First Laura Ingalls Stop

Yesterday was our first actual Laura Ingalls site on this trip. There isn't a book about the Ingalls family's time in Burr Oak, IA but they spent a year here between "On the Banks of Plum Creek" and "By the Shores of Silver Lake".



While in Burr Oak they worked at the Masters Hotel which is still standing and has been restored into a museum.


Lodging was $0.25 a night but that was 3 people to a bed, shudder.


A butter mold


Hay twists like they burned during the long winter in SD


Parched corn


Reverend Alden and behind the picture, Laura's teaching credentials.


The checkers are pieces of corn cob dyed red and black


Little Bit is Laura :)

And some random pictures from this part of the trip:


Interesting swing set at the campground.


Had to laugh when I saw a lawn tractor driving down the road in front of the hotel.


Crossing the Mississippi River on our way to IA on Sunday.

posted from Bloggeroid

Starting Our Trip

We've been talking about doing a " Little House" trip since we started homeschooling . And on Thursday, August 24, we started.

The girls and I had the car loaded, ready to leave first thing that morning for my parents' house. We got there, loaded our stuff into the motorhome, helped mom and dad finish loading their stuff and headed out.




We drove from WV to PA to OH that day. Got to the campground and got set up and fixed supper. By the time we'd cleaned up from supper it was bedtime.

Friday we went to the First Ladies Library and toured Mrs. McKinley's house. The girls and Mom got their Junior Rangers.

The exhibit was reproductions of some of the first ladies' inauguration gowns which would be more exciting if we hadn't recently gone to Smithsonian and seen all the originals. What was interesting is apparently a perfume company made smaller reproductions of many of the gowns to use in their dept store displays and there were a bunch of those on display.

McKinley's house (technically Mrs. McKinley's sister's house but the McKinleys lived there) was interesting. A 3rd floor was added later and they put some odd sized closet doors in to accommodate stairwells and roof lines.

posted from Bloggeroid

Morning Hike

We decided to go back and try to get a better view of Vanishing Lake before heading to Iowa this morning. We drove as close to the lake as we could, on Sam Campbell Rd. Then we hiked. Lexie and I followed Ashlyn's example from yesterday and went barefoot. There is nothing like walking barefoot through the woods!


Little Bit wore her shoes on the road but we carried them so she could be barefoot in the woods too.

The lake was clearer in the sunny morning so we could see it better through the trees and marsh.




There were so many cool looking mushrooms and mosses I didn't take time to take pictures of them all but couldn't resist this tiny red and white mushroom.


I had thought about looking for geocaches around here, since it's not a national park but didn't bother since I didn't have phone reception out there to use to track it, but we stumbled upon on without trying. Little Bit got a blue bracelet out of it so she was happy.



And now we're on our way to Iowa and our first Laura Ingalls Wilder site tomorrow.

posted from Bloggeroid

Sam Campbell's Country

Yay, I think this is going to work! I'm going to start with what we did today and then try to go back and fill in the first part of the trip as I have time.

Sam Campbell was a naturalist who wrote books and gave talks at schools, etc. when my parents were kids. They both read his books and heard his talks. Then when I was a kid, I read his books and now I'm reading them to my kids.

So when we realized that on this trip we'd be relatively close to where he lived we decided to check it out.

This morning it was raining so we went to the little museum in town. It had a video of him talking about his animals and some of his things including his guitar

And his typewriter and cameras


By afternoon the rain has stopped so we headed out to hike near the island where he lived.


It was a gorgeous hike through the woods. I love how the moss completely blankets the ground in the marshy areas.


The island where he lived is owned by someone else now but we were able to hike to a spot where we could see it across the water.


I also got a cute picture of Little Bit and her Papa teasing each other on the bench at the lookout spot for the island.


Then we started down the trail toward Vanishing Lake (a lake mentioned often in his books). The trail sign said it was 1/4 min but we hiked much farther than that. Also, while the earlier part of the trail was well marked, this had no markings. Finally, much to my older girls' disgust, I said we had to turn back. I had no cell service or internet, then last time I'd had internet, it was predicting thunderstorms in the evening and I just didn't feel it was safe to keep going deeper into the woods at that point. We did find a place where we could kind of see what we think is Vanishing Lake through the trees and across a Marsh.


My dad had gone back for the car in case it rained but by the time he picked us up, and I again had internet, the threat of rain had diminished so, the big girls, my mom, and I did at least finish the last part of the trail.


We saw 2 woodpeckers and what we think was a red squirrel. But the woodpeckers were too high for good pictures and the squirrel was too fast. I also found a tiny frog crossing the path so caught it to show the girls. I think Lexie got pictures of it but I didn't.

