A Trip to Holland

Our most recent read-aloud was Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge. It was a long read, but a welcome distraction to the dreary weather outside. We all enjoyed the two intertwined story lines, but would have preferred a little less Dutch history. We especially liked the characters of Hans Brinker, Peter Van Mounen, and Jacob Poot. This book is full of heroic values as Hans is faced with many difficult decisions of moral magnitude.

Jared gave a presentation on one of the chapters from the book at our Book Group on Friday. For his persentation he researched three different items from the chapter. The first item was a foot stove. He drew a picture of the foot stove and explained that it was a wooden box that would have hot coals placed inside and warm air would come out of holes in the top. The next item was a Meerschaum smoking pipe that he carved out of soap. Meerschaum is a mineral that is skimmed off the top of some seas (like sea foam) and was used to make pipes because it doesn't burn or give off a flavor. So many Dutchmen smoked pipes that the distance a boat could travel was measured by how many pipes it would take the captain to smoke. The last item Jared presented was an ice boat. The picture above is the ice boat that he made from Legos. The ice boat had a sail to catch the wind and had runners under the boat with two triangles on either side, with runners, for balance. Jared did a great job with his presentation!

After a short activity about Dutch words and how many of our English words are of Dutch origin, we made some ice boats out of cardstock and paper clips and raced them on ice. Jared and his friend provide the wind for their boats.

While the boys were racing their ice boats, the girls made pinwheels to remind them of the Dutch windmills.

We finished the day off by making (and eating) wafels and windmill-shaped cookies. The Dutch were the first ones to introduce wafels to America. We also learned that the word easel is of Dutch origin and means donkey. Therefore an art easel is literally a painters donkey, which makes sense being that it carries the supplies just as a donkey would carry a person's baggage. So, with our minds full of ice skating, windmills, tulips, painters, guilders, and gold watches - we bid goodbye to the world of Hans Brinker and his sister Gretel...until the next looong, cold winter?

Vulture Feast?

You don't have to be in Radford long to notice that there are lots of vultures. In fact, Radford is home to more than 300 turkey and black vultures, the largest roost in Virginia and possibly the entire East Coast. So, it should come as no surprise that Radford holds an annual Vulture Festival to celebrate this oftentimes misunderstood scavenger. Still, Jared was surprised when he looked at our calendar for Saturday where I had written in "Vulture Fest" and he read "Vulture Feast." I had to explain to him that Fest is short for the word Festival and No we were not going to feast on Vultures, just going to learn about them. Three little buzzaaaaaaards, sitting in a tree. Actually, we learned that buzzard is the British name for hawk and Americans just adapted the name to label vultures. The festival was held at the Elementary school and inside we found many fun activities about vultures and other birds.

Clarissa was a little hesitant at first about dissecting owl pellets until I told her it was one of the things that I loved to do as a kid. Then, she jumped right in (that's my girl). She found two whole deer mice skulls and many other tiny bones. Apparently vultures also regurgitate pellets, but theirs aren't as "clean" for sake of a better word.

Amber stuck to a little more familiar territory, coloring.

Krystal is sponge-painting with vulture shaped sponges.

After the crafts and some free popcorn, we went outside to meet Buttercup. Buttercup is a vulture that was rescued from the wild when her wing was damaged by a passing motorist. She weighs about 3 and a half pounds and has a wingspan of over 5 feet.

I waited patiently for my turn to hold Buttercup. Yes, I'm actually talking to her. Up close she had quite a bit of personality and I even told Chris later that she was kind of cute. He added, "In an ugly sort of way."

Vultures weren't the only form of entertainment. The Chickenman showed up and gave the kids quite a show, Jerry Lewis style. Yes, that's a chicken on his head, and No, it wasn't always on straight.

In this photo, "Larry" (all of the Chickenman's helpers were called Larry) helps the Chickenman with his giant Yo-Yo. Jared was pretty sure he wasn't going to have any fun at this festival, it's a good thing he's not enjoying himself :).

