For Show & Tell this week, I want to share how Kennady has been spending a lot of her spare time lately - practicing her recorder.  I have to admit that the family gets pretty tired of hearing it, but from what I can tell, that's fairly common among family members of recorder players!!  She has been learning to play in a co-op class and is really enjoying it so she practices at home (which not all of her classmates do, apparently) and last week she got out the whiteboard and practiced writing out her music as well.

Okay, now she's embarrassed because I'm taking her picture:

Okay, time to go - we need to practice for the Talent Night this evening - she is singing!

For more Show & Tell fun, visit  my friend CanadaGirl!

It's time for Show & Tell, and as usual I am late in getting mine ready.  I posted a little preview earlier today though.

On Monday, I took Landon and Kennady on a field trip.  We visited an art glass studio in Baltimore and were able to see how the glass pieces are made, and the kids each got to make a marble using the technique!  As our group arrived, we looked around at the interesting glasswork in the workshop area.

Calla lilies!

I thought this looked a little like Spanish onions!  Its MUCH larger, and is hanging from the ceiling, almost like a chandelier.

Here's where its all made:

As we were getting settled, our tour guide - the owner and artist, Tim - quickly fashioned a horse out of glass. 

Then it was our turn.  One at a time, the kids chose which colored glass bits they would use for their own marble.  This is Kennady getting a quick lesson on how to hold the rod and keep turning it so that the hot glass doesn't droop.

Tim got the hot glass on the end of the rod, and then Kennady pressed it into the little pile of lavender glass she had chosen.

Next, over to the furnace where the glass is heated again, always turning the rod.

Back to the stainless steel table again, this time to shape the molten glass by turning and pressing it onto the table.

And to the furnace again...

Finally, Kennady can sit down (still turning the rod though!) and Tim helps her to pinch in the end of the glass so that the rounded marble will come off the rod.  (I took a little video of that, which I will add here later if I can)

Landon's turn:

Here is Kennady's finished marble:

All the kids in our group proving that they still have their marbles!

Afterwards we looked around the shop and gallery - beautiful and unique work!!

He's got everything you could imagine in there, including the kitchen sink! (Actually, this is the bathroom sink - we couldn't resist taking a picture, despite the fact that our reflections are in the mirror! Ooops LOL)

Thanks for coming by - more show and tell fun can be found by visiting Mary aka CanadaGirl

A couple weeks ago I shared some pictures from the kids co-op class.  Well, now we've passed the halfway point and here are some more co-op pictures.  First the gross stuff...  I went into Spencer's biology lab two weeks ago to get a look at a cow brain.  I'm still rather surprised at how little it bothered me.  LOL 

They've now examined the tongue, heart, brain, and lungs.  Interesting.

The younger kids are enjoying their classes as well, particularly Music and Art.  One of the local library branches puts up artwork in a "gallery" to showcase different area schools, and most recently our homeschool group was featured.  We sent a perspective drawing Spencer did in his co-op art class:

Kennady also had a piece from her Art class submitted, a story quilt drawing inspired by the work of Faith Ringgold:

Kennady was with me when I went to visit the "gallery" so I tried to get her picture.  Not easy since her work was at the very top of the bulletin board, and I'm not crazy about how it turned out, but I haven't got a copy of Gramma's picture yet. (hers turned out much better, I think!)

For more Show & Tell, visit Mary aka CanadaGirl

Time again for Show & Tell!  A couple weeks ago, when we started our Lewis & Clark unit in History, we followed my book's instructions for making "vermillion" paint, which the Corps of Discovery took with them to trade to the Native Americans they met. 

Then it was off to a mirror so Landon and Kennady could paint up!

Here is Landon trying to look mean, like he's headed out on the warpath.  And Kennady tried to look mean too, but couldn't wipe the smile off her face. 

At first we were a little disappinted that the paint looked more PINK than RED, but when the time came to wash it off, I was glad!  I had a few anxious moments where I thought I might have to take them to gym class looking like they had sunburn! Thankfully it really was washable, like the instructions said, but I'd recommend not leaving the paint on for TOO long! LOL

For more Show & Tell fun, visit CanadaGirl and feel free to join us!

(by the way, I try to visit all the Show & Tell entries each week, but have so much trouble getting comments to post! I will visit your Show & Tell, I promise! Just might not be able to comment)

E is for Eeeeek!!!

