Weekly Wrap-Up.....Impressions of Success

Yeah, I was trying to do something snazzy with the title. Surely there is a way to combine "French Impressionism" and "success" in a hip-hoppining duo?

That's all right; though I have fallen short in my lingo, we have excelled in our art this week. Check out these beauties---

I might just sprain my elbow from patting myself on the back. (And then, how will I pick up my hot chocolate? Quel horreur!)

We've spent these past two weeks studying France (with a spattering of Spain, because Sweetling, who is learning Spanish, really wanted to do Spain.)

Part of our study of France included French Impressionism, which HAD to be part of France, because its my favorite genre. We skimmed through the book Impressionism by Judy Martin, which meant that we spent some time looking at the photos while Mommy dialogued about the progression of art into Impressionism. The book was very nicely arranged with several good color photos of paintings on each page, but the few paragraphs of text on the page wouldn't have held Toa's attention, so we summed it up.

The second book we used to study French Impressionism was Monet's Impressions which pared Monet's painting with his own words, which were arranged in a poem, with each turn of the page revealing a new masterpiece and a few words of text. The book opens with the words, "I paint like a bird sings." The rest of the book flowed gracefully from this lovely image. (In case you can't tell, I really, really liked this book and highly recommend it.)



Here's where the flash of genius comes into the tale. The Jedi's birth mom is a wonderful artist. For Christmas two years ago, she gave me this beautiful painting of French lavender fields. All around her house, she has art. So, I thought for Christmas this year, we should give her some art from us. I sold the kids on the idea of each of them doing two 5x7 pieces which would be put together in a grouping to make a whole. The effect would be sort of that of looking out a 4 paned window on a lovely landscape. Both kids thought this was a wonderful idea.

As we were reading Monet's Impressions, we came across his painting of Poppy Fields Near Argenteuil. That, we decided, would be wonderful inspiration for Grandma M's present. I used black yarn to section the photo into four squares, wrapping the yarn around the edge of the book and taping it to the plastic jacket, so as to not mark or damage a library book.

Then we had to decide on what sort of paper to use. I suggested a light blue paper, thinking that the color of the paper would blend into any space left between the small, dabbing strokes needed to replicate an Impressionist painting. Toa was keen to go with light blue, but Sweetling insisted on using white, since we had previously read that the Impressionist primed their canvas with white for brighter, more brilliant colors. In the end, it was decided that Toa would use light blue, and Sweetling would use white. To keep the piece balanced (rather than a white half and a blue half), I had the kids pick opposing corners to work from. Sweetling went with the upper-left and lower-right corners, and Toa worked on the lower-left and upper-right corner.

I got out my 64 soft chalk pastels (again, one of the best $15 I have ever invested in art supplies). And I gave them each a small piece of paper to practice the technique of small 'dabbing' strokes. I sliced Toa's paper for him, and then gave Sweetling a piece of white 12x12 cardstock, and had her use the paper cutter to measure and slice her own 5x7 pieces. (That totally justified skipping her math lesson for additional art time, right?)

I used small rolls of tape under the four corners of their paper to hold their paper to the table, otherwise they were constantly blurring and smudging the pastels trying to hold their paper while they worked. I also gave them each a baby wipe and a paper towel to wipe their fingers on periodically as they worked, again, trying to eliminate smudging and smearing. 

They got to work, under admonitions to take their time, that this would not be a quick project and would probably take us several days. They sounded like a pair of little woodpeckers tap tap tapping their chalk pastels on their paper. With art in slow progress, I warned them again to be slow and patient, and then I hopped in the shower. The little woodpeckers were still tap tap tapping at the kitchen table when I got out of the shower. I checked their progress, and busied myself with laundry.

All told, the little woodpeckers tapped away for nearly 45 minutes before they each had one of their two corners finished. I gave their efforts the praised it desired, for here were the results from the first day.

The next day, we spent the morning playing a geography game for Europe, doing our devotions, and then both children were eager to do more art. So the second half of the project was launched. I was especially impressed with Sweetling's perseverance. Her first couple of attempts at the field of flowers didn't quite pull off the desired effect. I sliced her some new paper, and gave her a new practice piece and a short demo on the back of some other practice scrap. Sensing she was reaching her frustration limit and knowing that 'hovering' wasn't going to help her any, I headed out of the room. So I spent the next half hour folding laundry and listening to woodpeckers. Toa showed up a little earlier than I expected so I was a little concerned about how carefully he had actually been. And, knowing how Sweetling had been struggling, I was more than a little worried about what her final piece would look like.

But, when I went into the kitchen, I quickly discovered I had been wrong, oh so wrong, to doubt what they were producing.

We were all so pleased with the results, that a special trip was made to go buy frames that very same day. I love how each piece is an artwork in and of itself, and yet how they all also go together. Sadly, I don't think my camera work captures the depth of colors. Toa's clouds, for example, look almost three dimensional. Mama thought we had used something textured to produce some layering they have so much depth. Similarly, Sweetling's flowers, with a blue dressed woman, has a lot more depth than the screen image captures.

Another huge success for us was making recipes out of Cooking the French Way. Cooking the Norwegian Way was a bust, but we've found some new favorite dishes in this book, especially the ham and broccoli crepes with Monray sauce. The kids are requesting that that becomes a regular lunch staple.





Check out what others have done this week on Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Au revoir!

When Pigs Fly

In the living room, Sweetling and Toa of Boy were wrestling. Which really means, Toa started trying to tickle and mess with Sweetling, who quickly pinned him. The Toa spends the next ten minutes wiggling and trying to claim that he "didn't do anything!" Now, the thing with Toa, is that he pleads for release, and as soon as he is let go, he just takes that as an opportunity to immediately launch another tickle attack (or, if it's me he's messing with, he launches a sock-stealing attempt).

The good-natured arguing going on in the living room wasn't anything unusual. Toa had tried playing the 'gotta go to the bathroom' card, and the 'can't breathe' card, and had therefore progressed into more creative attempts at brokering for his release.

Sadly, I didn't hear what led up to this comment, but I did hear Sweetling say, "Yeah, right, and pigs can fly too!"

At which point, being the loving mother that I am, I had to interject myself into the situation.

"I'm a pig," said I, "I can fly!"

"No," countered Sweetling, "You are a chipmunk. I clearly did not say that chipmunks could fly."

From underneath Sweetling, Toa piped up, "Some squirrels can fly!"

"No," said Sweetling again, "some squirrels can glide. That's not flying, that's falling with style. And Mommy is still a chipmunk."

See, it could happen.

Facebook Friday... um.....

You know, I knew I was a little behind with copying my Facebook updates into my blog....but I didn't know I was THREE MONTHS behind. (And I do this, cause I do go back and read my blog sometimes, and I never go back an read my facebook.....and cause there are little things i put in my updates that don't warrant a whole blog, but I don't want to forget them either.)

So, since I'm THREE MONTHS behind (i still think that's wrong. Maybe i forgot to label them. hmmmm....No. No. It's been three months. I just scrolled through all my blog posts to verify this.)

 So, since I'm THREE MONTHS behind in Facebook updates, I'm just going to put up my keepers from the past three months. The ones that capture a moment in our day that I want to look back at and laugh about later. (And yes, this is the trimmed down, thinned out version, thank you.)

8/14
After listening to half of a phone conversation between me and Telephone, the Jedi is of the opinion that it should only take one word to describe the color of a dress ;)

8/17
It's 76 degrees; I'm wearing a banana sticker on my forehead; I had to step over four paper airplanes to get to my computer; and, I don't want to stay inside doing school this afternoon. Where can we escape to?

8/19
things that we learned while reviewing the Pledge: Sweetling knows how to spell indivisible. Mommy does not.

