Dr. Ron Paul in Portsmouth

We drove down to Portsmouth to see Dr. Ron Paul speak at a town hall meeting.  It was a really good forum.  The questions people asked were great.  Some new friends of ours, to the right of Owen, gave us an ind-epth overview of the research they've done on the OWS movement on the ride back home.  Overall, it was a very full night leaving us with a lot to think about!

Dr. Paul answers a questions from undecided voters in the audience.

Auntie's Chickies

Auntie and Uncle bought some keets this spring, which grew up into Guinea hens.  Less than half survived the road of death and the predators lurking in the thicket, but in the meantime, they helped keep the lawn tick-free.  Well, Auntie and Uncle found that a coop partially filled is no coop at all.  So they went and bought some egg-layers to join in the fun.

They taught the Guniea hens to roost with the chickens.  What a cool house these fowl have.  The most spacious of any I have seen.  Of course, it is supposed to be a horse stall...

Olivia cuddles Helen, the golden feathered.

Owen feeds Autumn hen out of the palm of his hand.

swim fishy swim!

Saveia rockin' the swim class.

Bento

So, in an attempt to liven things up in the lunch category of life, I decided to make "Bento Box" lunches for all of us.  (I was also inundated with photos of Bento Boxes on Pinterest.)  This is Zoey's Bento with cut up egg, grapes, sugar snap peas and my version of Onigiri, basically rolled balls of rice but without the faces.  Since she's no sugar at this point, she got her own pack of Sky Flakes---the Filipino Cracker.  tee hee

The kids loved them...

For the older kids I made heart-shaped fried rice patties and "baby" boiled eggs with olive pieces for eyes.  The tutorial I watched used pre-boiled quail eggs, but since those weren't available at my local store, I went with good ol' chicken eggs.  The older kids also got strawberry-jelly Chinese pastries, which they didn't like.  I should have just given them the Filipino crackers...

Dylan's like, "Dude, I'm enjoying this."

Thanksgiving

Ten pounds of potatoes, but Olivia wasn't sure it'd be enough...

What's missing in this picture?

I know it looks like the turkey is missing, but it's there.  I just sliced half of it up and stuck it on the plate in the left hand corner.  Still, there's like a big gaping whole.  This is the saddest Thanksgiving photo I've ever taken.

Olivia photo bombs Zoey.

Zoey's like, "Get away from my mashed potatoes!"

Mmmm.  My favorite eating holiday.

Bison-ia

On Wednesday we made a trip to a new friend's house, with some of our old friends.  Conor Guptill, of the Bison Project, showed us around his farm and taught us all a little about what it's like to raise Bison.  We picked up a little bit of trivia as well.  Did you know that they were initially called Buffalo because Europeans though they looked like the water buffalo of Asia?  In fact, Bison are more closely related to camels!  You can thank me the next time you win Trivial Pursuit.

Chickens help fertilize the grass! 

 Leghorns.

The chickens aren't laying their eggs in the same spot, so Conor boils eggs and marks them with an "x" to lure them to specific "nests" where he can find them.

 Here we are walking out to the field.  The pasture had been separated into four quadrants so the grass would have time to grow before those huge grass-loving animals could get at it.

That's a really tall electrified fence.  Thank God Conor de-energized the bottom wires.  I almost had a hard attack three times.

 The one on the left was the male, the head of the herd.  Can't remember his name.  Conor told us they are curious animals and they walked all the way across the field to check us out.

But when Conor told us that they'd been naughty and weren't going to get any treats, they turned around and walked away.  Totally serious.  They had been standing and staring at us for a long time, and right on cue...  They must understand English.

Marble-ous Homeschooling Project

Jonathan just got a load of computer gear for his Red Blue Design and Design207 set-up.  Seriously, if any more monitors move into our bedroom, I'm going to move out.  Just kidding.  But software developers sure do like monitors:

I know it's hard to tell, but that's like six feet across and three feet tall.  Anyhow, all those monitors and the special monitor stand came in boxes.  Boxes and boxes.  There are so many cool things to do with boxes.  What should we do?

Well, when I was in 6th grade my pre-algebra teacher had us spend about a month of Fridays building small boxes with card stock, on which we used more card stock to create elaborate marble runs.  And recently I saw a simple marble run on Pinterest for a toddler, made on a big piece of cardboard.  It brought those memories back to the forefront of my mind.

My kids already love marble runs.   I have prior experience constructing marble runs.  We have cardboard, card stock, tape, glue and numerous other household items ideal for crafting marble runs.  We have small bouncy balls (err, we lost our marbles, literally).  Obviously we need to make a marble run of our own.

 Supplies!  (Do you remember using that term all the time as a little kid?  You always needed "supplies."  School supplies.  Fort supplies.  Run-away supplies [my cousins and I really liked reenacting certain parts of Annie and coupling it with the concept of the Box Car Children, I think.]  Mission supplies.  In retrospect supplies were a necessary element in staying out of the grown-ups hair.  I mean, if you have all you need to survive, what do you need Mom and Dad for?  ;) teehee)

The Plinko part was actually all Olivia's idea.  She hasn't even seen the Price is Right since she was a wee toddler.  I'm going to have to show her what Plinko is.  

This is where we're at.  We've had swimming lessons and hikes and new Math websites taking up our time, but we'll get back to it soon.  I'll definitely post our finished product.

It would be really cool if we could create some kind of Rube Goldberg effect, but perhaps we'll endeavor to do that another time.   Wouldn't you love to see us do something like this?  By the way, that makes me teary every time I watch it.

Here's something else that's sweet, a picture Olivia painted for me:

What We Did On 11-11-11

I woke up and after getting on Reddit and realizing that it was 11-11-11, I thought it was going to pass us by without any significant occurrence.  However, that's just because I forgot that we were going to Rochester, New Hampshire to see the man we hope will become our next President of the United States!

Field Trip!

It was HOT and JAM-PACKED in that Town Hall meeting!

Jonathan gets interviewed, post town hall.  You can find the article here, or you can Google J's name.

Strangely, the highlight of the evening for the kids was not meeting Ron Paul, but eating donut holes on the ride home.

Dylan and Dad

Enjoying a quiet moment in the afternoon.