Belated Build-A-Bear post

In early June, Princess Sparkley's Girl Scout troop went to Build-A-Bear to get the 100th Anniversary Girl Scout bear.  Her troop leader just sent out the pics.

Firehouse Tour

6/21

Our ward has a park day group and over the summer, they planned a field trip to the downtown fire station of a nearby town.  We tagged along for the fun.  Little Guy didn't want to squirt the fire hose but the two big kids did.

Apple Picking 2011

We took some friends (the Js) with us apple picking last year. She emailed me this year to see if we were planning on going again so we had another fun adventure this year. I didn't get nearly as many apples, but still a ton. We didn't see any bears, which I'm always worrying about at the back of my mind. We had fun and now we're munching on yummy apples (which I had to immediately start cutting open with my little car window hammer/knife set since Buddy has so many loose and missing teeth and Little Guy fell out of bed messing around the other night and injured his front teeth and the gums above them).

I love driving in the direction of the apple orchard or Shenandoah because all of a sudden we're in the foothills, and my kids, who spent 4 years in Kansas and now live in a flat part of Virginia, are intrigued by hills, foothills and mountains.  Buddy exclaimed, "What is that?" when we came upon a hill on our drive today.  I don't think he was expecting to run into a hill so suddenly.

Our friend Mom J took this and posted it on her blog.

George Washington Birthplace National Monument

We got in the car to leave Richmond and B asked if I wanted to stop at George Washington's Birthplace on the way home. He's had it on his list of weekend drives for awhile and it's sort of on the way home (meaning, just a little bit out of our way)and the kids are learning about our founding fathers this week, and it's almost President's Day, so I agreed. Not counting the stop, it took us 3 1/2 hours to drive home and it's normally 2 1/2 to 3. Not bad. And totally worth it.

I loved it. First, it was free. Second, it wasn't a huge amount of space to explore (although I'm sure we missed a lot). Plus, there were only a handful of tourists there so we got a park ranger to ourselves showing us the reconstructed house and the kitchen. AND, we got to hear little pigs squeal. I'm not sure I've ever heard pigs actually squeal in real life. Very satisfying. And there were sheep and a solo chicken wandering around. Little Guy kept telling me he wanted to go say hi to the sheep. And he kept asking me where all the other chickens were, and why that chicken wasn't flying. I'm excited to go back in warmer weather and explore some more of the outdoors stuff and there's supposedly an old shipping dock/wharf or something down the road.

The weird, knobby tree in front of the reconstructed house is the oldest tree in the area. They think it is celebrating it's 229th birthday this year. It's a hackberry tree and they also think it is the result of the fire that burned the Washington's house down around the same time the tree sprouted. Somehow a seed from inside made it outside and started growing.

B enjoyed that the reconstructed house turned out to be built on the wrong foundation. They built it several years ago for a Washington anniversary of some sort certain that they were building it on the correct, old foundation. Later, they discovered the real foundation of his childhood home (the picture I took where you just see the white outline of the house on the ground) a few feet away, and drastically smaller. The old house could have fit in the entry hall of the new house.


Swearing them in as Junior Rangers after the fact. The Rangers forgot to give us the packets until after we'd already toured the park and were leaving, so they sent the packets home with us.

Police Station Tour

1/14/11

A mom in our homeschool group planned a police station tour in Vienna, VA and invited other families to tag along. We of course jumped at the opportunity. We toured fire stations several times while living in Kansas, but never a police station. Buddy was thrilled.

It's a smaller police station but we got a full tour including the basement firearms practice room, and holding cell for bad guys when there is a wait for a spot at the county jail, and the room where all the officers get prepped on a situation (I think my only experience with this sort of room is from the TV show CHiPs). We also got to see the police cars outside (in the freezing cold) and the motorcycles (in their shed because it was too icy of a day for the officers to be out on them).

Fun facts we learned:
To be a motorcycle officer, you have to be able to lift your bike.
The back license plate on the motorcycles say, "Smile, I could be behind you."
The baton officers carry nowadays open like a toy lightsaber.
Bicycle officers have to be able to ride their bikes up and down stairs.

