telegraph springs

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noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 21:22:00 +0000

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New kayak

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 00:22:00 +0000

Jessie showing off my new kayak. We'll have more photos soon, as we all went out for an outing on Sleeter Lake today. Just need to download them.

Omi is here!

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:51:00 +0000

Proof that Omi is here, despite travel complications! She got here last week, and Den finally made it here Tuesday (but hasn't made it onto "film" yet). We're keeping too busy to blog regularly, but I'll try to get a few shots up occasionally!

Party guests

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 18:28:00 +0000

Here are just a few photos from Claudia's birthday party (Picasa limits me to uploading four at a time). Other than being just a tad on the cold side, the weather was perfect and we had a great afternoon. Patti helped cut up many of the fruits and vegetables, and several people brought extra food, so we had more than enough to go around. Best of all, everyone (and none more than Claudia) enjoyed the fellowship of great friends.

Partying in style

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 18:14:00 +0000

The sunny weather ordered especially for Claudia's birthday came right on time, and so did the feast!

What the kids are up to

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:41:00 +0000

Sunday afternoon, Jordan and a neighbor spent most of the day outside, including a picnic in the back of the car.

Today, we suddenly lost Jordan to books! The first ever time that we can't even pull him away from a book, and there aren't even any pictures! It's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, of course! We were reading it as a bedtime story but he got tired of only one or two chapters a night, and now there's no holding him back. He'll be allowed to watch the movie when he's finished the book.

Old Town Loon 138

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 01:52:00 +0000

I'm selling my Old Town Loon 138 kayak on Craigslist, looking to upgrade to something with dry storage and maybe a foot or two longer. $350 or best offer -- do I have any takers?

Jessie on a sunny day

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:40:00 +0000

It's rainy and dreary today, so I had to dig into last week's archives for this post.

Pi Day!

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:59:00 +0000

Why is March 14 Pi Day? I dunno! At 1:59 pm today we set out to find out.

We used a string, a ruler, and three common objects shaped in circles.

First we wrapped the string around each circle, cut it so it was the same size as the circle, then straightened it back out and measured it. We wrote down our results in our handy dandy notebook under the title of "circumference".

Secondly we measured across each circle, and wrote that down too (we called these "diameters").

Thirdly, using a calculator we divided the circumference by the diameter for each circle and wrote down our answers (we called these results "pi").

Then we looked at our results. It still wasn't clear what "Pi Day" meant, but we started to see a pattern developing.

Here's what we had so far:
Pie pan circumference=30", diameter=9.25", pi=3.2432
Pumpkin can circumference=12.5", diamter=4", pi=3.125
Milk can circumference=9", diameter=2.8", pi=3.2143

Surprisingly, the final answers for pi were all almost the same, even though our circles had all been very different sizes.

Finally, we figured out the average of our three numbers for pi, by adding them up and then dividing by 3. The answer to that came to 3.19. When we looked up the REAL value for pi on the internet, we found it was 3.14 -- we were very close! We determined that if we had a way to take more accurate measurements of our circles, our number would probably have been even closer.

So now we know that no matter how big or small a circle is, the ratio of its circumference to its diameter will ALWAYS be 3.14.

Suddenly, it became clear why March 14 (3.14) is Pi Day! Bonus points to any cousins who can tell me why we started our pie experiment at 1:59.

And even bigger bonus points to anyone who can stop by and help us eat our pumpkin pi!

My Friday

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 04:38:00 +0000

3:00am feed Jessie
3:30am try unsuccessfully to go back to sleep
4:00am get up
4:30am drive to Philadelphia...

...to look into buying one of these (click for movie)...

8:00am meetings start
11:00am driving back to the office
6:00pm home
7:00pm homegroup
11:00pm clean up the house
11:30pm blog
11:38pm bed

Rube Goldberg music video

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:47:00 +0000

Bedtime stories

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:41:00 +0000

Jordan's choice of books for bedtime story last night

End of the snow

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:33:00 +0000

This is all that's left of the big pile that we dug a tunnel and cave in.

Jordan walking up a snow ramp to the top of the basket ball hoop

Oops! Missed the basketball hoop and fell off.

