Fall Guy

Torpedo takes a break from farmer's market shopping. Besides, that stuff's for girls anyway!

Farmer's Market

A crisp October morning at the local farmer's market epitomizes all that is good about fall. We sampled organic broccoli, carrots and leeks sauteed in olive oil. We tasted honey on toothpicks and shared blueberry scones and cheese Danish with our friends. But let's face it, we didn't bounce home with any organic broccoli or leeks. No, the O's shuffled home with a jug of tangy apple cider and the cider donuts to match. Fabulous! We'll be back for more of that. Topping off the morning, the girls picked up ceramic knick-knacks from the adjoining flea market, (winner: a tiny glass elephant with a pink glass rose saudered to it's butt, glued on a 1"x2" mirror base), while Torpedo roamed the adjacent boulders hunting for crunchy leaves and big sticks. Ahhhhhhhhh.....

Money Minors

This is the story of Angelfish and Star's Pet Care business.
This is GorgonZOLA, the dog they love and care for. This is Star and Angelfish opening a checking account...Oh, wait, you have to be 18??! This is Star and Angelfish opening a stinky, lame-O savings account that only yields 0.25%. No temporary checkbook. No debit card. See Angelfish dreaming of where she will put her new piggy bank. See Star devising a way around the bureaucracy and into a brokerage account before she turns 12.

On the road again!

Chicken Hawk

I am going to tell you about a wild living creature. It is a Red Tailed Hawk. A hawk ‘s nickname is Chickenhawk. It lives from Alaska to the West Indies. Red tailed hawks eat mammals like birds and reptiles. They catch their food with their feet. Today at a play-ground I saw an injured hawk. It could fly pretty well. But it was hurt on the foot. It would not let us take him down. Red tailed hawks live in high trees were they can spy food faster and to keep safe from Eagles. A hawk can weigh from 690 to 1300 grams (that means up to 4.4lbs.)--Angelfish

Exclusive

Hi Everyone,

I was never really comfortable with the voyeristic nature of blogs. Does anyone else find it odd that we share so much personal information without actually keeping in touch? I like to say, "Before blogs we had Grandmas." I hope all of you as family and friends will feel welcome to visit our blog anytime and feel free to send an email or call.

I wanted something 'exclusive' for this post, but I haven't loaded up the crazy pictures of the van being broken into last Thursday. Now, why woud somebody want the bug guard, headlights, grill and front bumper?! There is a mini-storage ad campaign here that cautions: Bad things happen when you leave the city. The billboards always show atrocious aspects of suburban living but bad things happen everywhere so we just have to keep our chins up and celebrate all the good around us.

Be well!

September

We're back in school. Hooray! We're all happy to be on a schedule again. Too much Summer liberty was making us agitated. We kicked off the year with a series of field trips. First, we headed south for two days at Mt. Vernon. We worked the pioneer plantation planting cabbage, grinding parched corn and touring the 16-sided indoor threshing treadmill that G.W. invented. I think Star's favorite part was the cotton. They had ripe cotton which they had recently picked so we got to remove the seeds. Nasty boogers! Then we carded the cotton (very short fibers). Finally, Star became adept at spinning it into thread. Working out there in the heat and humidity gave us an insight into the daily lives of slaves, servants and the master of the house. The second day we started at the gristmill and distillery. We played on gigantic millstones while we watched the power providing water stream into the mill. In the mil, we were shown how the mill stones cut against each other to grind the grains. There was one for wheat and one for all other grains. The wheat came in 3 grades. The most expensive grade was refined white wheat which had to go through a separate cooling process so that it wouldn't clump together. That would have been bad for business. We watched the second mill in action. In seconds, it ground many times the amount of corn we had ground with mortar and pestle the day before. We were amazed. So many gears, pulleys, hydropower, lifts, etc. This was definitely the cutting edge technology of the day.

In the distillery, the rye was boiled in great vats to break out the starches and make Fire Water or Whiskey. The sugar to make rum was in the grip of the British, so it was more economical and patriotic to make whiskey. After the starches were boiled into the water it was distilled 2,3 or 4 times to raise the alchololic content and the price. At first G.W. didn't want to attract the clientel that followed whiskey, but the profits were huge and he became (by far) the most productive distillery in America at that time. We did learn about heating liquid to vapor and cooling it back into liquid form through copper coil pipes immersed in water, etc. There was plenty of science going on. I think our favorite part about the distillery was the pig pen. It's not actually on site, but we were told that most farmers let their pigs run wild until slaughtering day. Once G.W. had this distillery hopping, he didn't want to waste the boiled rye mash leftover. So, he penned all of his pigs near the distillery and fed it to them. They were said to be the fattest around and Martha was famous for her Christmas hams.