Had to be creative with this letter, but that is pretty much what I said when our TV antenna blew off our roof on Monday!  Here it is sitting in our yard.  I'm trying to think of a good homeschool project we can do with a TV antenna - suggestions?

For more A B See's, visit The Homeschool Post

And for Show & Tell, visit Mary aka CanadaGirl

Just one picture this week for my Show & Tell.  Last week I featured our co-op class and showed Spencer starting on a perspective drawing.  The students were to finish their drawings of the road heading off into the horizon this week, and add their own personal touches.  Here is what Spencer came up with:

He's not quite finish, I think he is going to adjust the shadows so they match.  Note the worker on thepower pole.

Check in with Mary at Raising 4 Godly Men for more Show & Tells!

Once again, I'm late in getting my Show & Tell posted.  For some reason it has seemed much slower than usual getting my pictures loaded onto photobucket so I can share them, and I don't know if it's my computer or the website, or who knows what.  Anyway,  since I wasn't well enough to teach this week, I got to just hang around during co-op, so I tried to get a few pictures.

Landon and Kennady are both enjoying an art class this year.  They study the style of a famous or influential artist and then do their own version of that type of artwork.  Landon's project this week:

And here's Kennady's:

They also each have a Science class and a Music class.  They are learning to play recorder.  I feel bad that I haven't really given Kennady proper piano lessons, because she really has a good ear.  She almost didn't need the class to learn recorder,as she has been teaching herself at home!

Spencer is taking two classes - one is an art class that is a basic intro to perspective drawing, or drafting.  I think he is really enjoying that one.  I sat in on that class for awhile so I took some pictures.

Demonstration:

Students hard at work:

This is Spencer's work in progress:

Spencer's other class is a biology lab, dissecting all kinds of body parts.  I think last week they did a cow eyeball.  Ick.  This week they examined a cow's tongue, and I gathered my courage to step in for a picture.  It wasn't nearly as disgusting as I'd feared.

Blech.

And finally, on our way out the door after class yesterday, Kennady noticed an insect on the wall.  It's still pretty early in the season for insects to be out, but I gues the recent warm temperatures brought this guy out into the open.  Normally Kennady wouldn't be at all interested, and I sure wouldn't be taking a picture, but her Science class happens to be focusing on insects, so this was a fabulous specimen.  I tried getting some good close-up pictures, and then fortunately found a ziploc baggie, so we saved this critter for the kids to take a better look at next week in co-op.  (the boys that were close by assured us that it was an assassin bug, but I don't know and am not interested enough to look it up!)

I'm trying to get back in the habit of blogging, so my Show & Tell today will be a brief review of the school things we did last month.

In our Science class, we talked about gears and tried making our own to see how they work.

I brought in a bike from the garage so we could see the gears in action, and do some measuring to figure out where the mechanical advantages were.

We also worked on History, Math, and Language Arts, but I didn't take pictures of those.

Last week we capped off January with a trip to Annapolis to see our state capitol.  I blogged about it here but will include a couple of the pictures I liked best in this Show & Tell entry as well!

The House Chamber:

The old Senate Chamber (1772!):

Outside view of the State House:

There are more pictures and some info about Annapolis and its State House in my entry from a couple of days ago - Annapolis, Feb. 5th blog entry - please feel free to check it out!

Visit CanadaGirl, our lovely hostess for Show & Tell, to participate and to see other entries!

I've been taking a break from blogging - not really intentionally, but just have had so much else going o over the holidays that blogging took a back seat.  Today is Show & Tell with CanadaGirl so I have a quick brag to do for that!

Awhile ago I did share that my daughter Kennady had learned how to crochet and she can chain circles around anybody.  LOL  She picks it up every now and again, but she wasn't crocheting every day or anything like that.  Before Christmas, I took her with me to a knitting group just for fun and she sat there and crocheted her chains.  I don't know what she will do with all of them...  So last Saturday I took her with me to the group again, and took a simple pattern and told her that Ms Patty would help her to read and understand the instructions (I only knit, don't crochet, so I'm no help).  As a result, I have a couple pictures of Kennady with the gecko bookmark that she made herself:

Here's a close-up of the gecko - I think he's kind of cute!

