Changes

My son, AH,  and I entered our 4th year of homeschooling on November 1st.  I cannot believe my youngest is a 7th grader!  He is also our only child living in the house.  Lots of changes this year.  Our 19 year old, AD,  is off to college this fall and I know AH misses him.  Little brother had a hard time when his big sis, AN, moved to college and I'm seeing some of the same things this time around even though AH is 6 years older.  Dinner time is when he seemed to feel the loss of his sister the most and I'm finding this to be true this time around.  Dinner is a very different affair without AD.  I guess I never realized how AD would lead the conversation each night because we have much quieter dinners these days.  He was home a couple of weekends ago and it was wonderful to hear these words again: "So, Dad, how was your day today?" and "Mom, guess what?"
 There is a big hole in our lives.  We will figure it out, but change is tough.
 We make our way through this change by forming new traditions and looking forward to the times when big sister and big brother are here.   One such change is to watch a movie or documentary together each night.  We started out watching each of the Harry Potter movies in anticipation of the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 1, but it has been so much fun that we save the documentaries we watch for school until dad gets home.  Last week it was Luther (happy belated Reformation Day!)
Another way to cope is to keep busy and we have had one of the busiest falls of our lives! It seems we are averaging 2 to 3 field trips, clubs or park days per week! Here is a sampling of our adventures so far this fall:

Got the new Lego Minotaur Game and played it A LOT

Took a class at Como Zoo: Life Through Time

A Millipede, one of the many examples of life shown to us during the 8 week Life Through Time class

Art Club

Searched for fossils at a fossil class

Found one!

Found some of Dad's childhood toys while helping Grandpa clean out storage...

AH and Dad try out the boxing gloves found.

Harvest Fest.  And that is the worlds heaviest pumpkin and it did weigh 1,820.5 lbs!

Another monster pumpkin at Harvest Fest

A Harry Potter Halloween party

Carving a pumpkin

Draco Malfoy

Celebrated Big Brother's birthday

Take Me Out To The Ball Park...

Last week AH and I headed to Minneapolis to take a tour of the Minnesota Twins' brand new stadium: Target Field.  Since baseball is BIG here at our house, this field trip wasn't met by the usual teenage indifference that seems to permeate our discussions lately.  We are Twins fans and we had been to a game earlier in the season, but we wanted to see some of the areas that aren't open to the general public during games.  The cost was $15.00 for adults and $7.00 for kids, so it was one of the more costly field trips we've taken, but both AH and I felt it was worth the money.  I'll let the pictures tell the story from here on out:

The Golden Glove outside the stadium

Kirby Puckett's image at the Legends Club



The stadium is filled with wonderful images and quotes

Wonderful quotes by TV and Radio announcers

The view from the press box

On the Budweiser Roof Deck

The visitors locker room was cool, but

 the visitors dugout was even cooler!!

All in all..a very, very nice day!



Cruisin' Down the River

AH in front of the Mississippi Queen

AH and I got a chance to take a narrated riverboat cruise down the Mississippi River last week.  We learned some great facts about Minneapolis and the Mississippi river.  But the best part was going through the St. Anthony lock.  Check out the photos we took that day!

Entering the lock

Exiting the lock, 50 feet lower!
AH thought the doors looked like the gates of Mordor (Lord of the Rings)

AH was fascinated with this whole field trip

Having fun together!

In 1492, Columbus Sailed The Ocean Blue

And in 2010, AH and I were able to explore handcrafted replicas of the Nina and the Pinta in Hudson, Wisconsin!  We drove the half hour to this small river town this morning where these two ships are docked until Monday.   It was almost perfect timing for our history studies!  We will be learning about the age of discovery, Caravels (this type of ship), and Columbus when we begin our "school year" next month.  I couldn't pass up an opportunity to learn hands on and up close, especially considering we live in the middle of the country away from any sort of coast.    More information about these two museum ships can be found on their website. 

AH finds a map!

On the Pinta

I'm not sure I would be brave enough to cross an unknown ocean on these small ships!

They are looking for crew members for the last few weeks of their tour this year. I did ask AH if he would be interested in signing up, but he just looked at me like I was crazy.  What an adventure in learning that would be!

"Mom, Come Here! You Have Got To See This!"

"And bring your camera!"

The door opened and AH bellowed those exact words into the house . I was a little annoyed, but when I got outside I could understand his enthusiasm. He had been playing in the backyard when he chanced upon this fine fellow:

This has to be the largest caterpillar I have ever seen. Who knew that Minnesota had such colorful and large creatures and that they could be in our suburban backyard! We haven't figured out what kind of caterpillar we encountered because AH watched its progress all afternoon (I told him to keep it out of my vegetable garden!) and hasn't bothered to look it up. Eventually his curiosity will get the better of him and then I'll let you know what he comes up with!

***UPDATE***

AH came upstairs to see what I was doing and when he saw the pictures of the caterpillar, he looked it up on our favorite site: Discover Life Here is what he found:
The scientific name of our visitor is Hyalophora Cecropia, and it will become a Cecropia moth or Robin moth. I can't link to the page from Discover Life which had a lot of pictures and information, so I looked on the site, Butterflies and Moths of North America, and found more information.

Just passing by...

I opened the door this morning to let in some fresh morning air and noticed this fellow passing through our yard!

Of course we asked him to stay and visit!

But he seemed to have places to go and people to see!

AH identified our visitor as a painted turtle. We looked up painted turtles on Warner Nature Center's website (this nature center is very near our home).

First Caterpillar of the Year

The first caterpillar of the season is a Wooly Bear also known as Isia isabella. It will become a Tiger Moth. We love to identify the many different varieties of caterpillars. We love this site because we don't have to look through a thousand pictures to find what we're looking for; we just enter in the information and it helps narrow our search.



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