8/19
Today's Asimov quote. After 20 minutes of reading about, discussing, and working with a trillion based number system, we get to this quote: "What then, is the good of a googol, if it is too large to be useful in counting even the smallest material objects spread through the largest known volume? I could answer: For its... own sheer, abstract beauty --- But then you would all throw rocks at me." Sweetling cracked up.

8/20
we need shoeboxes. I danced in Sweetling's room. by Toa

8/21
Two things I learned today, while painting little boy faces (and arms) at Children's Hospital. 1)yoda's light saber is shorter than Darth Vador's lightsaber. 2)Spiderman has tall blue boots. If you paint him with red boots, he suddenly becomes the EVIL bad guy Spiderman.

8/25
What my children learned in school so far today: No matter what Mommy says, El Salad-or is NOT a garden nation known for its wonderful vegetable crop which gives out free salads to tourists upon their arrival at the national airport. It is just a Mommy misspelling of El Salvador.

8/28
keep your fingers crossed for me. i'm trying to make hot fudge sauce from scratch. if I'm successful, it will be sundaes for dinner tonight. (no, I'm not joking.)
>>I am the oracle of hot fudge! woo hoo! Here's the recipe I used

8/29
The Great Wall of Chocolate at PF Chang. Why? Because my husband loves me a lot :)

8/30
circular floor plan + boys = gun chase scene

8/31
Did you know rabbits are not officially classified in the rodent family?

9/2
i've been hungry all morning. Toa of Boy says I'm turning into Winnie-the-Pooh.

9/3
Hey, guess what, there's a HUGE difference between corn flour and corn meal. I have no idea how to salvage these tortillas. I'm considering adding an egg to help hold the crumbly mixture together.

9/4
The weather is nice and cool this morning. I feel like doing some baking. I'm making cornbread for our cookout, banana bread (cause the bananas are getting old) AND maybe chocolate chip oat cookies. See, I told you I was in a baking mood.

9/8
chocolate chip cookies and milk in a cookie monster cup :)

9/9
the phrase on Toa's spelling list is "Nan's man." I gave him the phrase and used it in a sentence. "Nan's man is Fred. Fred is Nan's man." Toa looked at me and exclaimed, "What?!? Fred doesn't even know her!!!!"

9/11
Apparently, updating the look of my blog isn't on the list of things to do today. i'm not clever enough to figure out bloggers new easy "design your own template" feature.

9/13
There are families who do this whole "get ready and get out the door for school" thing every day, right? So why is it that getting to co-op at the crack of ten seems so stressful?

9/13
Toa's truism for the day: Hamsters don't need gym shoes to run really fast.

9/14
World's Largest Ball of Twine (though there is, apparantly, a hot debate over the claim.) Sadly, it is way too far off of our driving route through Kansas to see it.

9/15
What I learned at church tonight---- Sha-zaam!!!

9/16
We're at ColerainPark...not because the kids wanted to come to the park, but because Mommy wanted to go to a park :)

9/19
I found a recipe for muffins that taste like donuts! Too late to make them tonight, but soon they will be all mine! (of course, they lack the whole wheat and rolled oat goodness of the muffins I made tonight.)

9/20
I'm posting this here, because there are other women out there who will understand this. I have put on three different pair of socks this morning, and can't find a pair that's the right shade of blue to match both my periwinkle blue jeans and my blue and green plaid mary-jane slip ons. White doesn't work. Navy doesn't ...work. Muted blue doesn't work. I'm going to co-op, unhappy about my sock choice.

9/21
The universe has punishe me for sleeping in by having me wake up to the words, "Mommy, I lost my hamster." Sadly, he was not refering to his Webkinz hamster.

9/22
The escaped hamster came back at some point during the night, collected the seeds which had fallen on the living room carpet, and went back into hiding somewhere. The lure of the wonders of the hamster wheel did not prompt him to go back into his open cage. It's Wild, Wild Hamster Kingdom at our household.

9/22
We now have three hamster catching devices set up on our living room floor, but you all will have to wait until Friday night to see if they work, because my small group starts our media fast tomorrow.

9/25
It's nearly noon on Saturday. I got up at 8:30, had breakfast, did my devotions, and was ready to go back to bed! For those of you worried about (or amused by) our escaped hamster, he was safely returned to his cage at 12:20 am Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Mommy stayed up and waited for him to show his furry littl...e face, then trapped him in a paper towel tube and returned him to his cage.

9/29
There are some mornings where I just need an extra dose of patience. Maybe even a double dose.

9/29
Colds and the commencement of lifestyle changes do not mix. I was all set to start cooking from scratch and eating healthier, but now I have a headache and a cold, and I say, bring on the KFC!!!

9/30
I love my husband for many reasons, among those being that he can come home and ask, "Are those.....acorns?.....in....the toaster oven???" And when I say, "Oh yes!" He just nods his head and walks away without comment.

10/1
I am a technological power house! Just now I.... 1) replaced the camera batteries and reset the date/time. (hush, it counts as an acheivement). 2) outwitted the computer and made it do a search for the fuji camera manual, even though the first time it did the search, it only looked at the local hard drive and told me that no such document existed.

10/3
Today, a double layer chocolate cake with fudge frosting AND pumpkin cinnamon rolls made from a fresh pumpkin AND cheesy chicken bake AND sweet potato casserole. Tomorrow, .....the world!!!!

10/4
It's crazy hat day at co-op. I really want a King Julian crown. I have no crazy hats. Something is not right with the world.

10/5
I want to know why, all of a sudden, the google map on my phone can't figure out where on God's green earth I am. Sweetling says its because I'm a fairy that the satelites just can't find me.

10/5
A) the jedi has gotten me my very own Zelda game. Can you say "teacher in-service day"?
B)In the excitement of A, I forgot what B was. If I remember later, I'll post it then.

10/6
Things the hamster book doesn't cover...."How to get Elmer's glue out of a hamster's fur." And thank you, no, the hamsters in our house do NOT have Elmer's glue in their fur. You can hold off on your phone calls to PETA. We were just discussing the importance of letting the glue dry completely before letting the hamsters play in the homemade cardboard hamster maze.

10/7
You know you are getting old when a sneeze results in a small neck injury. Just saying.

10/7
Yay! Jake Sweeny gave us a free rental car to use while they did the two hours of regular maintenance the van is due for. The rental car's transmission stick thing has a P, an R, an N, and then it has +, S-D, and -. You can move the stick thingie to one side for the S and the other side for the D. I put it in D, for drive, right? What do you think the S is for?

10/11
Ah, magic housecleaning fairy, how I pine for thee......

10/11
Someone tell me why I have to say things like this, "Don't stick your head down there. If your head got stuck there, you'd be really sad. Don't stick your head down there again."

10/13
things that puzzle me today: 1) why do I have 7-8 overflowing loads of laundry this week when I usually have 3-5 medium loads? 2) why am I still very hungry when I just finished the same breakfast I always have? 3) what yellow SHA-ZAAM outfit do I want to wear to game night at the Brink tonight?

10/13
I just told my seven year old that he could turn into a zombie without the proper vitamins. I think on that successful parenting note, I shall go have an apple fritter and a second cup of hot chocolate.

10/13
I found my yellow warrior outfit for game night at the Brink. Sweetling very politely told me that I looked stupid. But I know how to fix that, by making myself a lightning bolt coronet out of aluminum foil. Cause then I won't look stupid at all!

10/14
Everyone's at Tae Kwon Do. Which means nobody is home except me......and Zelda.....

10/18
I've been awake for an hour, and other than hitting "like" on a few status updates, I dont have much to show for my time. You know what lesson I have learned from this? That I might as well sleep in. I don't get anything productive done from getting up when the alarm goes off anyway.