We finally retreated to the air conditioning of the education center. I can't begin to explain how three-dimensional and thorough this center is. We didn't get to cover everything and we'll be using our annual membership again and again. We've visited Mt. Vernon 5 times and aren't nearly through it yet. I digress. The highlights of the Ed. Center for us were 3 lifesize replicas of the great man prepared by multiple scientist, historians, artists, etc... to be the closest to his likeness ever. One shows him at 19 surveying. One shows him in his prime, fully uniformed astride a full-sized white horse. Lastly, he is recreated at his presidential swearing in. We also enjoyed a movie on Revolutionary War spy tactics and a 14 minute interactive film of the Revolutionary War from 1776-1781 which included 3 screens, shaking seats (canon fire), smoke, fog and even snow. We watched it twice. We also spent an hour or so dressing up in Colonial clothes and playing Colonial games of the day (9 pin, alphabet cards, paper dolls, play house with Colonial dishes). K and A spent a good deal of time piecing together Colonial crockery supposedly from an archaeological dig. Lastly, we saw a set of G.W.'s dentures and watched a film about Colonial dentistry. He was a dedicated brusher long before many of his countrymen adopted the practice, but still lost all of his teeth. Too bad.

Our next fieldtrip was set up by aunt Julie. We met up with all our D.C. family and toured the White House. No pictures allowd so you'll have to take a virtual tour on-line or set up your own through your congressperson. It was fairly snappy and self-guided. There were no hands-on activities for children, etc. Nevertheless, the kids put their hands on everything they could. Ali mostly remembers the sparkling chandeliers. That fieldtrip may be most meaningful in the future as we watch the news, elections, etc. We'll recognize the rooms. I most noted one of the presidential paintings was made by Samuel Morse (inventor of morse code). I'm not a ranter, but I did note that there doesn't seem to have been any generation in my personal awareness that is more pigeonholed than ours. G.W. was a "Farmer," but he was also and inventor, general, statesman, diplomat, president, botanist, etc. Today it seems we have to pick one label and never deviate: Academic, Financier, Artist, Dentist. I'll just leave it at that.

We had a fun family birthday party after the field trip and then headed to Georgia the next morning. 10 hours in the car with my kids was a pleasant surprise. They took turns selecting music, counting down miles or exits. It was amazing to watch the topography change. I never put Georgia and Palm Trees together, but as we approached our first set of Jesus billboards we also hit the palm trees. The humidity was intense and we imagined our Virginia plantation experience in Georgia. Forget it. Working in the cotton fields of Georgia would have been so much worse.

Our favorite part (and real motivation) was seeing our friends, the Days! It was wonderful to see how the children had grown and to put them all in their new context. They took us to an amazing wild beach where we were able to eyewitness the effects of erosion. The upended, sunbaked trees made an ethereal playground and a perfect campsite for our hours of oceanic exploration. This beach was the perfect combination of lake and ocean. The waves weren't much more than ripples and the water was incredibly warm. Even Torpedo came in up to his neck! We found crabs, hermit crabs, sea sponge and collected 19 sand dollars!! That was mostly Julie, who recently discovered that talent, but everybody found something. You might try googling sand dollars. We did because we wanted to know why they were turning our hands iodine yellow. What do they eat? What eats them? How do they reproduce? Why do they have those holes? You'll have to look it up yourself because my post is already getting too long, even for a self-proclaimed bombast. Moving on...

The next day, after some book work, we went to a gorgeous private island to swim at a completely over the top luxurious resort. Everything was unnaturally perfect, green and manicured. There were multiple pools, bridges, hot tubs, lions squirting out water, bridges, sprinkling fountains, etc. I think my favorite part was that towels were provided. Now THATS a luxury I can really appreciate. We enjoyed the game room where I picked up a ping-pong paddle after mmsdkfjklsm-years. We also played on the shuffle board (spinning rather than shuffling the pucks) and an ultra-modern playground. Julie and I reminisced about our many years of playgrounding together and declared this to be the cleanest one. ;)

The next day was all driving and we made good time. Then we had a day off to clean the van, repack and meet some Finnish relatives that actually speak English. Hooray! Also, we learned that Edy's has a limited edition Girlscout ThinMint cookie ice-cream. You should definitely check it out. Let me know if you find the Samoas version anywhere (Stew Leonards is rumored to have it). Finally, finally, finally we all came home. It was such a happy reunion and we've spent the rest of the month trying to log all of our learning in our daily writing. We've followed up on our Colonial studies by actually reading the entire Declaratation of Independence and putting the complaints in our own words. It includes "perfidy" and we know that word because of the Newberry winner we just finished in family read-aloud time. (Check out: The Tale of Despereaux).

We've had lots of other highlights and good times, but we can't keep looking back and I'm already a month behind so I'm saying farewell to September and looking forward to October.