And finally..., the crowning event of the day was that I won the Photo Contest with this photograph of a local turkey vulture sitting on our neighbors rooftop last summer. It was a warm August morning when the kids and I looked outside to see this vulture in full glory. We watched it for a while and finally I grabbed my camera and started snapping, never knowing what I would do with this picture, but we wanted to show Chris our mornings nature observations. Little did I know that in February there would be a photo contest of Radford's vultures. When I found out about the contest on Friday I was like, "Hey, I have a picture of a vulture." I promptly e-mailed the photo and informed my family that we were going to the festival to vote for Mommy's photo. I was pleasantly surprised when the director announced that I was the winner and even more surprised when she said that my photo won by a long shot, that meant more people voted for it than just my family. So...I won a T-shirt and the photo is going to be framed and hung in the Radford City Visitor's Center. I guess my quirky habit of loving all of nature's creatures is paying off. Here's to nature's clean-up crew - the vulture!

Mother/Daughter Date

On Saturday, Clarissa and I went to the hair salon to get our haircut together. This was Clarissa's second time to get her hair cut at a salon, but she probably doesn't remember the first time. She got a really cute cut with layers that curves around her face and she loves it. My hair had gotten way too long so I got about 3 inches cut off and lots of layers put into it. This picture is of us dressed up for church on Sunday.

Civil Rights Projects

Friday was a busy day. Before the Valentine's party, we got together with our history group for presentations. The theme this month was Civil Rights. Jared presented his project first which was a very thorough timeline of the Civil Rights beginning with 1808 when slave trading was made illegal and ending with 2006 when Coretta Scott King (widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) died. This was Krystal's first project. She wanted to talk about Helen Keller, who although she didn't participate in the Civil Rights Movement as we typically see it, did in her later years work for the rights of the blind and deaf in our nation and in Japan. For her project, Krystal dictated the story of Helen Keller to me as she remembered it. I then made a book out of it, which she illustrated and read for her presentation. She did a great job reading and even showed us how to spell doll in sign language.

Clarissa's project was about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott. She really liked the story of Rosa Parks and how strong she was to stand up for what she knew was right.

While doing some research about the bus boycott I found that in order to make money for gas and station wagons for those who were not able to walk, many women baked pies and cakes in their kitchens and sold them in beauty salons. I also found an original recipe for Baked Fudge from one of these courageous women and baked it for our history group. It was very delicious!

Some other projects presented were about Ruby Bridges, Jackie Robinson, Mohanndes Ghandi, and Harriet Tubman. We are grateful to all the amazing men and women who have fought peacefully for the rights of all. We know that we all have differences and that is what makes this life fun and interesting. We appreciate each individual for their differences whether it be in age, skin color, religion, political view, physical abilities, language, financial circumstances, or any other variety of traits.

A Crafty Valentine's Day

The theme for our family this Valentine's season seemed to be crafts. First, we spent most of the day on Thursday creating some cute Valentine's using punches. This is a sample of some the girls made, Jared actually wrote a little poem, typed it up and put that on heart shaped paper that he cut out (all his own idea).

The first part of the Valentine's party on Friday was some ice breaker games. This was a cute game where each person is given one side of a heart and they have to find the person who has the other side of their heart. Amber's heart matched with one of the other Moms. Next it was time to eat all the yummy food.

After the kids were done eating they passed out their Valentine's. Krystal watches as Amber gives her friend a Valentine.

Another craft were these cute boxes that we made for Krystal and Amber for collecting their Valentine's (Jared and Clarissa used theirs from several years ago).

I also made this Conversation Heart Bingo game, it was a hit.

Unfortunately, the party was at Amber's naptime so she crashed while I was running the Bingo game.

The last crafty thing I made was this collage on Picasa of all the kids sorting through their Valentine spoils when we got home. Check out those sugar-laced smiles!

One Day in the Desert

After 5 degree temps yesterday and more snow today, I decided to rebel. We spent the afternoon reading this book by Jean Craighead George called One Day in the Desert. We also acted out the book as we were reading it, drew pictures of characters we didn't have props for, and turned our living room into a Sonoran desert.