10/18
the real reason i like clear fingernail polish is cause its hard to tell wht a crappy job i do slapping it on AND its harder to notice when it starts chipping off

10/18
Guess what I found stuck in my hair? A glow-in-the-dark star....like the kind you can buy in a museum gift shop to stick on a bedroom ceiling.

10/19
The library had four veggietale dvds which I have never seen. I feel cheated somehow. They all four came home with me.

10/20
The school day is being delayed for the watching of new VeggieTales.

10/20
Sweetling just lost a tooth. The tooth fairy in our house doesn't bring cash. No, long ago the tooth fairy decided she wanted to be more unique and creative than that. Now the tooth fairy is wondering why she started that tradition, because she has absolutelt no idea what to leave in place of this tooth.

10/21
My dishwasher is temporarily out of commission. That's all right, because i'm sure doing dishes by hand builds character. In fact, I am so sure of this, that I am going to let my children reap the benefit of this wonderful character building opportunity.

10/21
Toa of Boy and I went outside to bring in the garbage cans and the recycle bin. Toa took his plastic sword with him "just in case". It was a good thing he did too, because there was a mighty ferocious drift of leaves at the top of the driveway.

10/22
Why is cleaning house suspiciously like shuffling things from one pile to another? I'm sure it has nothing to do with my organizational capabilities.

10/23
Today, I have come to the terrible realization that unless I clean out the under stairs storage, I will never ever be able to get out my Chirstmas decorations.

10/23
Contents of my kitchen table: playschool sword, Corduroy Makes a Cake, 2 rock+mineral kits, plastic organizer w rocks, 3 wendy's salt packets, webkinz snowman, green washcloth, xmas jar of coins, bell peper, advodado, 3 tomatoes, plant, tkd headband, napkin, plastic knife, plastic salad lid, medicine bottle, plant (which got watered yesterday--finally)

10/25
If I were to write a list of top ten things NOT to do at 3am, plucking your own eyebrows would be on it.

10/26
Mommy's words of wisdom for the day: "If you squish the two halves of your slinky together, its going to get all tangled and messed up," and, "If you stretch your slinky too far down the hallway, its not going to go back together again."

10/27
‎.....another slinky bites the dust.

10/28
The early bird gets.... a cup of hot chocolate of course! Why did you even have to wonder?

10/28
I think after several days of being revved up on a decongestant 24/7, I am beginning to turn into the Wicked Witch of the West. "I'll get you, my pretty.....and your little dog too!!!"

10/29
I am now going to go bless the good people at Meijer with my decongestant enhanced mood ;) --and yes, I caved after a night and an hour this morning without and decided oxygen and a release of pressure was worth the snarkiness of the psuedophedrine.

10/29
23 paper sacks full of groceries (plus 10lb potatoes and laundry detergent that didn't fit in a bag)---$211

10/30
Sweelting is warming up for her jr black belt test. She broke a board with a flying side kick diring practice Thursday :) Prayers for her test today please!


10/30
Her forms looked good, her kicking drills were good, her 360 crescents were sharp, she got in some nice high kicks in sparring, and she broke 1 of her 3 boards. She wasn't the only one not to break all her boards, but she was really disappointed not to do better on her breaks. I think she's going to mske a 2nd attempt ...on her breaks at class on Tuesday. Toa of Boy tests for his yellow belt next.

10/30
Sweetling broke her other two boards at the end of testing today :) Now I just need someone to tell me the hat I just made for Toa of Boy looks like a Pikachu hat and not a strange bunny duck. This is a feelings-based conversation, so the fact that you can't see the hat to know what it really looks like is completely irrelevent. Just tell me it looks like Pikachu anyway.
>>Congrats to Sweetling! I have a board breaker myself. :) And the Pikachu hat...I still have my whale shark you made, so it's a possibility that it looks like a bunny duck.

10/30
Pikachu's tail lasted exactly 15.2 seconds in the bounce house. 8ow he is tailless.

11/1
jammie day at co-op today. Now, the trick is to convince myself that we still need to get up and get going to co-op. Otherwise jammie day will turn into being late for co-op.

11/1
Toa of Boy made an African lion mask at co-op today. So far his favorite activity of the evening has been to hold the mask in front of his face, and follow his Daddy through the house while giggling.

11/2
Never seen the polling place that crowded in the middle of the morning. :)

11/2
ice cream is like a reboot for a homeschooling day.

11/3
Toa of Boy is voting for no school today. Sadly, despite the fact that America is a republic, Toa's home is not run as a democracy. Oh the tyranny

11/3
Did you know that ghosts can't do math? its a true fact. I learned it from the green ghost who suddenly appeared in my living room when it was time for math.

11/3
Jokes by Toa of Boy, "What did the witch say to the talking broom?.....Witches' brew!!!" And "Why do you not put a lid on a pumpkin?.....It's so ooooooo scary!" And, "What did the squirrel make the bird so laugh that the turtle couldn't sleep?.....The squirrel want to squirrel chat, but the turtle want some sleep."

11/4
Give it up for the two jr black belts in my house!! Woot woot!

11/5
I refuse to start my weekend with two loads of laundry still to be folded.

11/6
I have bunny slippers, and their names are Flip and Flop :)

11/7
‎1)Found a mini-hershey bar on the floor of the passenger side of the van. Don't know *who* could have dropped it. 2) Toa of Boy, who loves eggrolls, has just learned they are stuffed with cabbage. He is quite shocked and disillusioned by this treachery. 3) After a discussion on the importanence of calcium, Toa thinks oste...operosis = zombism. 4) Facebook needs spellcheck.

11/8
Another sock crisis. Dark navy jeans and dark brown mary janes. Sock suggestions?

11/9
There is a huge preying mantis perched on the back of our scarecrow's head. I can't decied if this is really cool or really creepy.

11/9
Sweetling is chasing Toa of Boy around on the church lawn. Sweetling pauses to bring me a yellow dandelion. Toa of Boy pauses because he just ran out off both his double tied gym shoes.

11/10
two loads of laundry folded, two and a half to go.....and life is too short to fold underwear.

11/11
I don't know what we're having for dinner, but I've got butter set out to soften for cookies :)

Follow the Yellow Brick Road!

I swear I spent hours, really, really I did, trying to find travel information on Kansas. And with one comment, a Traveling Prater has me hooked back into trip research. BUT her one comment was highly productive, cause it's opened up a whole new world of STUFF TO SEE IN KANSAS!!!! (All found on Yellow Brick Road Trip).

Including...A Giant Van Gogh painting...(very appropriate for the Sunflower State)
"Take in this giant Van Gogh Sunflower reproduction painting on an 80-foot easel – part of a project intended to reproduce all seven of Vincent van Gogh's sunflower paintings on giant easels in seven different countries around the globe. The painting stands in a park complex which encompasses Pioneer Park, a new city park, built directly west of the painting." Cherry St and E. 19th St.  Goodland, KS   67735

The Prairie Museum of Art and History (which is probably going to be closed by the time we hit Colby)

The Garden of Eden, which is 20 minutes north of 1-70, but I'm putting it here as a possibility. It has a fee though. And a rather strange history.

Also in Lucas is the Grassroots Art Center. A cool visit, but time will be a deciding factor. (Ok, a cool visit for a Mommy at least. The Jedi might not be as impressed.)

(Note---I started this post weeks ago. Weeks. Then I didn't have time to finish it, so i thought, I'll get back to it later. Now its much later. I'm never really going to "finish" this. So I'm posting it forward as is. No pictures. No decisions. Just as is.)

