Twilight

Finally read it, on the recommendation of some friends. Kept waiting for it to get better, but it never did. Several hours of my life I will never get back.

Her Own Beeswax

In the past we've talked about making candles from the beeswax from our honey harvest, but never done it. (I even bought a book about it.) So this year we gave the beeswax to some friends so it didn't just sit around. We got a call yesterday inviting G to come over because they had all the paraphernalia to make candles. It is not as hard as I thought -- it just takes a little time and patience. The smell is not as sweet as you might expect, but more vaguely spicy. The kids had a blast making and shaping hand-dipped candles. One more activity to balance out going-back-to-school time in the future!

Honey Harvest

Becca & Jamie came up today for the third annual honey harvest. Now that everyone knows what to do, it went fairly quickly, even though there was a lot more honey this year. It was very obvious that different combs produced different shades of honey. Three in a row makes it a tradition! Can't wait for next year!

Big yield this year!

First Day of School

It's not how she looked today, but it's how I saw her ...

"Camping"

G and her cousin Cha have been wanting to go camping, but the summer got away from us. They settled for an overnight in Grandpa's tent camper. What with the unseasonably cool temperature, howling coyote and answering barking dogs, and migrating birds, let's hope it was a reasonable facsimile.

Mentor Program

G is part of her school's program that has 8th graders mentoring 5th graders. They had orientation on Wednesday. Here she is with her group for this year.

Sent

We have been waiting for over a year for the second book in "The Missing" series by Margaret Peterson Haddix. It came out yesterday and G & I picked it up as soon as we could. She's through it already; now Dan & I are jockeying to see who gets it next.

Parting Shot

Philadelphia: Independence Hall & Liberty Bell

Did we make this stop so we could stand in the hall where 56 brave American patriots made their bold statement? No, we were there because "the vision to see the treasured past comes as the timely shadow crosses in front of the House of Pass and Stow" ...

Philadelphia: Franklin Court

Benjamin Franklin: One Awesome Dude. The stop at the remains of his house and the underground museum turned out to be the best site of the day

Philadelphia: The Franklin Institute

We got a two-fer: We came for the Galileo exhibit and found that there was a Star Trek exhibit as well


The permanent exhibit everyone from the Mid-Atlantic remembers from field trips

The Pendulum Stairs

Hershey: Chocolate World

At Chocolate World, the Hershey company provides a free tour that dumps you off into a gigantic candy emporium -- where they hope you will spend $$$ on all the Hershey's junk they have

Harrisburg: The Whitaker Center

The museum's hands-on activities are geared to younger kids, but G had fun any way

Inside the Hurricane Chamber

Proving for every action, there's an opposite and equal reaction ...

Baltimore: "Duck" Ride

Everyone gets a quacker on this amphibious vehicle

Baltimore from the harbor

Baltimore: The National Aquarium

Outside the National Aquarium

Inside a Meglodon's jaws

Back Online

We've been offline for a few weeks because we were on vacation. Then when we came back, the unthinkable occurred: A "Disk Read Error" screen appeared. The new hard drive Dan installed in May does not want to come back online. He has all our files double-backed up, so the only thing I will probably end up losing is emails from May through August. Right now I am using the old hard drive, which has its limitations because we replaced it because we needed more space.

While we were away, the fox picked off all but one of our yard chickens and eight chickens we are raising in a coop (that's more than 25 chickens). Setting up a human hair- and "pee-rimeter" has its limitations, I guess.

This past week G was busy with peer mentor training and registration. This is the last full week of vacation for her; next week she has orientation for "her" fifth graders and Open House. She got her schedule, and we are both pretty happy with it. Six of her seven teachers are known quantities and range from good to fabulous, so we're hoping for a good year.

As I get a chance I will post photos from our vacation "Out East." We used my mom and dad's as a base and did day trips.

Rainbow Hill

When this double rainbow first came up, the kids weren't too impressed -- but the inner one soon intensified so much that it seemed there were many more colors than the standard ROY G BIV ...

Sunset

We had some wild clouds and dramatic light on 7.27 at sunset.

Making Waves

The Wavetron '62 temporarily came out of retirement!

The Girls

There are 11 grandkids and we used to be able to get them all together at once. They're growing/grown up now, so that's getting harder to do. This year, however, all of Grandpa's granddaughters were in the same place at the same time. Here those beautiful girls are.