By the way, she also lost a tooth that same weekend, which was another picture-taking occasion.  How can such a small baby tooth leave such a huge gap - have you ever wondered?

For more Show & Tell, or to participate, visit Mary

(I started this blog entry a couple days ago, but as often happens to me when I have tons of pictures - dial-up slows down my progress.  LOL  So here it is as Show & Tell)

The day after our visit to the Everglades, we did another all-day "field trip" - we drove to the Florida Keys!  It was one of those "well, we've come this far south, what's another four hours" kind of decisions.  LOL  We set out after breakfast with a state map and the AAA tourbook to see the Keys.  At one point while we were still on the I-95, DH said to me "you realize the highway through the Keys is really a long series of bridges and causeways, right?  Are you okay with that?"  He knows I hate bridges.  LOL  I assured him that as long as HE was driving, it was all good.    Of course there was construction on the causeway from the mainland to Key West, so that was rather slow going at times, and by the time we arrived on Key Largo, the kids were already hinting strongly that lunch would be a good idea.  Key Largo was a little bit a disappointment to me because the part we saw didn't really look "exotic" at all!  LOL  Of course there were palm trees everywhere, and some side roads were only a block or two to the beach, and you could see that.  But I think seeing an Exxon station first thing when you get off the causeway is a bit of a letdown.  LOL  Maybe I was hoping for a beach or a tropical looking hotel as my first sight on the Keys.  At any rate...  I had checked the tourbook and had a couple of restaurants on Islamorada picked out as good possibilities for our lunch, so we decided we would just drive and keep our eyes open for places we might like to stop at.  We would up getting all the way to the restaurant I'd picked - Islamorada Diner, I think it was called (clever, no?) - which was a homey little yellow clapboard building.  We opted to eat in the screened-in patio.

Harrison had fried grouper - it was SO good!

We were much too full to have dessert - I really wanted Key Lime Pie - so I bought a small bag of Key Lime Cookies to take along for later.  A short way down the road, we stopped for a look at the ocean.

Two of my kids will pose for pictures - the princess:

and the cool teenager who is always looking for a new avatar for Facebook or MySpace:

and who is also a bit of a goof:

 Our next stop was at Anne's Beach, where we walked on the boardwalk and decided to wade in the ocean a bit.

 Next stop was at Curry Hammock State Park, which had an even bigger beach!  And bonus: we happened to be visiting the Keys on Veterans Day, so all the state parks were free admission.

The kids worked a bit on a sand castle.

Here's a collection of pictures of the interesting things seen on the beach:

It was taking a long time for my pictures to load, and since it's time for school to start and for me to get ready to go do some Black Friday shopping, I decided to make this a two-part entry and put the rest of the Keys pictures up later.  Please come back!  For more Show & Tell fun, visit CanadaGirl

ETA:  Part Two is here.

I was on vacation for just over a week and missed two Show & Tells!  And I really did miss them!  The good news is that after vacation I usually have plenty of blog fodder for upcoming Show & Tell weeks. 

Our vacation started on Thursday, Nov. 6th, when we drove to Salem, VA and attended the Virginia Tech vs Maryland football game.  That was a new experience!  From there we headed to Jacksonville, FL for one night and then on to Dania Beach, FL (Fort Lauderdale area). 

 DH has been a Miami Dolphins fan for years so he and Harrison went to that game on Sunday afternoon.  On Monday we put another notch in our National Parks belt by visiting the Everglades.

First we had to stop for lunch, and the kids found a cooperative alligator.

Then we went into the park, where our views of live alligators were - thankfully - not quite so close up.  There is an American Alligator in the slide show below, but it doesn't show up very well at all in the picture. *sigh*  My zoom has its limitations.  The alligators weren't hard to see - we saw several - but they apparently didn't want their picture taken.

We did see plenty of Anhingas on the aptly named Anhinga Trail.  I learned that the reason they sit with their wings open to dry them like this, is because unlike many other birds, they do not have oil glands for preening.

Other birds we spotted (and identified!) included:

Little Blue Heron

Great White Heron (and Great Blue); American Bittern

ospreys;  Brown Pelicans;  Double-crested Cormorants; White Ibis;  various egrets, ducks, plovers, sandpipers, hawks, falcons, gulls and terns; and all kinds of perching birds that would take far much time and space to list!

