Where the White Things Are: Good morning, Valentine

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Good morning, Valentine

Friday Feb 14-Monday Feb 16 is mid-winter break for Sunnyside High School so Jeff was home for Valentine’s Day. On the morning of the Day of Love, we had some quality family fun. First Jeff and I took turns running. Then we convened for a much-anticipated family moose hunt. Last week we checked out a book from the library called Looking for a Moose by Phyllis Root:

Jay fell in love with this silly spin off of the classic “going on a bear hunt.” He has been asking to go on a moose hunt for over a week. On Valentine’s Day morning, we finally did.

One more background bit before we go on a moose hunt: we never got rid of our old camera from 6 years ago. It has been sitting unused for over 2 years in its bag, gathering dust. Jeff put new batteries and an old memory card in it and gave it to Jay to play with this week, and Jay has become a photography machine. That was part of his motivation for going on a moose hunt: fresh subjects for his photography.

Every time Jay takes a picture, he says “look!” to the nearest person. I have seen more pictures of the floor and furniture over the past few days than I ever wanted to.

On to the moose hunt. Jeff said Jay could lead us wherever he wanted on our walk through town. We decided that moose like trees, and Jay picked out a destination where a few trees line the bike path. So we walked a mile and a half to the trees, following our fearless leader Jay, pausing every now and then for him to snap a picture. It was 50 degrees and super windy, and we were walking at 4-year old pace, so the blood never really got pumping. Burrr.

I couldn’t resist taking pictures of Jay taking pictures.

Here’s how this picture went: Jay said “Rose, stand right there. No—over right here. Ok, say cheese!” Nice composition for a 4.5 year old.

Rose started lagging about half a mile into the walk, so Jeff carried her on his shoulders.

Jay took this picture of the train we were rewarded with along the way. When we asked Jay how much further we were going to walk, he picked a sign up ahead on the bike path and said “We’ll walk to that sign and if we see a moose, we’ll say ‘yay!’ and then go home. If we don’t see a moose, we’ll just go home.”

We reached Jay’s appointed sign and turned back towards home, with no moose in sight. Jay wasn’t upset. He is hard to read sometimes. I could tell he knew that it was very unlikely for us to find a moose in Grandview, but at the same time he seemed so hopeful and determined!

“Look, Mommy, I took a picture of my shadow!”

We ended up walking 3 whole miles! About half a mile from home, Jeff and I each put a kid on our backs and power walked for it. Thank goodness for that brisk walk with a Rose-backpack because it warmed me up at last.

Here are a few of Jay’s other pictures:

Family scripture in the morning…ugh, I look like a dead person in that bed…in my defense, Rose had woken me up at least 3 times the night before, for various reasons.