Field Trip Friday: Ceasar's Creek State Park

Since this might be the last warm Friday for this fall, I wanted to spend a good portion of the day outside. (Of course, this has been my excuse for packing up school and heading out every Friday for the past two months, but shhhhhh....)

Following a tip from a friend, we headed up to Ceasar Creek State Park for an afternoon of fossil hunting. We did our devotions in the morning, got our morning chores done, packed up some lunches and headed out.

Having been told that we needed a permit to collect fossils, we headed toward the nature center first, and so were fortunate enough to encounter Ceasar Creek Pioneer Village, which was located right across from the long gravel drive to the nature center.

Of course, this late in the season, on a weekday, none of the building were open, but we had fun peering in through windows....

...and I loved reading the signs that told the story of each house.


We were also fortunate enough to run into one of the volunteers, who gave us information on a family membership (just $25 for the family for the year), handed us a schedule of events for 2011, and invited us to come back for the Christmas Candlelight Walk on Dec 4th. Oh yeah :)


We left the pioneer village and drove down the long drive to the nature center....which we discovered was closed due to an off-site program. I was set to break state park regulations and take fossils home with us with or without a permit, but my law-abiding daughter was distraught by this plan. So we agreed to compromise by going to look for fossils, and then coming back after our fossil hunt in hopes that the nature center would be open and we could get a permit.

So we left and drove the seven miles or so to the spillway. The spillway was excavated when the dam was first construction as an emergency run off area in case of flooding. The excavation uncovered layers of a limestone rockface loaded with fossils. Signage in the spillway directed us to the visitor's center (which was not the same as the nature center) to obtain our permit.

Excited again, we hopped back in the van and drove over the van to the visitor's center on the far side of the lake. Inside, I filled out the brief form for a free fossil permit (name, state of residence, vehicle description and license plate number). The park worker explained the rules to me (no using tools of any kind on the rocks, including sticks and other rocks; no climbing on the limestone layers, they are fragile and dangerous; and you may only keep a fossil which fits in the palm of your hand.) We also received a field guide with illustrations, names, and information of the kind of fossils we might be likely to find.

While I was doing this, the kids started exploring the visitor's center. It was very cool and very well done. Not only were there samples of all the different sorts of fossils, there were many other interactive displays as well.  There was a historical display about the native peoples and the first pioneers, complete with artifacts, both real and replicated (including a life-sized dug out canoe.) There was a section on the animals of the forest and the food chain. There was a large aquarium with fish, and a smaller habitat with turtles. There was a two-part exhibit about locks, one section allowed you to operate the gates and the valves which corresponded to a animated diagram showing the working of the lock as you tried to get the boat safely through the change in water level. The other section was a table with wooden cargo ships and two locks with moving doors and a crank to move the 'water' inside the lock up and down.

We spent much longer than we anticipated just exploring the visitor's center, which really was a free museum.

Finally, field guide in hand, we headed back out to the spillway to look for fossils. The spillway itself is a rather barren flatland.

But Toa of Boy wasted no time digging up rocks.

After a trip back to the van for her sunglasses, Sweetling was ready to join us....

......And we headed over to the limestone layers.


Now, I've taken Sweetling on a fossil hunt before at a local "fossil" park, and we were really disappointed in the scarcity of fossils. So, I wasn't that optimistic for our success here. But my doubts were unfounded. We found an amazing abundance of fossils everywhere. Nearly every rock that we walked over, turned over, or picked up were loaded with fossils.

We had a great time collecting fossils. (I let each child make a pile of fossils, yes, a pile cause there were that many really good ones. At the end, I told them they could keep one of each kind of fossil...using our cool field guide to identify them of course.)

Of course, fossil collecting held some people's attention longer than some other people's attention, but that's ok.






I called us finished after an hour of hunting. By then, it was a little after three, I wanted to check out the gorge side of the dam, and we were also going to try to squeeze in a trip to the playground before making the hour drive home.....which I was hoping to pull off before Friday rush hour traffic set in.

We drove to the park area downstream of the dam and headed out over a pedestrian bridge,

where we discovered that the water was much too slow moving for a game of pooh sticks.







But, when we have more time, I'd like to come back to hike along the creek.

All in all, an awesome day, and a field trip I'd definitely recommend to others.

For other great ideas, check out Field Trip Friday on Live the Adventure

Cincinnati Dayscapes: Great Oaks Trail

We actually went hiking on this trail in late September, and then the weather turned too cool for hiking, and I forgot about posting it. But now the weather is nice again, so....if you are looking for a nice, relatively short, fall hike, this one is for you.

Great Oaks Trail in Winton Woods is a .7 mile loop.

 The trail itself is an interesting hike, with a few stairs and changes of level, but not enough to be exhausting.

The far loop of the trail runs along a bank above a stream bed, with a few spots for sitting and snacking or for taking in the fall colors.

Then the trail dips down slightly, to afford a closer look of the stream...we kept hearing some loud plops and seeing the ripples made by whatever it was. We searched for frogs and fish, before realizing that it must just be acorns and walnuts falling from the overhanging branches.

Looping around away from the stream, the trail climbed back up the hillside, and my kids loved climbing on the large trunks of fallen trees that made a natural jungle gym beside the path.

The last stretch of the trail ran through a picturesque autumn woods, and our hike was then filled with discussions of fairies, forest gnomes, and unicorns.

At the trail head, to the right of the trail as you are facing the forest, is a large oak tree and a treasure trove of acorns in the grass beneath it. We collected a large bag full to bring home. We popped the top off several off them, and baked them in the oven for (I think) maybe ten minutes at 200 degrees. (I don't remember, check them often and don't burn them....but you want to bake them to kill any worms or bugs that might be in them.)

When they had cooled, we painted them orange. (This took three coats of acrylic craft paint. If I had known, I would have used some sort of primer on them.) Our original intent was to make little jack-o-lantern faces on them with fine-point black permanent markers. But, Halloween came and went, and there they still sat, faceless.... so they have just become Thanksgiving pumpkins instead.

(For those looking for a slightly longer hike, the Kingfisher Trail in Winton Woods is close to the Great Oaks trail and is a loop trail of just over a mile in length. You can find a map of Winton Woods and the trails here. )

Healthy Baked Goods

I haven't tried these recipes yet. I grabbed them from an email that my sister the Smurf sent out. But, I'm going to wrap up spelling with Toa, and then a batch of brawny brownies might be going into the oven. 


Says the Smurf, "when I say healthy, I don't mean low-calorie diet foods; I'm looking for nutrient rich recipes."

Sneaky Snickerdoodles
Strawberry Cupcakes 
Breakfast Cookies 
Legal Donuts
Brawny Brownies

To these recipes, I'm adding two that I found on my own. 


These cookies are made with whole wheat flour and rolled oats, and they are THE BOMB. I love these cookies. They are all a cookie should be. Sweet, hearty, chewy, chocolaty, easy to make, and delicious…

And, I made a yummy chocolate zucchini cake from allrecipes, but I can’t remember which recipe I used for it. This one *might* be it, but it might not. It has shredded zucchini and walnuts in it. I don’t know if that makes it nutrient rich or not. I tend to take a Bill Cosby approach to nutrition when it comes to chocolate cake.

Wordless Wednesday

Weekly Wrap-Up.....Norway's Snow Treasure

I love homeschooling. 

Let me describe our Tuesday this week. We've all be struggling with either really bad allergies or a nasty head cold, or a nasty head cold on top of bad allergies. Anyway, we dragged through school last week. Sweetling especially had it rough because she was congested, tired, miserable, and at the dojo for 2-3 hours several nights last week preparing for her junior black belt testing on Saturday.