This pond covered with a bright green water plant looked interesting:

Many of the trees were covered with Spanish Moss.

We also walked the Gumbo Limbo Trail, mainly because we were intrigued by the name.

I had never heard of it before, but the Gumbo Limbo is a type of tree!

On this trail we didn't see many animals, mostly insects and those little lizards that are everywhere in Florida.

The next trail we chose was Pahayokee Overlook, which was a boardwalk over what looked like a huge marsh.  It's surprising that the water is so clear and clean, until you remember that it isn't a swamp or a marsh at all, but a very wide and shallow "river."  The last time I could see this many miles over such a flat landscape was on the Alberta prairie a year ago.

Kennady was taking her Junior Ranger duties quite seriously, and did her best to act as a tour guide.  Obviously she really enjoyed the day.

We drove as far as the Flamingo Visitor Center, which is the end of the road - literally.  The lodging  area there was severely damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma and it was kind of sad to see the buildings looking in such poor repair.  While there we could look out over the bay.

Kennady and Landon were awarded their Junior Ranger badges (Landon declined to have his picture taken though)

Over near the marina, I managed to get a picture of an osprey and of their nests.

We found this crab on the road and let him snap at our shoes, which entertained the kids!

While I was in the marina store, the others got lucky enough to see an American Crocodile and boy I was mad that I missed that! It was starting to get dark, so it was time for us to head back to our hotel.

We stopped at one more pond for a bit of a look-round, and saw this alligator (his eyes and nose are visible) - I used VERY little zoom to get this picture, and only because we were careful to keep a safe distance as there was literally nothing between us.  I'm glad the boys opted not to get out of the van here, because they likely would have run headlong right up to the waters edge. 

One more stop to get some sunset pictures...

Thanks for coming along on my tour of the Everglades!

As always, Show & Tell is hosted by CanadaGirl, and you are invited to visit her blog to participate and to see more Show & Tell entries.

Hopefully I can get my Show & Tell up and linked to our hostess, CanadaGirl, before I need to head off for the day's activities.  I will be back (if all goes well) to read other entries this evening.  So this week I am featuring my daughter, Kennady.

A couple of weeks ago, while my parents and aunts were here visiting, my mom and my aunt decided to teach Kennady how to crochet.  Kennady had been wanting to learn how to knit for awhile, and I thought her hands weren't big enough to handle that, but she might be able to crochet.  Unfortunately, my crochet skills are rudimentary to say the least, so I hadn't even tried to teach her.  Turns out that Kennady will probably be teaching ME, because she caught on really quickly!

When she first learned to chain, she made long ropes of single crochets, walking around the house crocheting!  After just a day or two, she moved on to double crochet and then completed her first project, a hotpad - and although I neglected to take a picture of it, I have been using it proudly!  We have all been impressed that Kennady learned so quickly, and that she has so much patience and perseverance in keeping at it.  And doesn't get frustrated when it doesn't go exactly right!  Way to go, Kennady!!!

I had one more picture to post, but it is not working and I am out of time, so I will edit and add it later!  LOL

For more Show & Tell fun, visit Mary at "Raising 4 Godly Men"

I had originally intended this post for Show & Tell with CanadaGirl last week, but didn't get it finished in time.  I have a number of pictures from Honduras that didn't fit under any other "chapter" so I am tossing a few together here so I can wrap it up!

I grabbed some pictures in town during a shopping trip. 

I think the above building is the police station and local jail.

I don't think I posted anything about the one-day afternoon VBS we held for the Spanish-speaking children in the neighborhood of the church.  These children were in school already, so we set aside an afternoon to do a day camp style VBS for them.  And when I say Spanish-speaking, I mean they knew not a WORD of English.  So it was challenging for us, because most of us knew only enough Spanish to order at a restaurant and ask the amount of our bill at the store!   Thankfully the missionaries did the teaching, and we had some wonderful translators - four young men from the South West school.  These children came from homes where they had very little - perhaps barely enough money to send children to the least expensive school, and that at great sacrifice.  They were so excited about VBS that one little boy tried to cut class in the morning and arrived HOURS too early!! We were supposed to start at 1pm, but we had quite a crowd there by 12:15.  Since we couldn't communicate verbally, we played - mostly we blew bubbles which they LOVED.