Apple Picking

One of my Facebook friends mentioned apple picking earlier this week and it got stuck on my mind. So we went to Stribling Orchard in Markham, VA to pick apples Friday (on the way to Shenandoah to use our 7-day pass to see the trees all colorful again). We were lucky enough to be joined by some friends. And the kids totally outdid any past "pick your own" categories I'd placed them in. Before when we've gone apple or blueberry or asparagus picking, they just sort of help and I do most of the picking. This time, I didn't realize how all out they were going with their picking until I got all the bags together to figure out their weight and price. Yikes! We picked almost 30 lbs. of apples. Needless to say, we'll be making A LOT of apple recipes this weekend.

Here are a few I'm going to try out:
Apple Dumplings and Crock Pot Applesauce
Crock Pot Apple Butter or I might make a similar recipe a Facebook friend recommended
Freezing Apple Pie Filling




We looked at their farm animals when we were leaving. And a special trip to see the horse because Little Guy requested that we go see the "Forsey" which is what he now calls horsies unless we correct him.

More Busyness, now at the Fire Station

We happened upon a sign Friday advertising that our neighborhood fire station was having an open house on Saturday. Buddy of course took note of this and added it to the list of 100 things that had to happen on Saturday. We arrived just as a helicopter that had been there flew away. Darn!

Nature Center and Plants

Monday, April 12th we went with some of members from our northern Virginia homeschool group to a nature center to have a talk/walk about plants. This fit in nicely with the plant unit we've just started for science. We didn't actually know any of the people* in this smaller group, one mom planned the fieldtrip and invited anyone in the larger group who was interested to come along. Our homeschool group is for LDS homeschoolers in all of northern Virginia, so they were all from a city further away that I've barely heard of. One of the moms set it up for us to take this tour at the Ellanor C. Lawrence Park.


More Bluebells. Our park ranger told us they only bloom in the shady wet places near a stream or creek and are only out for a few weeks.


This park used to be a farm so the trees are only 80-90 years old. One of the trees, our guide pointed out to us, had a poison ivy vine wrapped around it that she guessed was 80-90 years old as well. It was 3-4 inches in diameter. Yikes.


The group of kids (or some of them) under a Dogwood tree (Virginia's state tree and flower). Buddy and Princes Sparkley are on the far right.


Just my three under the Dogwood tree with the Walney Learning Center in the background.


My boys.

*We'd been there about five minutes when the mom who planned it asked if my daughter knew some of the other kids. I looked over and saw that Princess Sparkley had already found the other girl about her age and they were BFF going around the nature center looking at turtles** and fish together.

**Two of the little turtles were out of the water, one using the other as a stepping stool for his front legs as they sunned on a rock in the lamp's light. Baby X told me "Two turtles. Two turtles cuddling."

Mount Vernon

A group of friends from our LDS homeschool group were going to Mount Vernon today, so we tagged along.


We were about an hour later than our friends since I slept through my alarm and woke up when we were supposed to be arriving at Mount Vernon. Here are the kids just after we bought our tickets with George and Martha Washington and their grandkids.


We met our friends in the Education Center and PS wasted no time before getting dressed up.


Buddy and Baby X played with this spinning build George Washington thing.


PS in between her friends E.Gr. on the left and C.Ga. on the right)


Buddy as George Washington.


Baby X as Washington's stepson, Jacky Custis.


PS as Patsy (or as she read it, "Pastey") Custis


So many cute lambs.


Baby X loved the baby sheep as much as me. He is my kid after all.






The kids in front of Mount Vernon.


Mount Vernon. We didn't actually go inside because that line was more than an hour long.


Potomac River.


E.Gr., PS, C.Ga., Ch. Ga. in front of Mount Vernon


The whole group (minus the three moms and two babies).
top left: C.Gr., below him, Baby X, Buddy, PS, E.Gr., C.Ga., Ch.Ga., K.Gr., and standing up on the right, Ca.Gr.


PS, Baby X and Buddy in front of Mount Vernon.




Washington's Tomb.


George (Martha's is to the left and out of the picture).


View from the house.


The back of the house that faces the Potomac.


Ignore the crowd touring the house.


Playing on the grass between the house and the river.




Potomac River.



The kids really had a good time. They didn't care so much about seeing Washington's wooden teeth or even the house itself, but they had a great time at one of the short movies in the museum where sudsy soap drifted down on us like snow while we watched.