went with are planning to stay for the week. If the weather cooperates, we’re thinking of going back next weekend for another go.

Chocolate, by the way, was a popular write-in candidate and thus added to the survey. She made the graphs at the National Center for Education Statistics’ Create-A-Graph website. If you’d like to be added to her email list for any future surveys, please drop her a note.

We’ve all enjoyed the recent musical endeavors. I heard recently that it is very likely that the kids will be able to begin music lessons at school after the holidays. I saw some of the House Music Competition yesterday and was impressed with the musical talent there. Unfortunately, I missed the performance of Momma Mia, but River says that it went well, though they didn’t win the adjudication.

The reason I missed part of the show was that Sage attended a birthday party that ran concurrently. She enjoyed an afternoon of shooting her friends with laser guns and bowling.

She had a good time and it was nice to meet some of the families from the school.