This is one of our young translators, Victor, helping Harrison and Eric organize the kids for a relay race.

This picture isn't very clear, but gives a little idea of how many kids we had.  This is approximately a third of the group ready for a puppet show:

We had somewhere over 130 kids. They tended to come and go as they pleased so it was hard to get an accurate number.

The church has some land up on the mountain where they will be building an alcohol rehab center.  We went up to look at the site one day - this is the "road"  (and I use the term very loosely! LOL)

Bob tells us this is where they will make a driveway for the trucks to bring construction materials up.  I may not be a construction engineer, but I am a thinker... and this is a pretty steep grade from what I can tell.  LOL

This is the view from near the actual build site:

After the waterfalls at Pulhaphanzak on the last day, we did get to do some shopping at a tourist plaza.  (There was great rejoicing on the bus when this was announced! LOL)  I was very glad myself, because I hadn't found anything in La Esperanza to take back for Spencer and Landon.  I did find some nice t-shirts at this place though so my gift shopping was completed!  This handsome fellow was greeting at the door:

These are some of the things I brought back as souvinirs and gifts.

For more Show & Tell fun, visit CanadaGirl

THEME

This week I want to invite you to take a moment and post a Summer Photo Essay memoir. Starting from around the official date of Summer to this past week - just give a basic summary of your summer as I know someone of you are photoholics! Haha! Make sure you jot down your memoirs about each photo so everyone can read about your summer. You can do the essay however you want. You can journal a lot of just caption the photo! Can’t wait to see what you all do!

I've decided that I need to do double-duty with this post, and use it for both the Homeschool Memoirs and for Show & Tell.  I just haven't been keeping up well lately, and I don't imagine that will change over the next couple of weeks, as I have family coming for a visit. 

We started off our summer with a trip during the first week of July to Ontario to visit DH's family.  We also were able to visit with friends, and one couple invited us to enjoy their beautiful garden.

We took an impromptu field trip to the Zamboni plant:

We celebrated Kennady's birthday:

On July 4th we went to Niagara Falls for the day.  We visited the  Floral Showhouse, and a few other attractions, and of course, the falls were the highlight.

After arriving back at home, my oldest son Harrison got his Learners Permit

We attended a Combine Demolition Derby - so much fun!!

 Our family made our annual trip to Kingdom Bound 08 in the first week of August.  When we came home from that, Harrison and I had to get ready to head out again.  Two days later we were on our way to Honduras for our much-anticipated missions trip.  I've put together a slideshow of the trip, and will include links to all my blog entries that share more about it below. 

Our Arrival - Part One

La Gruta - Part Two

Morning VBS - Part Three

Harrison's Pictures - Part Four

Working Hard - Part Five

School Days - Part Six

Lakes and Waterfalls - Part Seven

We had a week to settle back into our "regular" life before school began.  Then on Labor Day, we ended our summer with one more field trip.  DH wanted to see the Air and Space Museum at Dulles, so we spent the day there.  It was a fun way to end our summer - and I have yet to get the rest of the pictures up on photobucket or this blog!

For more Homeschool Memoirs, visit The Homeschool Blog Awards

For more Show & Tell fun, visit CanadaGirl

Although I still have Honduras pictures I'd like to share, I decided that for this week's Show & Tell with CanadaGirl I would show a little of what we've been doing in school.  Yes, we actually do school around here! And its amazing how when we are actually DOING school, I don't seem to have time to WRITE ABOUT school on this blog.  LOL

I shared a few pictures on the first day of school showing what we are working on in Science this year.  We are studying Physics.  We started out by learning about different types of motion and how objects move because of different forces acting upon them.

We studied the conservation of momentum by doing a demonstration very similar to a Newton's Cradle, using marbles and a book.

Landon did this worksheet showing how momentum is conserved and the calculations for it.

(I don't remember studying this when I was in Grade Four! LOL)

Then we learned about Force, including tensile strength and buoyancy.  We talked about how a bathroom scale works by measuring the force of gravity on a mass.

We learned a bit about how suspension bridges work as well.

Next we studied Friction.  We tested our dining room floor, our living carpet, and a chunk of coarse sandpaper to see how much friction each would have against a block of wood.

