Shark Party: Happy Birthday S!

  Brother S has been planning his shark birthday party for a long time.  When we saw this big shark pinata at Walmart we HAD to get it for the party.   We had pizza and a variety of gold fish crackers.

 The kids set up an "ocean" in the toy room. We played "walk the plank" with everyone assigned to do various things like walk blind folded, skip down the plank, hop on one foot etc.

Then we made it even harder.  They had to throw a little shark into the great white's mouth. 

 Success! Cousin B was the first winner. She got a little stuffed shark for her prize. 

 We tested out several variations of "ocean cake" made with jello.  We discovered that the most important things were: #1 insert gummy fish and sharks into the "ocean" and serve immediately (so they don't get squishy), #2 quickly dip each gummy fish in water before sliding it into the jello ocean, #3 one must have cool whip on top, and #4 letting everyone help makes it more fun.

  It looks kind of small in this picture, but to fill this bowl we used five boxes worth of jello mix!

 The pinata worked great. Everyone got a couple turns and the candy came out gradually as it fell apart.

  The littles hits were the cutest.

 Little Miss Rainbow Unicorn...

 

 Batter up! We had to make it extra hard for cousin L's powerful swing. Daddy was lifting the pinata up and down.

Field Trip: Amish Produce Auction

My friend managed to get a picture at the Amish produce auction that we went to last week. You can see that side of the building was almost all pumpkins and gourds.

I mentioned last week that we bought 6 bushels or about 240 lbs of apple seconds at a nearby discount store instead.  It was 62$. 

 Those apples made 92 quarts of applesauce and about 15 gallons of what I hope will be apple cider vinegar. It is my first time making vinegar with the peels and cores, but so far it is pretty easy.

My shelves are overflowing...  I have met my 500 jar canning goal.  I have plans to can a lot of the  80 lbs of sweet potatoes that we just harvested and am about half done canning the rabbits that I harvested this week.  I am trying the "bone in" raw pack canning on those.  It will be interesting to see how that effects the taste and moisture of the meat.

My friend also had these great pics of the kids being silly with their buddies at the Amish Smorgasbord.

Family Schooling Summary: Fleet Week, Maryland Historical Society, and Lancaster

Last week we went to Baltimore to tour the ships on display for Fleet Week.  It happened to be a very hot day. 

 We enjoyed looking around the real battleships (tight security to get onboard these) and the replicas that reminded us of pirate ships.

After awhile we got too hot and used our membership to the Science museum to go in and cool off.

 They have made some improvements since our last visit.  The kids really enjoyed the new water tables. Benefits of being home schoolers -- our buddies and we were the only ones in there most of the time.

The kids and I are really enjoying their art class.  The teacher is enthusiastic and patient.

 She does a great job asking questions and hearing her young artists ideas.

 Miss L was shy the first week of her ballet class, but now she enjoys it. She is running around with her friend before class in these pictures.

 The lunch room is wild! So many kids all eating together.

 Brother S and Miss L's brainy games and puzzles class has busy interesting moments and quiet thoughtful moments... which is nice for the assistant teachers, like me.

Maryland Historical Society had one of their homeschool days this week.  The theme was "Maryland Through the Arts".  I appreciated how they divided the kids into age groups and gave them age appropriate tours and activities. 

 Miss L and I followed brother M and S's group around.  Brother S loved the Mastodon bones. Brother M kept talking about this strip representing one stripe of the "Star Spangled Banner" that hung over Fort McHenry in 1814.  He loved seeing a tangible representation of how big that flag was. 

 They learned about early photography and how their used to be MANY steps to taking a single photograph.

 Here is brother S taking his turn looking through the camera.

 The guide showed them all the different chemicals involved in the process of developing a glass plate photograph.

 He showed pictures of immigrants coming into Baltimore Harbor at the turn of the century.  He told the kids about the art forms that immigrants brought with them. One was this German paper cutting.

They also looked at some quilts, which is an art form they are pretty familiar with.

 For part of our home studies this week we did a fun science lesson on anatomy.

 We also made a quick jaunt up to Lancaster to go to an Amish produce auction. It was a lot of fun with our buddies as usual.  I bought 6 bushels of apples to make applesauce -- only 60$ for  about 250 lbs. of apples.  That price definitely makes homemade applesauce worth the work. I have 50 quarts canned so far and still about 100 lbs to go.

Field Trip: Upstate NY to harvest grapes

When I was growing up we always went in the fall to pick grapes for canning grape juice.  I have been looking around here and called several vineyards to see whether they have u-pick grape options, but they all said "no". Their are a few farms that grow grapes for people to pick, but they are $2.99/pound. In upstate NY it is only about $0.35/pound. (My mom said that it was $0.11/pound when she was picking them).  I finally decided that it was worth the trip. Once you have had real homemade grape juice, no other store made juice is even close.   We visited with my dad, Goomie, and Gma J for a day and then left first thing the next morning to hit the vineyard.

 We got a late start because it was pouring rain and we had to stop to buy some ponchos.

 The landscape was beautiful! The owner was sweet and had some funny stories about people picking grapes in the rain.

 We picked 213 lbs. of concord grapes.  The kids did a great job of helping.

I bought a steam juicer and my friend from our ward gave me her old one. My mom had advised that it was good to have two going at once. It did work great, but it was still long and messy. It takes about an hour for 6 lbs. of grapes to cook down all the juice. Every half hour I was able to fill 3 quarts, alternating between the juicers.

 I got a late start because the tube was broken on the one my friend gave me.  I had to go get a part at Home Depot.  I started at 10am and canned all day and all night until 6am the next day. Our boxes were squishy from the rain and I knew that the grapes would ferment quickly.

 I filled a whole rubbermaid bin with the skins and stuff. I know that people use them for fancy things, but I just put them in my compost pile.

 We ended up with 90 quarts of beautiful grape juice for our efforts! (We usually dilute it about 2:1 for drinking because it is very strong). The taste is fantastic. And my kitchen smells wonderful. Totally worth the trip and the work.

Farm Fresh: Monster Stump is gone!

One morning we saw Mother Goose running down from the top of the compost pile. She looked unusually pleased with herself... so we looked and found a nest! It is the wrong time of year for goslings so I am still not sure why she was laying a clutch.  We will have some XL eggs for eating in any case. 

 We finally found a "stump guy" who specializes in huge stumps and was able to handle the monster stump and several other big ones that would have taken many long hours for hubby to get out with the tractor.

 Here is the crevasse where the 6 ft. wide stump was.  Even with his massive stump grinder it took about 4 hours to grind up this one.  He did a great job getting all the giant roots too.  Now we can finally make progress on the high tunnel.

 The garden is mostly done for the year.  Remaining crops are beets, daikons, spinach, late potatoes, and the sweet potatoes that are taking over all available space.