(Which, by the way, I must now stop and say my baby girl is a junior black belt!)

On Monday, we managed to get out the door to co-op, only because co-op was having a jammie day. Midway through the day Toa of Boy got brought to me because he wasn't feeling well.

On Tuesday morning, (you thought I forgot all about what I set out to describe, didn't you?) On Tuesday morning, I woke up at 8:30 only because the phone rang. It was the Jedi calling to tell me that he thought we should take a sick day, or at least take it easy that day. I headed upstairs, and I was the only one awake.

At 8:50, I was still the only one awake, and I was in my jammies. I called the leader of our 9:30 women's Bible study to let her know that we were taking a sick day.

We eventually all had breakfast, and then did nothing till lunch time.

But lunch, we were still in jammies but feeling a little better.

After lunch, I rallied the troops to the couch, and we read two chapters of our book, Snow Treasure.

The book, set in Norway shortly after the Nazi invasion, is inspired by true accounts of children who carried gold bullion on their sleds in order to get it past the Nazi sentries and loaded onto ships hidden in fjords, where it was then sent to America for safe keeping.

We had just read to where the plan is about to be put into place. The children of one of the villages where gold has been sent for safekeeping have been divided  into teams. Each day, 19 children were to carry 4 gold bricks weighing a total of 75lbs and travel 12 miles from the snow cave where thirteen tons of gold was hidden, past the Nazi sentries on the road, and then to a small inlet of one of the fjords. They were to spend the night in a nearby farmhouse, and then the next day hike back up to their village.

In a flash of brilliance, I had everyone, including me, go get paper and pencil. So, say I, if there are 13 tons of gold, and a ton weighs 2,000 lbs and the children carry 75 lbs of gold, and there are 38 children, with 19 children sledding down every day.....how many trips will each child have to make, and how long will it take to move all the gold if everything goes exactly as planned?

The math session crashed and burned quickly. Toa did amazing things with math far beyond his second grade level. He made one error because he was doing things in his head. He added 1200 and 225 and got 12,225. I set up the numbers for him vertically, and explained about place value, which we have done before. I told him to add the two numbers vertically and see what he got. He gave me that stubborn stare and did nothing. I repeated my instructions. I got a blank stare. I sent him to his room and turned off his computer.

Sweetling figured out that it would take ten trips per child and looked to me to verify her answer. I hadn't figured my own problem that way, so I told her I didn't know....that I had only solved it by how many days it would take to move the whole load down the mountain. She then got a little frustrated with me. I offered to look at the problem she had worked with her if she'd like, but she just flipped her paper over and started working again, with a few little noises of frustration. I was then informed that "Ponyo is tired of math" in a little Ponyo voice.

But a bowl of ice cream fixed everyone's moods. Over ice cream I told them how proud I was on their efforts with the math and that I knew it was a difficult problem. They were greatly encouraged, more by the ice cream than the pep talk. Still, after ice cream, we tried again with the math, and this time everyone, even Toa, worked through the problem successfully (we think. We think it should take them 19 days to move the gold down the mountain, though on the 19th day, a smaller number of children will need to sled.)

Then I said, we know that the German's invaded on April 9th, and that the first group of 19 children were ready to start sledding with their gold on April 11th, according to the story. So, if it takes 19 days, when will they be finished? Let's set up a calendar. Of course, we didn't know what day of the week April 11, 1940 was....or did we? Sweetling had an algorithm in her Math for Smarty Pants book that lets you find the day of the week of any given date in the 20th century. I asked the kids if we should get the book out to figure out what day of the week it was....and was shocked when both kids were really and truly eager to do so. (It was a Thursday.) And, making a quick calendar, if everything went exactly as clockwork, the children should be finished moving the gold on Monday, April 29th.....if the snow held.

From there, we went downstairs and got into Daddy's free weights. We loaded up a sturdy laundry basket with 5 and 10 lb weights until we had 75lbs in the basket. The kids took turns pulling it back and forth across the floor. None of us could imagine trying to get that amount of weight on a sled, pulling it through the woods, and sledding down an mountainside with it.

As far as I'm concerned, it was a perfect homeschool day. It was flexible for the fact that no one was feeling well in the morning. It was full of reading and spontaneous hands-on projects. It contained challenging, real world math applications. We had history and geography. And, most importantly, both children were truly interested and excited about the lesson (with one minor sinus-congestion induced hiccup, which was remedied by ice cream.)

Other fun things we've done the past couple weeks:

Rosemaling

Used to decorate Norwegian furniture and houses, this is a bright and colorful technique. It is full of scrolls and fanciful flowers. After looking at several examples of the art through google, we got out our sketchbooks and  lightly doodled a free flowing design of scrolls and loops. Then I got out my chalk pastels, and we added color, softly blending the pastels together.

Here is Toa's piece:

And here is Sweetling's:

Again, this was a nice project for a week where no one was quite feeling up to par. It was very soothing and relaxing. (The blending turned a little more smudgy than anticipated. I bought some paper blending stumps at Hobby Lobby yesterday to avoid this problem in the future.)

Norway in a Nutshell

Sometimes, well often times, its hard to get an understanding of a place just reading about it and looking at a few flat pictures. So, I found a nice travel video from Rick Steves' Europe. We still have on cue a "Secrets of World War 2" documentary about the Norwegian underground, and another documentary on vikings. They might be part of a lazy Saturday tomorrow. We were holding of on watching them till the Jedi could join us.

Norwegian Explorers

There have been many. Including Thor Heyerdahl, whom I had never heard of before, but whose voyages most captured the imagination of Sweetling and Toa. We traced the possible routes of the explorers on a large wall map of the world.

And still other things:

Due to not feeling well, we skipped our nature walks the past two weeks. So no pinecones or conifers.

Sweetling started reading Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates for literature. (Which the Jedi, being of Norwegian descent, had a minor objection to, since the Netherlands are not Scandinavian. I argued that there was ice, lots of ice, in the story, but the Jedi was not mollified. That's ok, we're going to France next week, the Jedi will have plenty more to gripe about soon.)

Of course, the belt testing for Tae Kwon Do was huge. Not only did Sweetling test for and receive her junior black belt, but the Jedi also tested and received his junior black. (Junior black being the belt that is just one rank lower than black belt.) And Toa tested for the first time and received his yellow belt. The pictures of Sweetling are still on the Jedi's system, but here's one of Toa breaking his board.

Halloween

Yes, I know that many other homeschooling families don't participate. That's why I put this at the very end, so that anyone who wants to stop reading now can, without missing any of the cool school stuff we did.

We don't trick-or-treat from door to door. Not because I have any ethical objections to it, but because when we live in a day and age when a parent should check the registry of sex offenders for the neighborhood, one must question the wisdom of walking around the same neighborhood accepting candy. Likewise, when the local fire and police station offers free x-ray machines to check for needles and razor blades, and when parents need to go over the candy batch with a magnifying glass to check for tampering....well, you get the idea.

But, we do like dressing up in costumes, getting candy, and generally having fun. So each year I'm challenged to find an activity that is reasonably safe and still fun. 

I do also try to avoid the more macabre decorations and costumes. I am after all, related to elves and fairies, and have to uphold my fey heritage. 

This year, Sweetling found and checked out Family Fun's Tricks and Treats from the library. She asked me to sit and look at the book with her, an event which hasn't happened in a long, long time. So I did. And there were lots of great Halloween party ideas. They had much more to do with spiders and witches than I usually go for at Halloween, but she was so excited by the concept of organizing and planning a party, that I went with it. There wasn't anything gruesome or wicked in what she was selecting anyway. A Halloween party was definitely in the works.

