Hi, everyone!
Right after Grandma and I got the Christmas tree ornaments off the dining room table, we got it ready to pack the Ground Hog Day cookies! I helped by getting out the packing boxes and the sealing tape. My buddies the Packer-sans all came over and we got the cookies packed in less than an hour! Now the boxes are all back in the freezer until it’s time to mail them!
Grandma and Grandpa took me out to the bay the first Friday in January. All the snow had melted, so we could drive right in! There were big branches down in the front yard. Two sections of tree limbs dug into the ground when they fell. I’m glad I wasn’t outside when that happened! When we came back from the bay on Saturday, I got a letter in the mail from Moose-san! It was a thank you note for the Christmas present I gave him. Moose-san is a very polite friend! My cactus friend was in bloom when I got back, too! Grandma says we’ll have to call it an Epiphany cactus this year, rather than a Christmas cactus!
Before we took the lights off the apple trees, Grandma noticed that half of one of the strings wasn’t lighting at all! Grandpa took some time to figure out why. He discovered that the light bulbs that didn’t work had water in them! That’s never happened before to any of our outdoor lights and this string was brand new when we put it up this season!
Thursday of this week, we woke up to snow again! It was very cold out, too! Grandma said this would be the best kind of snow for a snow bath for me! Grandma found a patch of nice clean, undisturbed snow and helped me roll around in it. I got covered all over!
Then Grandma brought me back inside and brushed the snow out of my fur. I got to snuggle in a towel for a little while, then I dried off more with a hair dryer and a nice nap in front of the heat register in the kitchen. Thomas has a book about a spiffy giant, and I feel spiffy, too!
Last night, Grandma and Grandpa and I took Uncle Steven’s family to the members’ opening reception for the improved planetarium at the Rochester Museum and Science Center. It was fun! I got to meet the new director of the museum! Grandma says she remembers going to the planetarium when it was new, fifty years ago. She and Grandpa lived close enough to the museum then that they could walk there! James and I were first in line waiting to see the very first star show at the opening reception. When we got inside, we could see the fifty-year old star projector in the central pit of the star theater. Everybody calls it Mr. Carl, because it was invented by Carl Zeiss, a Swiss optics maker. The new system doesn’t use Mr. Carl to project the show anymore, but Mr. Carl rose out of the pit at the start of the show so everybody could see him. I made friends right away!
The star show took us to the moon, then to Saturn (the museum director’s favorite planet, she told me), then to Ultima Thule at the edge of the galaxy. Then we went outside the galaxy to the Orion nebula. Then we came all the way back to Rochester and traveled into the future to see the complete solar eclipse here in April 2024! There was a lot to see all over the theater dome! After the show, we got to take another look at Mr. Carl before we left. Then there were snacks and displays in the planetarium lobby. James and I got to meet an astronaut! There were colored lights making shadows at some of the tables.
After the members’ opening reception, we all went back to Uncle Steven’s house to have pizza. We each brought home a souvenir: when we went into the star theater, we traded our purple admission tickets for golden tickets. The golden tickets will let us get into the planetarium for free fifty years from now, for the hundredth anniversary! That’s a long time for a little lion, but not for a star!
Love,
Lion-san
We think that Mr. Carl was doing the last show that Nancy-san and Joe-san went to. Also Joe-san found out that Nancy-san was born on a day when the temperature was minus 20 where she was born! You will have to tell us when it is a good day for a snow bath. Nancy-san wants to have Iggy get a snow bath, she says his bottom which was white is now brown! It doesn’t look that way to me. But then I’m brown and Tilly is grey.
Lion-san, To whom do you mail cookies for Ground Hog’s Day?
Great Aunt Betsy, they go to military academy cadets (especially Uncle Bill’s Air Force Academy squadron) and active duty military serving in difficult or dangerous places. Uncle Bill’s military friends and the local Blue Star Mothers group help Grandma get the addresses.
I have to agree that you look very spiffy after your snow bath! Glad you didn’t get a chill!