Home Improvement

We are finally redoing our ugly front porch. Yesterday G primed the door -- now we just have to decide what color to paint it.

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!