Then we talked about Work.  Mechanical work!  We calculated the amount of work done by lifing different objects.  Its fun to have a chalkboard to show these formulas!  (I even got to write E=mc² one day, and it was totally in context!)

We've finished the first section of our textbook now, and have just started on the second section, so we are now studying simple machines.

So, as you can see from my very scholarly post today, sometimes I neglect blogging because we're having fun learning!

For more Show & Tells, visit Mary's blog and see what others are sharing!

I'm home from vacation just in time for Show & Tell, which is hosted by CanadaGirl.  Please join us, and visit the other bloggers participating!  I hope I'll have time to view them myself, and catch up on the blogs I read... 

For the past several years, our family has been going to a Christian music festival at Darien Lakes Theme Park (formerly Six Flags Darien Lake) in western New York state called Kingdom Bound.  We set up camp at nearby Darien Lake state park and then commute each day to the park for the concerts and speakers - and of course, the rides as well.  Here is the little tarp town we called home for the week:

Our next door neighbors are friends of ours and we share meals and campfires with them.  There is a lake (duh - Darien LAKE) with a beach, but despite our good intentions, we still haven't been there.  There is a playground near our site and the younger kids sometimes go over there.  This year we also got a look at a snapping turtle that had wandered up to the road near the bathrooms!

We think he had a run-in with the lawnmower - see the scrape on the top of his shell, and how the tail end of the shell is broken off?

Well... off to the park... we all enjoy the rides, and Landon is tall enough for all but one this year.  Kennady is still too short for the coasters, but she just managed to sneak in for this one - the Silver Bullet, I think its called.  I guess Harrison must have looked really responsible to the ride attendant:

There isn't much point in taking pictures at the concerts, because we usually are too far back, but I usually grab a couple shots just for fun.  Some of the bands we saw this year were:  Decemberadio, Thousand Foot Krutch, Skillet, Denver & the Mile High Orchestra, Big Daddy Weave, Salvador, Jaci Velazquez, 33 Miles (had not even heard of these guys before, but I really liked them - always nice to add someone new to the list of artists we enjoy), Matthew West, Delirious, and Newsboys.  I will put up a couple pictures I got of the Newsboys concert, since I was actually close enough to get some that turned out.  We also met an artist and speaker - Eric Samuel Timm - and bought some of his prints. Other speakers we enjoyed were Justin Lookadoo and James Ryle. 

Well, just looking at the time now, I guess I probably won't have time to visit everyone's blogs today and get caught up, but I'll try to see a few.  I'm short on time because Harrison and I are going on a mission trip to Honduras, and we leave tomorrow!! Not much time between the camping trip and heading to the airport to do all the laundry and all the other fun stuff.  I'll be back in just over a week, and hopefully have LOTS of Show & Tell material from Honduras!!  Prayers for the trip and for the projects the team will be working on are appreciated!

It is time for Show & Tell with CanadaGirl, a highlight of the blogging week!  Click on the link to visit her blog and participate in the fun!

 I am going to share about THE most redneck, hillbilly thing that I have done in a long time.  On Saturday night I took Harrison and Kennady to the 4H/FFA Fair to see a Combine Demolition Derby.  My homeschooling friend told me about it on Friday night, because her FIL had a combine he was putting in the derby, so she and her family would all be "pit crew"  I didn't need to think twice - I absolutely HAD to see this event!! 

I've got two slide shows (at photobucket)  that I made from my pictures, but can't figure out how to make them work here.  So I will be sharing the individual photos instead.  If I crack the code on getting the slideshow to work, I'll edit and put those up here instead.  Anyway...

The crowd for this event was HUGE, relatively speaking.  The emcee told us that this was the first time a combine demolition derby had been held east of the Mississippi.  Wow.  Ground-breaking!!! LOL  But obviously a LOT of people wanted to see it - the traffic was lined up in all directions from the fairgrounds, and parking was at a premium.  There were long lines to get into the "seating bowl" for the event, and in fact they had to prolong the parade at the beginning to give more time for the people to get through the line and find a seat.  (There were only a few bleachers, so seating was BYOB - bring your own blanket) 

Here are pictures of the parade of combines.  I wish I'd remembered all the years and make/model info about each of the eleven entries, but most of it left my head.