Of course, we still hadn't resolved what to do for costumes. The first year Toa was home with us, Sweetling and he went as WordGirl and Captain Huggyface. Since then, they've gone with theme related costumes. But this year, we couldn't come to a costume consensus. Some good ideas were tossed around, but no agreement reached. Finally, Sweetling, fed up with the debate, announced that she was making her own costume, and that it was going to be a surprise. She went into her room and closed her door. She worked on her costume in secret for several days. Here's what she came up with.

 Uncertain as to what or who she is? That's ok. That is also in keeping with Sweetling's long standing tradition of obscure costumes, my favorite of which is still when she went as a neutrino, the "ghost particle". This year she is Strong Bad, a character from the online Homestar Runner cartoon. See the resemblance?

Just to clarify, yes, that is a complete hood that she has hand sewn out of felt. And yes, those are green eyes, which she has made out of plastic green mesh.  I told her how impressed I was. If she had come to me and asked me to make this for her, I would have told her the task was way too difficult for my sewing ability. But, fortunately, no one told Sweetling how difficult this might be. She just jumped in and did it, with no pattern, no directions, no measurements. 

With Sweetling's costume completed, we were then left with Toa of Boy needing a costume. There was a brief discussion about Toa of Boy going as Strong Bad's sidekick, The Cheat.  

But in the end, Toa decided he wanted to be Pikachu, so he was. Here is the picture before the tail got ripped to pieces in the bounce house.

 We went Trunk-or-Treating on Saturday at a local church, which is where the tail got ripped off. (Even without the tail, everyone recognized Pikachu, and Pikachu himself wasn't upset about he tail....he was only distraught that he had to come out of the bounce house for the rest of the torn and mangled stump of a tail to be removed.)

On Sunday (Halloween) we had the party at our house. Since we were starting shortly after church, we served a lunch of worms on a bun (hot dogs sliced long and thin and boiled to make them curl up) and wizard's salad (honeydew melon sliced in crescents and star fruit). 


Our guests....

 Pinkie was a birthday present, which I thought was ingenious. She's wearing a huge bow and ribbons, and a large happy birthday gift bag, with the bottom cut out and suspenders attached. 

Mario and Luigi had never met each other before the party, and the families had no contact with each other before this day, so they were each delighted and surprised when the other showed up in costume. They became great buddies for the day and action poses had to be made.

 Pikachu didn't want to be left out of the action shots.

 After photos and lunch, we went on a spider pop hunt in the front yard and played a game of Witches' Brew tag. Back inside, we played Mummy Wrap and also Ghosts and Goblin....all ideas we got from Sweetling's library find. Then some of us made caramel apples while Mario and Luigi went out to the back yard to defeat Bowser. 

All in all, a great time was had by everyone. And the only major clean up I had to do after guests had left was to take down the spiderwebs. Here is just one small portion of the spiderwebs, which the girls had a great time making.

Hop, sled, or boogie your way over to Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers to read about what other families are doing.

Weekly Wrap-Up.....Monkeying Around

Hooray, after four weeks, we are finished with our three week unit on South America, Brazil, and rain forests. Why did it take three weeks instead of four? Because, in true Mrs. Random fashion, we took a lot of extra field trips, outings, and mini-vacations to get out and about while the weather was nice.

Here are our "curriculum" highlights

Monkeys Please

Toa of Boy loves monkeys, so a monkey craft had to be a part of any rainforest study.

We followed these directions to make this awesome monkey climbing up a tree to get to some bananas. We didn't have the green craft foam that the directions called for, but we used green construction paper instead and achieved the same result. (I did have to help Toa roll the leaf sheet up tight enough to fit into the top of the tree trunk, and I helped him fold the leaves down so that they didn't rip in the process of being turned downward.)

We also found some directions online to make cute origami monkeys, one is a simple monkey face, and the other isn't really origami, just paper around a toilet paper tube. I'd post some pictures of our finished product, but the finished products became part of a monkey game and aren't quite in photo-perfect condition anymore.

Chinchilla

This one wasn't planned. We were at the Museum Center in the Nature's Trading Post, and they happened to have a pet chinchilla. We were the only family there, so we got a lot of interaction time with the chinchilla and the museum volunteer.  I know that our local pet store often has a chinchilla, and if I had realized how soft they were, I would have asked the worker to take one out so we could touch it. Definitely worth a short field trip as part of a South American study. (Chinchilla fur is considered the softest in the world and have the highest fur density of any land mammal---more than 20,000 hairs per square cm.)

Magic School Bus

Oh, to have the field trip power of the Friz! This started as just a read aloud to Toa of Boy, but soon there was a Sweetling on the couch with us. I really loved this Magic School Bus book. It reviewed everything Toa of Boy has been learning about in science...pollination, layers of the rain forest, eco-web thingies (yeah, its 3am when I'm typing this. Eco web thingies is as technical as your going to get. I'm not coming back to edit this later. I'll just wait for Sweetling to read it and post a comment as 'Super S' with the correction.)

List of Good Intentions

Somehow we never got around to all the cool hands-on projects we had planned. See our list of other stuff to see why. But, for those readers who might be tooling for ideas for studying South America and/or the rain forest, here are the lesson plans that never got actuated.

• flower dissections to find the petals, stamen, pistels, anthers, style, ovule, sepal.
• pollen under the microscope
• macrame/ yarn hangings
• Brazilian dancers out of pipe cleaners
• a small terrarium
• making petit fours (it was in a "Cooking the South American Way" recipe book
• making chocolate truffles (was in the Brazil section of "A Trip around the World" under a different name)
• take our sketch book to the Krohn Conservatory to draw rain forest trees and plants

Marble Math

Nothing to do with South America, but I'm proud of myself for coming up with this, so I'm sharing it. Toa of Boy is doing multiplication and division with two's and three's. (Yeah, its not factors of two's and three's....and saying products of two's and three's makes it sound like he's just multiplying those two numbers together. It's 3am here, remember? You all know I'm talking about his two times table and his three times table.)

On this particular day, my mama, who lives with us, was off work. Also on this particular day, by 11am, I hadn't gotten a shower yet and was still in my pjs. (That might be because we all slept in and then had a VeggieTale marathon of new Veggie videos brought home from the library the night before. Maybe that had happened in my house. Maybe.)

So, being the responsible adult which I obviously am, at the end of our Veggie Marathon, I sent the kids off to get dressed and get their morning list done, while I hoped in the shower. I got out of the shower and heard that Toa of Boy had talked Mama into playing a game of Aggravation with him. I knew this because I heard the marbles rolling around in the box  and Mama saying, "Ok, we can start this, but when Mommy is ready for you to do school, we'll have to pause the game so you can do school."

In a stroke of brilliance, I yelled from the bathroom, "Wait, are you about to play aggravation? Don't start yet!" (See, it was a stroke of brilliance.) Following that profound statement, I came running out, wet and towel wrapped, to fetch two different dice from my dice bag.

Still towel-wrapped, I went into the kitchen and plopped a three-sided die (its just a normal six-sided dice, but with the numbers 1-3 each appearing twice) and a twelve-sided die on the aggravation board. (You can buy dice with unusual number of faces in specialty game stores--stores that carry all sorts of different board games, card games, strategy games, and role-playing games. We got ours at Sci-Fi City at Northgate Mall. Yada Quest on Hamilton Ave also has these sort of dice. You can buy them in a set of seven to nine different dice for about $9 a set, or, some stores have them in big jars sorted by number of sides for about 80 cents per dice. Since I get them out for math and school and then, um, lose them, the second option is the cheaper route to go. For 80 cents a pop, its a great math resource.)

Here were the new rules with the strange new dice.

