We had a great day at home this morning. I managed to sleep until 9:30. I woke realizing I’d been talking to Sam in my dreams. I lay there awhile resting in that feeling. I finally dragged my lazy bod out of bed and downstairs. Diane had been up and buzzing around for a few hours. After breakfast we pushed ourselves outside into the beautiful morning to snowshoe. The snow is still amazingly deep.. Even with snow shoes it was very slow going.. It was like working out on nature’s Stairmaster with the resistance turned up high. It was such hard going that our original goal to do the lower loop in the back woods with Chai had to be revised to a much shorter loop.. without Chai. Poor pup fell into her belly whenever she went off of our trail. She finally gave up and went back to the yard.   It was so beautiful and quiet up in the woods.. nothing was moving, there was a light snow falling No wildlife  about but  I managed to catch sight of this elusive creature… Beautiful, no ?

   We huffed and puffed our way up one of our shorter hikes .. Basically taking an hour to do what’s generally a 15 minute hike on a normal day.  As we were coming down we were talking about the mindfulness that Sam’s passing has given us. I’d been beating myself up a bit over the last week in my conversations  and in this  blog about having trouble resisting the rush and distractions of my old life.  Diane pointed out  that I may be holding myself to the wrong standard. She said that being completely grounded just wasn’t me.. that I needed to be a little spacey and distracted to really be ‘me’.  maybe shooting to be the Dali Lama was the wrong goal.. she suggested that I aim to be someone that the Dali Lama would find fun to be around.. Now that’s a fun thing to ponder.  Diane is a good and wise soul.
   We got back to the house around noon and the kids were still sleeping. We woke them up and had a great family breakfast. After that, Gabe and I retired to the Lab to work on  a school project, while Diane and Max worked on his Pratt coursework. Max is going back to Pratt in a week to start finishing off some of the make up work he has from leaving mid semester.
   Gabe’s project is a ‘motion machine’. A kid contrived contraption that illustrates the laws of motion. Working on this particular project brought back great and strong memories of having done the same project with Max and then with Sam. I really love seeing how these kids think . They are all so creative..  Each one has approached the problem with a different style. I remember how adamant Sam was about using a golf putter to swing in a certain was and hit a ball. It took him hours to get it set up.. but in the end it worked great. I was thinking about Sam as we worked today..  Sam would sometimes call me on his school projects when my own impatience would take over. He had a good and  way of telling me  when I  needed to lighten up. I made it a point to listen more and be more patient while working with Gabe.
    Gabe had some really cool ideas on what he wanted to do for his project. We spent most of the day working out the mechanics of a pretty complex gizmo that had one marble hitting another marble which rattle through a funnel, into a pipe  which  then launched it at a stick, that pulls a pin that releases a blade that ….cuts off a clay figures head…  So much for not letting them watch scary or violent movies as small kids. 
   I loved working all day with Gabe.. he’s creative and very good with his hands.   He did all the cutting, grinding and welding on his project himself.. I certainly couldn’t do that stuff at his age… Here are some pictures of the young inventor at work.

He  did his  first complete test run of his project at about 10:30 tonight.. and  I’m happy to say.. it works pretty well.
      Sam. .. I realize just now that I never taught you to weld…   I hope you  were watching us today…

-jc

 ps. never trust a spell checker 🙂