(This "Holstein" combine is the one belonging to my friend's FIL)

I do remember that this one is an Allis-Chalmers Gleaner.  Originally manufactured in a silver color, which is why the owner decorated and named this entry "The Tin Man"  That is "Dorothy" up front. LOL)

This one was called First Responder, in honor of the owner's connection to the fire department.  The emcee made a comment about them taking a "perfectly good John Deere and painting it red"

The entries were divided into three "heats" and then at the end the winner of each heat faced off in the final.  Here's the first heat lined up and ready to go:

And let the demolition begin!

As it got dark, it got harder for me to get good pictures.  After the third heat, there was a ten-minute break for the winners to make repairs before the final.  The small wheels on the combines did not fare so well, and the Army Farmer (who won the third heat) had his welding crew come out and fix him up!

Some final heat action:

And the winner...

The Holstein belonging to Lisa's FIL!! (BTW, pray for Lisa's family - after the big win on Friday, this week has brought some not-so-fun things to their household - just pray for them, the Lord knows the details)

The pictures really don't do the event justice - it was so much fun! 

Now I need to get back to work here - we are headed out on vacation tomorrow morning, the annual Kingdom Bound camping trip!  I'll be home next Friday, and hopefully will have time to put up a Show & Tell about that.

Its time for Show and Tell again!! To participate or see other entries in this highlight of the week, visit CanadaGirl

On Monday I took the kids to a mountain lake beach near here.  We went with three other families and it was the perfect beach day in many ways.  Sometimes that beach is quite crowded, especially when busloads of kids from daycamps or schools in the city show up.  But lucky for us, despite the perfectly clear and hot day, no busloads arrived!! So it was relatively quiet, and with fewer people on the north beach, it was also not too difficult for the moms to keep an eye on their kids without having to be right next to them at all times.

Landon volunteered to be buried in the sand (I supervised this very closely, because I knew it could be dangerous - and told them not to do that ever again):

On Tuesday I took Kennady to the playground, and in some ways she is just a teen girl.  Most notably, she likes to take pictures of herself with the digital camera.  LOL  Here she is:

And then she needed a picture of the two of us.  I hate pictures of myself.  But if I can get past the fact that I'm not wearing makeup and my double chin shows in this one, I guess its not too bad. 

I guess my Show & Tell for this week is not terribly exciting, but to me, it sums up much of our summer experience.  Taking a little extra time to do some fun things and be silly.

I got started during the week with sharing the pictures of our day in Niagara Falls, but didn't finish.  Therefore, it has become my Show & Tell entry for this week!  For more Show & Tell fun, visit CanadaGirl.

The first thing we did when we got into the town was to stop at a "souvenir mall" where there was a glass-blowing studio.  We thought it would be fun to watch the artisans at work for a bit, and it really was interesting but I didn't take any pictures.  There were a couple "photo op" places there, and Kennady wants her pictures taken every chance she gets, so I complied with some of her requests:

This is what I got when I asked Landon to pose at the same place:

Other "characters" that Kennady met included this RCMP officer

the Pink Panther

and - how thrilling - Hannah Montana!

We chose to park at the lot quite far from the falls and downtown and take the shuttle in.  We got off the shuttle at the Floral Showhouse (link takes you to my pictures) and looked around at the greenhouses, and then continued on to the main attraction - the Horseshoe Falls.  This was one of the first views we had:

I kept thinking about those cartoons - like in The Lion King - where the characters are floating down a river saying "I wonder what that roaring noise is?"  LOL

 As we got closer, we could see the famous rainbows.  Now I'll keep quiet and just post pictures of the Falls...

That's the Maid of the Mist boat tour above.  In this next picture, you can see the little knot of people in raincoats - that is the Journey under the Falls tour that we wanted to do but the timing didn't work out.  DH and I went down there years and years ago (as in - when we were dating!!) and it was awe-inspiring.  The power and beauty of waterfalls is breath-taking, and to think that God planned it and created it for our enjoyment, and I believe He was also planning ahead to provide hydro-electricity!  Amazing!

We went into the shopping district to have our dinner and then came back to the Falls in the evening for the fireworks show.  From where we sat down to watch the fireworks, this was our view until it got dark:

The Parks light up the falls at night, with colored lights, which is nice enough, but it doesn't begin to compare with the rainbows and sunsets that God creates!  Thanks for coming by!