It was a fun hike, but I was frustrated that the people at the museum told us it was 1 3/4 mi. My dad's Fitbit said he'd walked 4 miles and he didn't go all the way to Vanishing Lake. He also hiked back to the car on the road rather than through the woods which, on the map, looked to be similar distances but might have been a little longer or shorter. Regardless it was more than double what we'd been told! Most of it was well marked and even with heavy rain earlier in the day it wasn't muddy except for one marshy area near Vanishing Lake where we had to walk across some fallen logs to keep from wading. The lack of marking near the lake, and very inaccurate distance (the sign said 1/4mi and it was at least a mi before we turned back) made that part frustrating to say the least.

Driving back to the campground we passed Spirit Lake, another lake he mentioned in the books.

So despite the rain and inaccurate info, it was a fun day!

posted from Bloggeroid

Testing

We're traveling and I'm trying to figure out to be able to blog from my phone since we're discovering that when campgrounds say they have WiFi they don't actually have WiFi that works at the campsite and/or that doesn't stop randomly every 5 minutes. So I'm trying an app . . . Starting with a random picture to see if it works.

posted from Bloggeroid

Wrapping Up June

I started writing this at the beginning of July and then got side-tracked, and the window got closed, and I forgot that I hadn't finished it so now it's the middle of July, oh well . . .

How is it July already? It seems like June just started! We started our summer by going to Lititz (a nearby town) to visit our favorite book store, go to the farmers market, feed the ducks (if you look close at the picture you'll see the baby ducks in the grass), and eat ice cream :)

I snapped the picture of Joy on Little Bit's loft one night at bedtime. He often sleeps up there with her, and sometimes goes and wakes her up in the morning. One morning she said he wouldn't let her get to the ladder, so "trapped" her up there with him for awhile. 

And while we're sharing cute pictures of Little Bit and our critters. Both Tracy (pictured) and Mi'Lady (the other black cat). Like to lick Little Bit's face. Maybe she should wash it better after lunch LOL. Or maybe they just think she's a kitten who needs to be groomed :) Tracy is a sweet, friendly, cat, but ever since she had kittens last summer (and maybe before? I don't remember when it started, I know I was hoping that getting her spayed (after kittens) would solve it) she's insisted on peeing everywhere BUT the litter box. She likes to pee on fabric . . . so any clothes on the floor, the bathroom bath mat, etc. . . also shoes apparently are close enough, because the last straw was when she started repeatedly peeing on our shoes by the back door URGH!!! And then, we were leaving for a week for campmeeting. I told the girls that Tracy was going to HAVE to live outside, at least while we were gone. Rodney wouldn't be home enough to notice, or clean up, any cat pee and I didn't want to come home to week-old cat pee who knows where. . . So we put her outside with food & water for her on the porch. And headed to Campmeeting.

Lexie and Ashlyn divided their time between their class (which included tubing, and attempting to waterski at the lake, listening to mission stories from Papua New Guinea, and playing games) and helping in Kindergarten (age 4-6) and the craft tent for ages 7-12. Little Bit was disappointed that most of her afternoon activities were off-site, and I wasn't comfortable with allowing her to go off-site with the supervision and organization I had observed, but I think it worked out, even with skipping most of the afternoon activities, she was pretty exhausted by the end of the week. We have always put a priority on keeping downtime in our schedule, so our kids don't handle the constant stimulation that is the norm for many families in our current culture. Being able to just hang out with me and read stories, or paint or draw, gave her some downtime between the morning activities and the evening meetings. I remember observing the same thing with Lexie and Ashlyn at this age. It's just too much . . . even though they aren't actually getting to bed much, if any, later than they normally do, we normally start "winding down" by 8pm, and have a nice long storytime each evening. When they get back from meeting at close to 9pm, they're wound up and we don't have that nice, gradual, wind down to our day. Anyway . . . I didn't take any pictures during campmeeting, but linked to a couple pictures from Facebook that have my kids in them :) 

Also during campmeeting, my Dad helped us replace one of our garage doors. The bottom was rotting, so it needed to be replaced. So now we have one green door (old one) and one white door, but at least critters can't get in through the hole in the bottom of the door :) At some point we'll replace the other one so they match again :)

I figured, with the garage wide open while we were installing the new garage door, that Tracy would sneak back in. But apparently she's accepted her fate as an outdoor cat. She looked like she was considering coming in a few times, but never did (and certainly COULD have snuck in easily enough). And, since we've come home, while she's happy to have us come out and love on her (the morning that the weather was nice enough that I drank my coffee on the front porch, she happily came and rubbed around under and on my feet the whole time I was out there), and sometimes looks longingly in the door when we come out or go in, she hasn't even tried to sneak in. I think, since we have another extended trip planned this fall, we'll just stick with her being an outdoor cat at least until after that trip, and then may try again and see how she does, so she's not stuck outside in the cold this winter. . .

