Poco Mountain Girl

October was unseasonably warm for 9000 feet high in the Colorado Rockies. We had hardly a dusting of snow all month, which was surprising, especially after our mid September “summer snow”.

People here cry for snow when it’s a little late–the local business owners suffer when the ski slopes are dry and vacationers don’t come, local skiers want their full season’s pass-worth, and literally everyone has the same battle cry: We need moisture!  Because here, moisture comes in the form of snow.

We thoroughly enjoyed our mild October. I guess we’re just not Rocky Mountain old-timers yet. It’ll come, I’m sure. We’ll be talking about the need for moisture in a decade or two.

This morning the kids trekked down the hill leaving two sets of giant rabbit tracks in the snow, Caleb shouldering Zia’s science fair display. He has been laboring over it for three weeks, she singing and dancing on his bed, hopping down every now and then to write a sentence or answer a question. First graders are required to do a full-on science project, while in the same school, middle-and-high schoolers go scot-free. Hm.

But Caleb didn’t miss out this year. He helped Zia choose a topic (“Why Does the Moon Glow?”) they wrote a hypothesis, rigged a flashlight-and-box experiment, made a chart/illustration, took pictures along the way, and recorded the results. David and I thoroughly enjoyed the process, which conspicuously left us out of the equation.

Caleb told me it will take him a year to get over the trauma of doing a science fair project with Zia. I completely understand–that girl is not exactly compliant. For all my agony over letting her go to school instead of home schooling, I have to admit I kind of enjoy playing second fiddle to her teacher. “Oh, but you have to do it. The TEACHER said so.”

And that’s that. She even accidentally calls me Miss T. now and then.  Even better, sometimes she calls her teacher Mamma…and I’ll bet Miss T. loooooves that. 🙂

How is November shaping up in yo’ neck o’ the woods?

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2014 at 10:07 am and is filed under Caleb, Colorado, Little Redhead Girl. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.