The Jraf
Greetings to everyone.
This past week, Xavier has enjoyed Spring Break. He contracted a cold mid week, so some of his planned activities were postponed.
While preparing his backpack for Monday's return to school, we discovered one of his classroom assignments.
Not bad for a kindergartner asked to draw a picture and write a story about it. I'm not sure I can spell "giraffe" correctly without looking it up.
Where Do Chickens Come From?
Greetings to all.
As you may know, Xavier has an obsession with Minecraft, so much so we limit his time with it.
The version of Minecraft we allow Xavier to play is an older alpha version which comes bundled with his Raspberry Pi.
One of the many nice things about this version is we have programmatic access to the local server, which allows us to code some fun stuff. Still, our version suffers many limitations when compared to the current production release of the game.
One of the things we have figured out to do is program the game with several kinds of farm animals: cows, pigs, sheep and chickens. The chickens seem to be the most animated and generally Xavier's favorite animal to have injected into his world.
Today, Xavier logged into a game we started yesterday which we coded to have ten chickens. He visited one of his chicken corrals.
With great excitement, I heard "Dad, there's another chicken! I think the chickens kissed!"
So, according to Xavier, baby chickens appear when chickens kiss.
The Best Snow Fort Ever
Greetings to everyone, and belated Happy New Year.
Beginning Friday, we had actual, measurable snowfall, something Xavier has been wanting for weeks.
Rebecca left town for her weekend in Cheyenne before the storm got much of a foothold. As she was going to be away four days, Xavier, Rebecca and I all had breakfast together. We dropped Xavier at school, then Rebecca headed north and I back to the home office.
By the time I picked Xavier up from school, the storm had dropped about three to four inches of Spring-like snow, the kind wet enough to do something more with it than make snow angels.
After coming home, Xavier spent little time in the house. He wanted to go out and play in the snow. As I was still working, he decided he wanted to play in the snow with or without me. So, he bundled up, I helped him with his mittens, then outside he went.
He spent a good hour outside building a snow fort. He had a little bucket he packed with snow to make the blocks. He even made a few snow angels.
He came in for lunch (because of his snack at school, lunches on school days are late for him, around 1:00 or 1:30).
Of course, after lunch he wanted to return to his snow fort building, but this time he wanted Dad to play.
I finished up what I had to do, then we bundled up and went outside. Two hours later, we had the best snow fort ever, according to Xavier.
Why the best ever? We built snowmen into the walls and placed mini snowmen on the battlements. As we made the snowmen, Xavier learned and practiced how to roll snowballs big enough to build snowman body parts. This new skill made him quite happy.
Afterward, the snowball fight commenced.
The snow continued much of the rest of day and into the night. The next morning, the skies had cleared and the sun shone brightly.
After breakfast, Xavier and I geared up and headed outside again. The snow was even better for building forts than the day before. We built another fort, this time by rolling huge snowballs instead of using the bucket and block method.
Two hours later, another snowball fight, then in for lunch. Within an hour, the giant snowball fort fell over due to the Sun melting away at it.
Xavier's original fort still stands. It froze well over night. Now Xavier ribs me that my fort fell over and his will never fall over.