Ever since Lexie and Ashlyn turned 13, we've talked about getting them their own checking accounts (our bank offers a teen account) so they would have a debit card available when they go places without us. So, the money they received for helping at campmeeting was the incentive we needed to finally do that. While we were at the bank, there was a tornado warning, which freaked Little Bit out, but since it didn't even look stormy where we were, we just kept a close eye on the radar maps, and finished what we were doing, then headed home. The tornado warning had expired by the time we got home (and we still had blue skies), but we did get some good thunderstorms later that afternoon.

Lexie and Ashlyn "graduated" from 8th grade this fall. When I asked if they wanted a graduation or party or something, they had no interest but when I asked if they wanted to go out to eat to celebrate, they thought that sounded like a good idea. After much discussion, they had narrowed it down to The Melting Pot and Cheesecake Factory. We decided that, since if they weren't twins, they'd each get their own graduation meal, we should do two graduation meals this year. I'm pretty sure Little Bit is too young to enjoy the "experience" of The Melting Pot so arranged for her to have a playdate with a friend while we took the big girls. Got there, sat down, ordered, and . . . they came and said they had smoke pouring out of a vent in the back and were going to have to evacuate the restaurant. Sigh . . . We decided to wait and see if they re-opened after the firetrucks came to see what was wrong (and as it turned out, the firetruck blocked our car in, so we were stuck even if we hadn't been planning to stay), but they determined that the storms earlier in the day (the same ones that scared Little Bit at the bank, but apparently they were worse in Harrisburg) had messed up their electrical system, so they didn't re-open and we had to go to Qdoba for supper instead. I tried to convince the girls that it still counted, since there was cheese to dip the chips in, but they are insisting that we still "owe" them a trip to The Melting Pot LOL.

Apparently we are becoming more "known" as the dog watcher family. When one of Rodney's coworkers needed to make a last minute trip, he remembered hearing that our girls like to watch dogs, so called Rodney and asked if, by any chance, we could watch their dog.  She's TINY which Little Bit liked, because she could handle her on the leash to take her out by herself. And she's a cuddle bug, so we all enjoyed cuddling her.

As usual, our cats stayed out of sight, though a few times Moccasin poked his head out, and Tara growled at him and he ran way. Which I found amusing since Moc is probably twice her size LOL. Figured it was just as well that he was afraid of her, rather than thinking she might be "prey" :)

One of the things Lexie and Ashlyn love about church is helping in the 0-6 year old class and getting to steal help out by snuggling the babies. When I saw them both holding babies after church one week, I had to snap a picture, even though the babies were both fussy (that's why B looks like Lexie's squeezing him too tightly LOL.

Ever since mid May, we've been trying to figure out and visit our friends Tom and Charity and meet their sweet new baby girl! But campmeeting and such got in the way, and then I had a cold . . . but FINALLY we got over there! A dog, a baby, and a toddler (who didn't make the picture)! What more can you ask for?!

They are also hosting a 13 yr old from the Ukraine for the summer. She doesn't speak English (Google Translate is a very useful thing!), but that didn't keep all 4 girls from having fun playing Uno. No need to speak the same language :) (bonus, since all the girls were busy playing their game, *I* actually got to snuggle the baby for a little while, woo-hoo!)

Once the Uno games were over, we all headed to Oley Turnpike Dairy's petting zoo! As a fun bonus, since it's only a few miles from our old house (and loading an 8 yr old and two 14 yr olds into a car is much faster than loading a baby, a toddler, and a teenager, so we left ahead of them), the girls and I detoured by our old house. . . they removed the gazebo :( If I'd known they weren't going to keep it, I'd have taken the (in better repair than the one we have) porch swing for our porch now, sigh! Ashlyn was excited to see a big dog pen in the back yard, and was wishing we still lived nearby to go meet their dogs LOL.  