1. On their turn, each player rolled both dice, and then multiplied the number to find how many spaces they could move. OR, if the product of the two dice was more than ten, they could choose to get a marble out on the path instead of moving.
2. When they rounded the last corner before they reached home, they could choose to divide the numbers to find their movement IF the two numbers were evenly divisible.
3. As usual, you had to get a marble home on an exact roll, and you couldn't split your movement between two or more marbles.
4. As usual, if you couldn't move any marble the number of spaces indicated by your dice roll, you were stuck, and the play passed to the next person.
5. As usual, the first player with all 4 marbles home, won.
6. A variation of the game would be to roll the two dice and let one dice be your movement, and let the other dice indicate the number you have to count by on your move. This makes it more feasible to practice five times, six times, seven times, etc. Otherwise each player would be flying aroud the board (So if you rolled a four and a six....you could chose to move four spaces, counting by six--6, 12, 18, 24--or you could chose to move six spaces counting by four--4,8,12,16, 20, 24.) In this variation, you would have to set a different condition for getting out. (Maybe you could get out when both dice showed the same number OR when one of the two dice showed a 10.)

Toa of Boy and Mama loved it and thought they should play Aggravation that way all the time. Of course, next time they play I'll put out a four-sided dice and a ten-sided dice and say you can get out on a roll of ten on one die, or when the product of the two dice is more than twenty. Mommy loved it, cause I got to check math off our to-do list that day AND I got to finish drying me, drying my hair, and getting dressed at a more leisurely pace.

Other Things We Did (or why we didn't get other hands-on projects done for this unit)

• visited the Santa Maria and the Ohio State House (and COSI)
• held some pine cone races and was reminded that often its the little momments in life which are truly important, not the 'big plans' we had
• took a mini-vacation to Hocking Hills State Park and survived the Rim Trail

And now, dear friends, it is 4am. The cold meds have kicked in and I can breathe again. Even though I want to include some pics in this post, I shall come back to that perhaps tomorrow night. (Which is really tonight, since its technically already today and not at all tomorrow.) For now, I shall say good night to the tissue box and head to bed.

To read what other homeschoolers did this week, check out Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers (or, this week, See Jamie Blog is the place to be).

Field Trip Friday: Hocking Hills

Once again, I break the rules. I'm a rebel that way.

This wasn't a field trip. This was a mini-vacation. But, it's an awesome area, and its my blog, and I think Mrs Prater will forgive me.

We left late on Friday morning for a weekend trip to Hocking Hills. We made a stop at church, because the Jedi needed to do some work on a church computer, and I needed to check the food pantry and pack up some more bags to be given out. On our way out of town, we stopped and grabbed two large pizzas from LaRosa's. (The pizza, by the way, made it to Toa of Boy's top three favorite things about the weekend.)

We ate pizza in the van, turning the middle seats around and putting in the little table in the back. We got to Hocking County around three and got checked into our cabin. There were two cabins at this location, run by a family on their own land. They were reached by a long gravel drive through the woods, and each cabin had a separate pull-off to park the car. The cabins themselves were then reached by a separate foot path, and were very secluded, nestled into a thickly wooded hillside. (Demonstrated in my sadly overexposed photos.)

We stayed in the second of the two cabins, which had two bedrooms, a large central living area, and a covered back deck, complete with hot tub, which jutted out onto the forest slope.

One of the bedrooms had two double beds, and one had a double bed and a set of bunk beds, which the kids gleefully claimed. (The beds in the cabin were on Sweetling's list of top three favorite things from the weekend.) After getting checked in and unpacked, we headed out to the trails, hoping to beat the weekend crowd.

We went to Old Man's Cave first, knowing from tips and from past experience that this place can get pretty crowded. Luckily, it was after four by the time we got there, and most people were beginning to leave to head to dinner. Because the summer has been so very dry, none of the falls were going.

We started our hike at the Upper Falls.... (all my photos are overexposed. I'm so upset about this. I had the camera on its default 'landscape' setting for the most part, and it just let in way too much light. Rather than whine about it before each picture, I'm just getting my whining out of the way now.)

And followed the trail down the gorge. Not only was it so dry no water was spilling over any of the falls, but it was so dry the wide stream/small river which runs through this gorge was practically non-existent, having been reduced to a few small pools here and there.

On the plus side, that meant that the kids had full access to small caves and recesses in the rock face which in the spring are unreachable, unless you want to go wading in cold knee deep water. Great fun was had climbing in and exploring all these little caves.

In fact, great fun was had climbing in general.

Though, we were careful to keep our climbing to just the large boulders on the path, and not any of the oh-so-tempting climbs off the path. On our way down the trail there was a photographer who does a lot of work in the park and he was saying that the park has really gotten strict about maintaining a no-tolerance policy for off-path climbing. He said the park will issue a $200 dollar fine if a ranger catches you climbing somewhere off the trail. He also said that since they have instituted that policy, they are down to "just" one fatality every year or every two years. But the Jedi and I were quick to hear the word "fatality" and impress on Toa of Boy how important it was to stay with us and not go off running, and climbing, and jumping.

 We hiked back out of the gorge through Old Man's Cave (which for some reason, I don't have any pictures of at all, overexposed or not). The Cave itself is a large recess carved in the face of the sandstone cliff. It is some 250 feet long and around 50 feet high. To me, the most striking part about it is how abrupt the transition is from green and gold forest with dark rock walls to this large, other-worldly place of sand and tan rocks where nothing at all grows.

From Old Man's Cave, we hopped in the van and drove to Rock House. By now, it was nearing dusk. Which meant that we had the trail nearly to ourselves. It also meant that we had little light for photos and the entire of the Rock House, which is rather dark even in the middle of the day, was very, very dark, and hard to see where one was walking. Nevertheless, Rock House made it to Toa's top three favorite things about the weekend. Once again, he loved crawling up into the recesses in the back wall of the rock. We talked about how native peoples used to inhabit this large cave, and he picked out the recess which would be his bedroom if we lived in the cave. The trail on the way back goes on top of the cliff which holds the cave. The Jedi was commenting on how invisible that huge cave is as soon as the trail makes one little turn around the bend. Coming towards the cave from either side of the cliff, you'd never know such a large feature was there.

(And now I'm cheating, because of the light, we didn't snap many pictures of the rock house this visit, so I'm putting up one of my favorite pictures looking out of the "window" of the rock house which I took during a visit in 2004. Go ahead and tell me that it's under-exposed. I double-dog dare you to).

We hiked back to our car in the fading light, hit Wal-mart for milk and other perishibles, and got back to our cabin after 8. We made a quick dinner of cheddarwursts, then bundled up and headed outside with the telescope.

Visible in the sky that night were supposed to be Jupiter and a comet. The Jedi focused the telescope on the craters of the moon, which was pretty cool.....and then we set about trying to figure out which of the thousands of bright objects in the sky might be Jupiter. I thought we might be in trouble when Sweetling and I couldn't even find the Dippers and Polaris. But, the Jedi has picked up Saturn and its rings from our back patio in the middle of city glare AND he talked me through pointing out stars, constellations and planets over the phone when I was at an AHG campout with a bunch of little girls and I didn't even know which direction was which,  so I had confidence in his ability to eventually work everything out.

Sweetling and I stared at the Milky Way, which she had never really seen before, and we found a little cluster of faint stars near the horizon. Frankly, I was pretty overwhelmed by the sheer number of stars. Even the few constellations that I'm occasionally able to recognize, like Cassiopeia, looked  entirely different because of all the little stars, invisible near Cincinnati, which were shining through and around the constellations. Eventually, the 40 degree night tried the children's patience, and we headed for the hot tub instead. (The hot tub was number three on Toa of Boy's list of favorites.)

