Showing posts with label hot chocolate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hot chocolate. Show all posts

Saturday, March 16, 2013

My email to you for March 16, 2013

Here is my email to you for March 16, 2013, just in case you don’t receive it:

Hi Kieran,

How are you today? I hope you’re doing well. I’d doing fine, though I miss you very much.

How is school going? I did not receive your email to me last week, so I did not get to hear from you how you are doing in kindergarten. Please have your mother resend the email to me so I can catch up on your schooling.

Tomorrow (Sunday, March 17), you will have to make sure you wear green. Why? Because it’s St. Patrick’s Day! It is a very important day for people who are Irish. Though we’re not Irish, we still celebrate the holiday out of respect to those who are and because it’s a lot of fun!

Do you get spring break at your school? The school where your cousins Rebekah and Bryan go has spring break in just another week. During spring break, they get the whole week off from school! Schools often have spring break so that parents can take their children on vacation, and then the kids don’t have to miss any school.

If you could go on vacation, where would you go? Some people travel to lots of fun places like Disneyworld in Florida (We used to go to Disneyland in California.). Other families travel to scenic or historical places where they can enjoy nature or learn about our past. Places like that include a national park, such as the Grand Canyon in Arizona, or Washington, D.C., our nation’s capital. Other families don’t travel at all but spend their vacation in their own house, enjoying their time together playing games and watching movies and maybe going to fun places that are nearby, like a mall.

After St. Patrick’s Day and spring break comes Easter on March 31. Do you have big plans for Easter, like going to an egg hunt or maybe out to eat for Easter dinner? I am going to Grandma and Grandpa Bignell’s for Easter. Your Uncle Chris, Aunt Suzie, cousins Bryan and Rebekah, Aunt Sandy and Uncle Mark all will be there. We are having ham and prime rib for dinner. All of us wish you could be there with us for Easter sinenr.

There sure is a lot of snow on the ground – much more than we had in California! Do you like playing in the snow? Have you made a snowman or snow angels yet? Have you gone sledding? When I was a little boy your age, I always liked to go sledding down snow-covered hills and then have hot chocolate afterward. You might remember that we went up into the mountains near our house in Lancaster and went sledding and had hot chocolate afterward – it was the first time you ever had hot chocolate, and you loved it! You had so much fun going up and down and down the hills and drank so much hot chocolate that you slept the whole drive back to our house.

Once the snow starts to melt in a couple of weeks, the wind will start to pick up as spring arrives. That makes for great kite-flying weather. Would you like to fly a kite?

Well, that is all for now. I love and miss you very much and can’t wait to see you again on March 29!

Love,

Dad

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

The first time you ever had hot chocolate

Dec. 28, 2010: Kieran and Dad
prepare to take the sled for a ride down
an incline on the Pacific Crest Trail.
As researching material for my upcoming hiking books (which includes a section on winter hiking), I recalled a time we'd gone up into the Angeles National Forest so you could play in the snow - something we rarely got to see or do when in Southern California's desert (Though you'll soon be playing a lot in the snow now that you're in Minnesota/Wisconsin).

I premade hot cocoa/chocolate for us to keep warm when up there and put it in the equivalent of a Thermos bottle. We didn't open it until back in the Jeep Patriot for the ride down the mountain. By then, you were a little chilled, so I changed you into warm, dry clothes.

And then I offered you a cup of hot chocolate. You took a sip, and your face absolutely lit up! You drank it quickly and asked for more. Though only 3 years old, you were so careful not to spill it lest you no longer have any to drink!

I think you enjoyed three whole cupfuls that drive down the mountain. And then, tuckered out from a day of playing in the snow, the warmth of the Jeep's heater, and all of the hot chocolate in your belly, you slipped off into the most peaceful-looking sleep I'd ever seen you enjoy.

OK, answers to yesterday's "Caillou" trivia:
1. Grandma
2. Gilbert
3. Brunette (black or dark brown, though the books showed her with red hair)
4. Rosie
5. Rexy (his blue T-rex dinosaur)