Pig Roast

Dan's family has a pig and corn roast every other year. I anticipate it with a mixture of excitement and dread. It is nice to see everyone, but it is a lot of work, especially for Dan, because they do it all themselves instead of catering it out. We will be eating leftover pig and corn for several days. If anyone who hasn't heard about it already wants details on "The Corn Escapade," which I got a lot of mileage out of at the event, email me and I will tell it yet again.

Red Parade

Grandpa drove his restored 1958 350 Hi-Utility tractor in an "all-red" (Farmall and iH) parade today between the Farm Progress Show in Waterloo and a tractor show in Madison. Dan, G & I caught up with him on Highway TT outside of Deansville.

Outfoxed - For Now

About a week ago, we found feather evidence that something had attacked and taken our rooster. Due to the location and the timing, we assumed the predator was an owl. Then cats who don't usually show their faces started hanging close to the house. That's because the rooster snatcher turns out to be a red fox! We've seen glimpses of it around nightfall, and last night it SAT in our front yard like it owned the place and YipYipYipped. Dan wanted to photograph it, but I didn't realize that and ran running from the house screaming like a banshee and waving my arms. I now graphically understand the phrase "turned tail and ran," because that's what it did -- it had an extremely impressive tail and was deep red in color. If I haven't scared it off for good (highly unlikely as long as we have chickens), maybe I'll keep my head and try to get a picture of it next time it turns up.

Ah, Youth

Who cares if I was in a sweater and fleece and the mercury was barely pushing 62? G and her cousin Cha didn't even evidence blue lips!

Episkey

D, G & I went to the midnight showing of the sixth Harry Potter movie. There were easily 1,000 people in line, but everyone was amazingly calm and orderly, even when it started to rain as the queue started to move. My quick take on Half-Blood Prince: Meh. Given the material from the book, you'd think I'd be outright sobbing (as I did during parts of HP3, 4 & 5), but I didn't even get choked up during this movie. Besides my impression that the movie was just plain flat, my chief beefs are: Michael Gambon proves once again that he does not understand Dumbledore; Alan Rickman goes for camp and should be slapped on a bun with some Swiss; and though Jim Broadbent turned in a marvelous performance, he unfortunately was given a character that in no way resembled Slughorn. At least there are two more installments to look forward to.

Lake Geneva

G & I went along with Dan to his company's annual Summer Conference. It was held at the Grand Geneva Resort in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, which is a nice enough place. They've redone the rooms, which they seem to be quite proud of (though I personally think they should have taken the money they spent on the TV-in-the-bathroom-mirror and used it for more comfortable beds). Downtown Lake Geneva had Carousel Horses on display. We love that type of exhibit -- we've seen Cows in Harrisburg, Miwaukee and Madison and Nutcrackers in Seattle. G was an extremely good sport and allowed me to photograph her with all the full-sized horses we visited.

"Rhapsody in Blue"

My favorite, "Medallion"

"Firebred" at our hotel

Parting Shot

Paprikash

My great-grandmother was an ethnic German from the Banat region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (her hometown is in Serbia today). She could cook like no one else. One of the few recipes that my mom still makes is my Nany's Chicken Paprikash. (It's different than the Hungarian version that most people know. An excellent Web site that highlights Donau-Schwabian recipes is found here). While we were in PA, my mom taught G how to make it. We are looking forward to adding this heirloom recipe into our meal rotation!



Nana supervises G's first Paprikash

Cousin Time

Due to the various schedules we were all on, G got to spend one-on-one time with Simon and Jaspar while we were in NYC. G now understands why Teletubbies shout, "Again! Again!" -- toddlers love repetition. Fortunately for her, adolescents have different tastes!

Marathon Monopoly with Simon

Building a tower with Jaspar

So Good They Named It Twice

G & I took a few days to go up to New York to see Pat, Bill, Simon and Jaspar. While we had a good family visit, Pat astutely noted that G will not be following her cousin Ellie to Barnard -- she did not enjoy being out and about in NYC, especially because of the crowded streets and second-hand smoke. (We are so spoiled in Wisconsin! I would be interested to see smoking rates for the East Coast versus the Midwest!) I however could have lounged in the chairs in Times Square or sat at the tables in Bryant Park all evening to people watch.

At the American Museum of Natural History









Empire State Building from Penn Station

Visitors

Usually G & I estivate (look it up!) when we're at Nana & Pop-Pop's, but this year we had visitors. Our friend Mark stopped by on his way to DC and spent the afternoon with us. We made sure to take him to Sweet Willow's for ice cream.

My cousin Meg, her husband Alan and their kids Craig and Cheryl put us on their route during their family vacation.