The Pumpkin Patch

"Eee tick-ohs!" Rose kept screaming whenever the goats licked the feed from her hands.

"Heb-bup pockin?"  Yes, three words together.  Mom paid almost $30 for "pockins" today.  And yes, I hebbed him up with his pockin.  And after being such a nice boy for a good part of the trip, *some* child had a horrible temper fit on the tractor ride back to the playground area.  A gang of two-year-old farmer boys finally offered him some clumps of hay and this (amazingly) suddenly calmed him.  Parents were relieved, because we were all stuck on this ride until it got back.  WHY is it that all of us adults couldn't figure out that the solution was giving the kid hay??  I mean, that makes sense...

This is new!  A "music" area with metal cups, pans, spoons and assorted fun stuff.  Noisy but entertaining.

I'm sure everyone at the pumpkin patch thinks THIS child's mom is awful.  He sat two carloads back but STOOD UP, WHOOPED AND RAISED HIS HANDS when the tractor went downhill.  His mom sorta yelled at him a little bit.  Don't do that again, kid.

Pumpkin donuts, soda pop, some chili for an older child who refuses to be pictured, and some popcorn for the egg-allergy boy.  Thank$, Mom!

Another music pic, but I'm too lazy to move the pictures around and risk "losing" some, thus having to reload the whole set.  You'll be ok, seeing the events out of order this time.

PS.  There is a reason why there are no "playground" pictures, and his name is Woodjie.  :)

Tadpole Hunting.

I knowwww we're far behind in our curriculum studies. But it would be criminal to stay indoors on a beautiful day like today turned out to be. We returned to the same place we went last year in July to see what the frogs look like in the stream right now. They are 3 to 5 inch long tadpoles without any legs at all. I would swear that they're about 8 inches long at their longest before becoming frogs later in the year.

Elf and Emperor waded in the water and no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't catch one in the ice cream bucket. So I wandered in as well. It is VERY slippery and slimy in this creek, and full of trash. I kept thinking it would be just my luck to step on a syringe or something... but you know, every child should have some carefree days every now and then to look at stuff like this.

I finally caught a three-inch long tadpole. Like his brothers and sisters, he's a bullfrog with a HUGE head. We let him swim about for a bit and showed him off to the other people in the park. Emperor named him August, perhaps because he hopes to see him later in the summer. Or perhaps he is naming him after his very fave Roman emperor. He prayed over him before we put him back into the water, that he would be safe and that we would get to see him later. :)

War Between the States

Emperor and Elf are proudly displaying their battle flags. We marched down to the park, singing "Dixie" and the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." We passed many friendly people admiring the boys in the blue and the gray. The boys shot marshmallows at each other and I think Elf got quite good at staking out vantage points. Emperor kept trying to hug the toddlers at the playground, and this resulted in his being pelted by many marshmallows. :] We ate day-old biscuits and beef jerky and drank from our canteens (aka, small plastic water bottles). Elf ran out of ammo midway during the second battle. We talked of how that felt, to have an enemy with plenty of ammo and your being cornered. We called it his Appomattox Courthouse moment. While they were fighting, the ants discovered the marshmallows on the ground, as well as all of our biscuits. I tried to convince the boys that it would be a more authentic Civil War experience if they ate the biscuits with the live bugs in them, but they didn't feel like participating in precise historical re-enactment in that regard. Some of the marshmallows had been helpfully removed from the battlefield by hungry toddlers, but we still had a bit of work to do. We packed up, cleaned up the rest of marshmallows around the park, and threw away the buggy biscuits, and started home. We passed by the same ladies we saw on our way to battle. Elf had his head down, sad that he had lost the war. He was so disappointed (um, even though he knew we would pretend the South lost at the end. I guess it doesn't make losing easier). "The South lost," I explained to the ladies as we passed. "Don't you worry! The South will rise again!" they encouraged, waving, as we marched on our way home.

Prepare for War!

The Blues and the Greys are getting their uniforms together, preparing biscuits, and decorating their flags. The South only gets about two biscuits in this war, but the North will distribute its extra rations after the South surrenders. It's going to be brother against brother, but we'll be sharing some good times and some bad food.

Bugs!

Recently, we went to a butterfly showing at a local nursery. We got a poster, a butterfly-attracting plant, and a couple of bug-catching nets. I spent a fair bit of money on these, but the boys have loved running about in the night to catch netfuls of glowing fireflies. Of course, Emperor has gotten his chigger bites infected from the constant scratching and is on antibiotics. Elf has a huge welt-y bite on his leg. I'm waiting and hoping this goes down, as we've already spent about $75 on the bugs we find outside for free. :]

This is the frog that never ends ... it goes on and on my friend

D helped me load these pics, so I guess he gets to title the post. The four older boys and I went out to film our movie, but we got distracted. There had to have been at least a hundred LARGE tadpoles swimming about in the creek. And some frogs, too! The boys had a wonderful time wading in the creek and seeing these close-up. The script and artwork is pretty well ruined, and that's ok. We can film some other day.

Jesse James Farm - Souvenirs

Each of us picked a souvenir in the gift shop. Guess which one is mine??

The Jesse James Farm and Museum in Kearney, Missouri.

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***************This tour and museum is worth it. Kids under eight are *free* as well. The tour begins with a wonderful short historical movie about Jesse and his older brother, Frank James. Then you can wander about the exhibits featuring the boots and feather-duster Jesse James was using when he died. His wallet. His letters written under a pseudonym. Some coins and saddles. BTW, *real* outlaws have flowers embroidered on their saddle blankets. Yes, they do.

Jesse James Farm - Outhouse.

Brr... this is not a place I'd want to have to go to the bathroom in the winter. Fifty feet from the house in the wind in the middle of the night. Bleck, but I wouldn't want my home to smell of "chamber pot," either. It isn't like Jesse's mom could have lit candles to disguise the smell, either. Or used air fresheners. Thank God for indoor plumbing, would ya?

Into The Woods We Go!

You can't tell from the pictures, but when I read that this was a WALKING TRAIL, I had no idea that what they really meant was that I could abandon all hope of bringing the stroller more than 20 feet into the woods. I eventually had to pack the stroller and things away, but that meant I couldn't bring the camera in either. We found a lot of very beautiful leaves and sticks, but surprisingly not very many acorns at all. We have far more at our house. But the children didn't realize what "forest" really was and kept getting tripped up by little sticks and small trees.

The Pumpkin Patch!!

Elf and Emperor had a great time on the pumpkin patch tour. We got to see all different kinds of pumpkins as well as pet the animals and go on a tractor ride to pick our *own* pumpkin! All this for less than half the cost of general admission, because we were a "school" group. School groups, unlike other customers, get to take the pumpkins home but they don't get to play on the "pumpkin playground." For an $18 difference, we can skip the playground!!