This was our paloverde (a type of tree) area where the peccaries (pigs), tortoise, cactus wren, and ringtailed cat hung out by the saguaro, teddy-bear, and prickly pear cacti.

These are the other characters to our story. The rattlesnake (or old bike tire), the Papago Indian hut, Clarissa as Bird Wing, the mountain lion, Diesel the coyote, Jared the sound effects man, the red Scorpion Mountain and Krystal's drawing of a kangaroo rat (but she refused to be in the picture). It was fun and we even did some math, science, and writing along with the art and acting. But, the best part was that whether it was just in my mind or not, I was actually warm the whole 2 hours. Also, it brought back fond memories of the three (Mojave, Great Basin, and Chihuahuan) different deserts that I've lived in.

Swimming in the Snow?

On Saturday, in spite of some pretty icy weather and one weather induced cancellation already, we went with some friends to an indoor swimming center for some family fun. A bunch of us got together and rented the whole place for two hours. This is what it looked like outside.

Inside, we had a blast. Amber is loving the kiddy pool with several water features like the mushroom, mist spraying arch, and streams of water.

Krystal was actually brave enough to go under the mushroom and eventually down the waterslide. Although after her first time down the slide we asked if it was fun and she said, "No!" She did go down it several more times.

I barely saw Jared and Clarissa as they were swimming all over the place, going down the slide as often as possible and hanging with their friends.

I for one, enjoyed the "therapy pool" which was warm and the hot tub, which was HOT! About the only time I went in the cold water was to race Chris. Thank goodness no one got a picture of me when I about drowned myself by breathing in water during the race and Chris was nice enough not to rub in that he won.

This may have been one of the best water experiences ever. It had everything necessary for a sucessful family pool time: clean, close bathrooms, water at every depth, water at every temperature, good friends, soothing quiet pools, fun exciting pools, no hoards of people for your child to drown in and never be noticed, and finally...a definate ending time which meant that I didn't have to be the meany by saying it was time to go. Awesome!

Snowed In!

After getting a foot a snow last weekend, the kids spent every afternoon this week sledding and playing outside in the snow. So, when the forecast called for another 6-12 inches this weekend, we decided we needed a project to keep us busy while mother nature laid her white blanket. This is the view into our backyard while it was snowing. I didn't measure this time, but it looked like it was another 8-10 inches when all was said and done. Now, on to our project - Moving Amber into a big-girl bed (and out of her brother's room). I realize that Amber is the only 3-year old in the world who has ever slept in a crip for this long (Ha Ha), but the truth is that with no baby to push her out of it and a set of seasoned parents who have learned that big-kid beds only mean having a child who can get out of their bed and come into yours in the middle of the night, we felt no urgent need to rush her into this stage of childhood. However, a friend had a set of bunk beds that she was getting rid of, so we took this opportunity to rearrange.

Before: The "toy" side of the room

Before: Chris made this loft bed for Clarissa and this twin bed for Krystal that we put under the loft bed.

After: The dressing side of the room

After: With the bunk bed in place, we put what was Krystal's bed next to the bunk bed. Krystal is now sleeping on top of the bunk bed, Clarissa chose the bottom because it is actually a double size bed and Amber is in Krystal's old bed. With three beds, even this large room is a little cramped, but we still had room for the Barbie house and a bookcase along with the two dressers. Now to decide what to do with all the extra space in Jared's room. And no, Amber did not stay in her bed all night, but she does love it!

Go Legoman! Go!

Jared's Cub Scout Pack had their Pinewood Derby last Saturday. Previous to the event, Jared spend hours researching and designing his car. He and Chris looked on-line for ideas, but ultimately Jared settled on making a rule-compliant car made out of Legos. The wheels and axles are from the kit and fit into a thin slice of the wood from the kit. Then, he made a Lego shell to go around the thin peice of wood. Chris helped one of the boys make his car, it's on the left and Jared's is on the right.

Here are all scouts getting ready to race their cars.

And patiently waiting for their awards. Jared won the best engineered award for his ingenuity and design.

Good job Legoman!