Jessie

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:33:00 +0000

Last week Jessie figured out how to crawl forward (consistently), and this week she figured out how to sit up on her own (consistently)!

Happy

Learning to fly

All giggles

How to bite an invisible sandwich (Jordan's caption :-))

Weekend stroll through Philomont

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:28:00 +0000

We had our first spring weather this weekend, and managed to get out to walk to the Philomont store a mile from our house on both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday we took the horses along with our neighbor Jamie, and Sunday we biked with Patti and Berghan. The Philomont Store is a picturesque general store dating back to 1913, and apparently still a famous destination. While we were eating our ice cream on the front porch a middle aged couple rode up on their motorcycle and we chatted with them for a bit. It turns out they were from Baltimore and had read about the Philomont Store in a motorcycle magazine, as a great place to ride to. They certainly had a beautiful day for a ride, and so did we.

Canada vs. Russia

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:03:00 +0000

Anyone else watching this game? Sadly, we can't view it on TV or in streaming video here in the U.S. of A. The best we can do is see live score updates, which doesn't quite capture the excitement. Still, looks like Team Canada is off to a great start against our Russian friends.

Leave a comment to tell us what you were doing during this game! (please) Bob is weird. And I am too.

Those last (do random letters now) few comments are from Jordan as I type. Better send this quick (daddy now just type random letters, okay? ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ) before he says anything else!

Home Group Olympics 2010

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 01:02:00 +0000

Someone from our Home Group had a great idea (and lots of energy!) to organize a Home Group Olympics 2010 event, and what a blast it was! Competitors from around the world came together to vie for gold, silver and bronze in seven different events including luge, ski jump, downhill speed racing, moguls, figure skating pairs and two exhibition events called Wild Man Running and the Ironman. Jordan did us proud, bringing home a bronze medal in moguls! Go Team Hekman!

Team Hekman during the Opening Ceremonies

Getting air on the ski jump

Spectators of all ages flocked to the event

More photos than you can imagine can be found here.

Wordless whatever the day is

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:01:00 +0000

Always shoveling

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:58:00 +0000

Tired of snow pictures yet? There's not much else to show these days! Here's Claudia taking a break from shoveling the back deck, which we were worried wasn't designed for the weight of snow it had to carry. This was taken about a week ago -- the past few days have been nice and warm and the snow has gone down considerably.

Enjoying a starbucks moment

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:59:00 +0000

Tired of shoveling

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:56:00 +0000

I didn't quite make it to the front steps when shoveling the walk today, but I left a note for the next person to come along. :-)

Family portrait

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:11:00 +0000

Tire d'érable

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:39:00 +0000

We tried making tire d'érable, but didn't quite get the recipe right! It made for great tasting snow, but didn't get all chewy as it should have. I've now looked up the recipe and I see the maple syrup needs to boil quite a while before putting it on fresh snow. It should boil until it reaches 230 F, then put it on the snow and it should turn to "candy" which can be coiled up on a spoon or stick.

2010 Olympics have begun!

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:27:00 +0000

We stayed up last night to watch the opening ceremonies for the Vancouver Winter Olympics, the first time I've ever see any Olympic opening ceremony live (as far as I can remember, anyway). I use the term "we" loosely there, because Claudia succumbed to sleep deprivation around 11:00pm and Jordan not much later, and despite my best efforts I was unable to rouse Jordan for the lighting of the Olympic torch around midnight. :-( I taped it, though, so we got to relive the occasion this morning.

I was impressed and moved by the show as many were, and proud to be a Canadian.

If you missed the ceremony you can see clips of it here courtesy of NBC. The songs and visual effects were incredible -- my favorite was the visualization of the prairie provinces. I also loved KD Lang's interpretation of Leonard Cohen's song "Hallelujah".

From my scrapbook, a much younger me carrying the Olympic torch for the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics:

How many of you watched the ceremonies last night?

Only one path to the door

noreply@blogger.com (ben) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 15:44:00 +0000

Since most of our outside activity is between the house and the barn, the back door is the first one to get cleared (and so far the only one).