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.

Applesauce

Remember all those bushels of apples we collected for Applefest?  Well, we have extra and we have to do something with them.  Here's a look at our first batch of canned applesauce.

First Day of Tumbling Class

We just renewed our membership at the YMCA.  I immediately signed up everyone for swimming classes (we'd already missed the first week), and Dylan got the additional Tumbling Class while Saveia and Summer got Intro to Dance lessons.  I didn't get any good photos of the dance class because there was no picture window.  Dylan loved it.

A Hike Around an Island

We went on a mile long "hike" on Wednesday.  It took us about an hour with all the stops to check out beaches, fairy houses and fallen trees.

 Sand was blowing in their faces.