The petting zoo was fun. It's been awhile since we've been there, and now they sell bags of dog food (or something similar) to feed the animals instead of crackers. At first V wasn't sure what she was supposed to do with the pet food, but by the end she figured it out and all three teenagers had fun feeding the baby goats :) 

I'll finish off my June Wrap-up with a picture of Ashlyn with one of "her dogs". We went to visit Maggie and her family. I'm not sure who was happier to see who, Maggie to see Ashlyn or Ashlyn to see Maggie :) 

Wrapping up May

After our whirlwind of field trips in Maryland, we headed home. . . and continued to stay busy :) A few days after we got home, we went to Hopewell Furnace. They offer a free field trip for school (and home school) groups in grades 3 and up where they take the kids on a tour of the park, explaining how the cast iron was made then they let the kids make their own sand molds of a model of the stove doors that were made there. The ranger pours plaster of paris in the molds and the kids get to take home their own casting! We had a good sized group from our homeschool coop join us for this field trip. Little Bit isn't in 3rd grade yet and her bff in the homeschool group was also there with her younger brothers so their mom and I took the younger kids on their own "tour", and did the Junior Ranger with them.  

The highlight, however, were some caterpillars they found. By the end of the Junior Ranger, Little Bit and B had collected 6 or 7 caterpillars and decided to create a "caterpillar hotel" in a tree near the visitor center.  In the end, those silly caterpillars kept them occupied for most of the 2+ hours that the big kids were busy on their field trip! Since I was with Little Bit, I didn't get to actually see the big kid field trip, but Lexie & Ashlyn said it was interesting. I'm hoping to organize another group in a couple years when Little Bit is old enough to participate as well :) 

Ashlyn finished up a subscription to a ArtAchieve at the beginning of May, so is doing her own thing for art now. At the moment, she's having fun making jewelry with oven baked clay. She made coffee bean earrings for herself, Lexie, and me a few months ago. And made Little Bit a penguin bead to try out some other techniques, but her "big" project was a TARDIS necklace. She did tons of research to figure out what techniques to use to get the look she wanted, and it was a multi-step process, but the end result is pretty cool! So far Lexie hasn't convinced her to make her one though, she says it was too much work :) 

Meanwhile, Little Bit finished the finger knit jump rope she'd been working on. Unfortunately, despite following the directions for determining the length, it was way too short. We may try again at some point, but for now, we moved on to some hand-stitching. With campmeeting coming up soon, and our plans to take a long motorhome trip this fall, I liked the idea of having a pouch to keep her block and stick crayons in. So she chose some felt she liked, and she hand-stitched it into a crayon pouch. I'm so tickled with how well it turned out and she's been having fun being able to carry her crayons around :) 

May is the start of park days with our homeschool co-op. We attended some last summer but since we only knew a couple people, and not everyone comes every week, my girls hesitated to join in the group games. Now that they know most of the kids they have no such qualms. One of the main games is "sword fights". A couple of the kids have a whole arsenal of foam swords/weapons and are willing to share, so all the kids get in on it. I love that everyone from the teenagers to the preschoolers get to participate! Once my girls had played a couple weeks and had determined they want to continue, they made their own "weapons" with pool noodles, pvc pipe and duct tape :) 

We got to dog sit one of "our dogs" for a week while his family was out of town. Always love having a Cavalier King Charles around again. And he's sweet as can be! In general he's more lovey with the girls and me, and ignores Rodney, but  he was very certain that Rodney should share his chicken with him :) 

One Saturday afternoon each month during the school year, a group of us from church goes to the Boys and Girls Club downtown and play games in the gym and do a craft with the kids. May's craft was string art. The kids LOVED it!Some of the crafts they rush through and want to go back up to the gym, but this one even the boys asked if they could do a second one. Little Bit had fun with it too :)












Lexie and Ashlyn take turns teaching in the 0-3 yr old class at church so they get to be friends with all the little ones at church. After church last week Lexie was "helping out" by hanging out with one of her buddies while his mommy was busy, and I managed to snap this picture, isn't he a sweetie!

This past week, Lexie and Ashlyn spent a couple days helping with a project at Rodney's office (photocopying and putting packets together and such), so Little Bit and I got to hang out together.

Recently Little Bit has gotten very into looking up bugs, plants etc. to learn more about them. She had started carrying around a whole stack of field guides in her backpack so when I needed to order an "add on" item from Amazon, and therefore needed to order something else to get up to $25, I took the opportunity to order her a combination field guide for our area. She's been having a blast finding things to look up and had to get a new purse at Goodwill that was just the right size to carry her book with her everywhere she goes :) In this picture she was looking up some bug she'd found on the railing, and glaring at me for taking her picture LOL.







One of the days that Lexie and Ashlyn were at work with Daddy, she spent the better part of the morning sculpting things with clay (Ashlyn's current interest in making the baked clay jewelry has sparked Little Bit's interest in sculpting as well. Her most elaborate sculpture that day was a gnome.