Learning about Archery

We have started learning archery, as a family, and are really enjoying it. We do not yet have our own gear, but have had training and loaner gear from our local SCA barony – a wonderful group of talented folk. The marshals are inspiring, and safety focused, and make lessons fun.

Brian has taken to it quite well. He’s going to get good fast if he keeps it up.

 

Honor is finding it a little more difficult to get into, but we hope she’ll continue.

Brad is quite a good shot too, although it’s harder for him to get to practices. I just need to work on consistency! I have my days. We found out that I am left eye dominant now…. used to be right eye, but Lasik must have (maybe?) changed that. This means I had to switch from shooting right handed to left handed. I can aim better, but I am right handed, so learning to handle the bow and arrows ‘backwards’ has been interesting!

In addition to learning archery, we had a lesson in leathercraft and each made our own bracer. I like working with leather! It’s like carving wood, but somewhat different. I want to do more!

Honor made an archer kitty.

Brad chose an oak theme

Brian made a tiger in a top hat!

Because of my awkwardness in shooting left handed, I keep smacking my upper arm with the string (I am getting better!) and so we came up with a longer bracer design.

In other crafting news, Honor had a project for school, so we went out to the shop and broke out the tools. She had to make an invention. Her idea was to make a cat powered, bird feeding, bird powered cat toy. The cats would bat a toy to feed the birds, and the birds moving the feeding platform would wiggle the cat toy.

Our little tool user. She approved of our having a glue gun, but was disappointed in the lack of a scroll saw.

Honor and her invention! We’re not exactly sure how this would mount through a window or screen… obviously, keeping the cats separated from the bird is important!… but this is just a prototype!

Crafting

Our new home has room for a craft room. It’s not that big, but it’s a perfect size to keep my machine set up and to have all my stuff. I also have a table for crafting. If need be, my projects can spill out to the rest of the house, but I now have a place to contain most of it. The cats LOVE it. Honor and I do too.

Every project though, must have additional time allotted for feline assistance.

Anyway, it feels really really nice to have all this stuff unpacked and ready to play with again!!

Brr! Time for some cold fun! School’s Out! (but work was in. Boo.)

At almost 6am this morning, I got a text from the kids’ school giving notice of a 2 hour delay. I reset my alarm and went back to sleep. A while later we got further notice that school was canceled. Our county was on the ball. Apparently school SHOULD have been canceled all over the DC area today! I think most everything should have been closed. Brad had to go in to work and his usual 35-40 minute commute was insane and took two hours.

The kids and I stayed home and played. It never did warm up. By tomorrow we should see the coldest temps this winter. It is supposed to get down below 10F here. Today was cold, but pretty, and it snowed from early, early morning until almost sunset.

View of the front yard this morning.

And the back… before we tromped all over it.

This is the amount of snow accumulated on the patio furniture this morning – a good couple of inches. It kept on snowing for hours though. I’m not sure what the official reading was. “Enough” is a good word in my opinion!

Brad had to go to work. (ok, I admit, weird photo, but I like how soft the snow looks here).

The kids and I went outside around noon to work and play. They did help shovel some of the drive, but I also encouraged them to sled and goof off too. They don’t get to see enough snow and shouldn’t have to work in it! We were outside until sunset, maybe 4 hours. We might thaw out come Spring.

They started sledding down the driveway, but eventually moved to the hill on the lawn. The snow was so fluffy and light that Honor had a hard time getting going! Eventually they had some of the snow packed down and she was able to get up to speed.

We saw ‘our’ deer hanging out in the back several times today. At one point, when we went out to the shed, they didn’t run off when they saw us. They kept a beady eye on what we were up to, but didn’t spook and run!

I went out to the road to clear the end of the driveway. There was NO way that I was going to clear the whole thing(!), and I didn’t feel like trying to figure out the new snowblower on my own either, but we managed to clear everything but the graveled area. This snow was light enough to shovel. I took it easy though, and went slow. My ankle is still messed up and I’ve been sick. I didn’t want to push it. We have 3 shovels and the kids helped some, but I did most of it. I’m glad they had a chance to play today. 

There is a driveway in there somewhere…

The kids came up with some huge snowballs!

Brian, hard at work. He was with me at the street, so I got a photo of him shoveling. Honor was up near the house. She worked too, but I didn’t get a picture.

Honor tasted some snow, because Hey! Free snowcones!

We probably should invest in some snow pants… all of us had soaked and frozen britches! Boots might be smart too. Brr!

Honor made a cute snow turtle. I gave her a couple of key limes to use as eyes.

Isn’t he sweet??!

The setting sun was very pretty, reflecting on the snow.

Brian, hard at work on the edge of the cleared driveway, which shows how hard I had worked! That’s a lot of driveway to clear! I ended up shoveling the whole hill, down to where the gravel starts. I’m going to ache tomorrow!

Brian sculpted a snow dragon!

Here’s the head.

Honor helped some too, so she gets to pose with her big brother.

Full side view. You can see that the tail goes all the way to the basketball hoop.

The other side of the dragon. And a view of more shoveled driveway. (whew!)

It’s too bad that Brad had to work today. The kids and I had a very busy, but very fun snow day. At least Brad made it home just in time for hot cocoa.