On Saturday, the Jedi was judging in a BBQ festival in nearby Nelsonville. We popped on-line from one of the two netbooks we had brought (really roughing it we were), to check out activities for the kids and I to do while the Jedi was at the festival. I was hoping for a Junior Ranger Badge from one of the State Parks, or some educational program at one of the parks, but our internet connection was really slow and spotty (see I told you we were roughing it.) After a little while of searching, we didn't find anything nearby that was appealing, plus, it was still pretty chilly out. The kids opted instead to hang out at the cabin, play card games, eat pizza, and watch a movie for the first part of the day.

After the Jedi was finished at the contest, it was late afternoon. We grabbed smoothies from McDonalds and headed out for another hike. This time, we headed to Conkle's Hollow. The temperatures had warmed considerably during the afternoon. It was still a little cool, but certainly not cold like the morning had been. The scenery was beautiful. (Scenery being another item on Sweetling's 'top three' list.)

When we arrived, there was a historic camp set up in a field near the parking lot, so we spent some time wandering around that, watching a demonstration on how writing quills were made, and chatting with the re-enacters (who said they woke up this morning, in their little cloth tents, to a frost covered field.)

Once again, we hit the trail late in the day, as everyone else was leaving to go to dinner. At the entrance to the hollow, there was a trail map, which we skipped, and then two signs at a fork in the trail. The gorge trail went strait ahead. It runs down the center of the gorge and is 0.5 miles, and the Jedi and I have walked it on previous visits. To our right was a large, large flight of wooden stairs, which, the sign told us, was the rim trail. The rim trail was 2.5 miles long, and we had never hiked it before. Since this would be our only hike of the day, we opted for the longer path.

On the way up, we passed a couple of warning signs, which we had Toa read aloud, all about not becoming a fatality. The signs said that the trail ran near the rim, and that the path could be very uneven, so please exercise caution. Check. Can do.

Now understand, the Jedi and I have traveled to Hocking Hills on several occasions. We've hiked along Cantwell Cliffs and taken the rim trail along the edge of the Rock House cliff, so we were pretty confident we knew what to expect from a rim trail. The other rim trails are about ten to fifteen feet or so from the actual edge, and give lovely glimpses into the valleys below from a safe distance away on a wide smooth path.

The rim trail at Conkle's Hollow was meant for mountain goats. Any living creature who is not a mountain goat has no business being on that rim trail. At 200 to 270 feet above the canyon floor, for large stretches of its length, this rim trail was two or three feet of rock, tree roots, and crevices RIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF. Got that? RIGHT AT THE EDGE. The Jedi walked in front of Sweetling, reaching behind him to hold onto her hand. I kept a death grip on Toa of Boy's wrist and marched him in front of me. Oh, and did I mention the rock would often have step ups and step downs of one to two feet? The Jedi would cross these, help Sweetling down, walk her a few feet away, double back and help Toa down, walk him over to Sweetling, and then come back and help me down. Cause, one misstep? One trip? One lost of balance? Game over. We crawled along that cliff edge like ants.

Why didn't we turn back? Because at first we thought, surely its just this one little patch that's like this.  Since the path was zigging and zagging to follow the uneven edge of the canyon, we couldn't really see much of it at once. At first we thought, it would get back to being a sane trail after this one little scary stretch. When we reached the first outcropping, I thought the danger was over, and we paused for a photo op. The top of the outcropping was a large, open space with a few spindly evergreens of some sort, and the view was breathtaking. We sat down, I snapped some photos, and we traveled on.

We left the outcropping, and the path went back to its mountain goat self, but I thought, it's just because we are on the other side of the out cropping. I don't know when it occurred to us that no, no, this death trap really is the trail, and this is really how it is....but at that point the thought was, surely this scary portion will end soon, and we'd be better off going forward than going back over all that dangerous stretch again.

Did I mention that Sweetling and the Jedi are both terrified of heights?

At points, we stepped over crevices in the trail just a foot or so wide, but looking down which one could see the tops of the trees in the valley far below.

And always, we'd reach little sections where the trail would widen some, and we'd think, ah, we're finished with this. Here's one of those points. A scenic overlook, which I at least thought was towards the end of the fatal portion of the rim trail. See those two black sandstone cliff faces? At the time we paused to snap this photo, we had no idea that the trail would wind around both those out croppings.....we hit the one on the right on the east rim of the trail....and the one on the left on the west end of the trail.

You will also notice the deep shadows that both those cliffs are in. That's because the sun is very low in the western sky. Remember how there was a trail marker with the distance of the trail at the beginning of the trail? We hike fairly regularly, regularly enough to know how long a trail of a given length might take us. But, we hadn't counted on the crawling pace this particular trail would reduce us too.

We reached a point, at long last, where the trail left the sheer cliff face and meandered back into the forest a bit. The five to ten feet of buffer between us and the cliff seemed like fathoms after what we had just hiked. And then, mercifully, we reached a set of wooden steps going down. Now, I knew we hadn't traveled back towards the entrance to the gorge yet, but when we reached the stairs, I thought we were done with the rim section of the trail. We all bounded down the stairs with great relief. And we followed the trail past little hollows.....

.....and then we got to a trail map. The map was conveniently located at, you guessed it, the halfway point of the trail. And, it clearly depicted that the west rim trail was in fact, just like the east rim trail. I checked out the 150 feet of dried up waterfall ledges, seriously contemplating whether we could pick our way down that. The Jedi and I discussed backtracking, because it looked like the eastern rim edge was slightly, ever so slightly, shorter than the western rim. But in the end, I just couldn't drag the kids back over the eastern rim again, and I was still clinging foolishly to the thought that the rest of the trail couldn't possibly be like what we just went over.

However, I was really worried about the fast fading light. Away from the rim, deep in the evergreen forest, the daylight was quickly disappearing. The thought of taking another rim trail in the dusk was terrifying. I remembered how blindly we had felt our way along inside of Rock House, and doing that 200 feet up was not a pleasant thought. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have opted for the eastern rim in hopes that it would catch more of the last light of the day than the western rim would in the shadows of the great pines.

But, we went on. I think the Jedi didn't want to face the eastern rim trail any more than I did. And in the end, I am so glad that we did. The western rim was actually the pleasant hike we had been anticipating. It had a couple of tricky spots, but nothing like the terror of the eastern rim. We walked through a section of autumn trees, all aglow with the indirect light of sunset. Toa named it the "Golden Garden". We found large caves invisible from the valley far below. We made the hike of the rim and out of the forest in plenty of time before it got dangerously dark.

In fact, the western rim hike was so successful, that at the bottom of the trail, the Jedi suggested we do the .5 gorge valley hike we had passed over before. The kids, however, were done with hiking and were ready for dinner. So we headed back to the cabin and I worked on dinner while the Jedi and the kids went out to the hot tub. (The cabin's range didn't boil water, only heated it, and the cabin didn't have a stove, so I did dinner in sections in the small microwave oven, then kept things warm on the range top. It wasn't that bad, cause the Jedi had brought home lots of leftovers from his bbq judging earlier, so other than cooking a side dish of noodles, I was just heating things up.)

 After dinner, we had a family game night. (Family time together was the third item on Sweetling's favorites list.)  On Sunday morning, we grabbed breakfast at the cabin, packed up, and headed home.

My three favorite things about the weekend were--

• Time with the Jedi.
• Stargazing on Friday night
• The Rim Trail. (yes, I know that doesn't make much sense, but since when have you started expecting logic from me? After we were all down, and safe, I really appreciated the beauty of the trail, the adventure of the trail, and the teamwork we needed to move everyone safely along the trail.)

Check out more adventures on Field Trip Fridays.