How hard could it be?

Eyeglasses take 3...no 4. Last summer Tristan got eyeglasses. They broke after a few months...all by themselves. He got new frames, under warranty. The puppy ate the frames and the lenses. We PAID FOR new frames and lenses. Last night Tristan forgot to put his glasses away before bed and they got slept on and stepped on and probably bitten by the puppy. They were on the floor by his bed when he woke up...broken again.

So now, here we are with a VISION INSURANCE PLAN surely we are prepared for anything now.

Tristan's regular eye doctor it turns out doesn't accept the vision plan. On the back of the flimsy paper card they sent there are logos for places like Walmart, Sears, JC Penney and Target. We head off optimistically for the promised once yearly FREE pair of eyeglasses.

Our nearest Walmart, 45 minutes away, is not part of the plan because they are independently owned not part of the chain. They still wanted to sell us something and were relatively helpful but by gosh we want to get the promised FREE pair from the VISION PLAN which is not free, it's $20 a month.


Sears looked promising. They helped Tristan choose a frame (a lengthy process), wrote up the order even though the VISION PLAN's system was down and they couldn't verify that Tristan is insured. Typed the prescription into their system then...nothing. They can not do Tristan's prescription since it is a high number prescription (blind as a bat in daytime kinda prescription).


So we move on to JCPenney. "Our location doesn't have vision facilities" we are told.


Target..."this location has no optical shop" we are told.

Then we gave up and went home. I do have a pair on order from Zenni Optical (and plan to get a second pair from them too, great prices) but I still hope to eventually find a way to get a FREE or cheap pair through the VISION PLAN which is now seeming like not such a good plan at all.

What's Up?

What's up there on that roof?


It's furry and orange


and cute and silly


It's Flower the cat!

Perhaps he wanted to enjoy the warmer day today, without sitting on the mountains of snow on the ground.

Tubing Cub Scouts

We went snow tubing again this week, this time as a cub scout den meeting. We suggested it and the leader said sure! A fun time was had. I am convinced that tubing is the most difficult thing ever to photograph, they go too fast!

Randon pics

Our ferrets are multi talented

Not only are some of them maths ferrets as shown in an earlier post some of them are also phonics and language arts ferrets! These kids around here sure have it easy with all the ferret helpers!

Wait a minute here, don't eat the book!

What a "Bover" long hair is

Tristan's hair was "bovering" him so much that he couldn't concentrate on his reading this morning.


It was looking scraggly so I set up my Mommy barber shop (hair clippers).


Tristan didn't like his haircut though because he only wanted the front cut he wanted to keep the rest long until summer. I convinced him we should do it the same all over and he agreed but then felt upset after it was cut off. I haven't a lot of skill in hair cutting and can really only do a buzz cut with the clippers or no cut at all. I did use a longer length plastic thing so it wouldn't be totally summer short.


No photos please, I'm too distressed by this short hair!

Tristan soon forgot about the hair cutting incident had a quick shower to get the itchy hair off and played happily the rest of the day. He kept a handful of his cut hair though! LOL

I on the other hand noticed that one of Tristan's toys needed sprucing up. His magnet set. He used to bring his magnet set absolutely everywhere, he only brings it sometimes now. The set has been to parks and co-op's and friends houses etc. The set was filthy! I was worried about it all rusting but on second look decided I didn't care, all the magnet parts and pieces looked filthy. I soaked it all for an hour then rinsed and dried and the magnets look good as new again. No rust!

Girl Scout science and snow on the way

More snow is coming but before that we walked a couple dogs to the lake, didn't stay long though, there was a real chill in the air at the lake. It's often a lot colder there than at our house which is not far up the road.

Brought in lots of wood to get ready, look Mom- no jacket. Colin is rarely cold, a hearty New England child I guess!

About 4:00 PM the snow arrived.

Earlier in the day Hayley worked on the last few requirements for two girl scout patches. Making it Matter and Water Wonders. As usual a brother or two joined in for parts of it. Sometimes girl scout things match up well with cub scout things too. I sometimes refer to this site Scout School to see what requirements the kids can work on together or just to see what fits a need in our homeschooling.

Making a polymer...or flubber!

A ferret helps out!

Later adding salt and other items to bowls of the polymer to see how it changes.

Fun to play with but messy too.

Colin LOVES messy.

Then we moved on to engineering a structure that would hold a cup full of gravel, using only rolled newspaper, tape, a cup and string...oh and gravel. Colin this is not your experiment!

The first try didn't work.

After some modifications, success the structure holds a heavy cup of gravel!

We also made some circuits, with wires and batteries and such not the easy way with our much loved snap circuits! LOL wasn't sure if it would count for the patch if we used the snap circuits.


and froze some salt water and fresh water to see which froze first.

The fresh water froze solid where the salt water stayed somewhat slushy.

I can do it

I received a "squirrel house" for Christmas. It needed assembly and looked complicated so I set it aside. Today I took it back out to finally assemble and still felt that it looked too complicated. Tristan said "I'll do that for you".

And so he did!

THANKS Tristan!!!!!

More boys stories-communicating, cub scouts

A couple more articles the boys have written for their cub scout newpaper and as part of earning the communicating achievements.

Beethoven by Tristan

For the music pin I'm learning about a composer that I enjoy. That composer is Beethoven. Ludwig Van Beethoven was born in Germany in 1770 and lived until 1827. Beethoven grew up in an unhappy home and had to go to work playing music from a very young age, to earn money for his family. His father was a mean person who punished Beethoven if he made mistakes on the piano. Beethoven eventually became deaf and some people thought he was insane. One of Beethoven's favorite foods was the same as mine, macaroni and cheese! Beethoven wrote a lot of music and it is very good music. People wonder what Beethoven was thinking about when he wrote his music, some think a bird, the yellow hammer sparrow, was the sound Beethoven copied for the da,da,da,daaah, sound in his famous 5th symphony. My favorite symphony of Beethoven's is the 6th but they are all good and you might like to listen to Beethoven sometime. If you play Beethoven on windows media player you can watch crazy shapes on the screen, it goes extra crazy during the loudest parts of Beethoven's symphonies. Beethoven was a wonderful man, composer and pianist who changed music forever.

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Skiing by Colin
Skiing is fun, I like to go fast when I ski. I took lessons at Mt. Sunapee this year and learned a lot. In the lessons I started on smaller hills and then moved to bigger ones. I like the bigger slopes the best! One of the most important rules of skiing is to stay in control. Also you should know your limits and not try a lift or ski slope that you're not ready for. Another important thing is to wear the right equipment. Helmets keep you safe and goggles help you see better when it's sunny or snowy. Mt Sunapee is my favorite for skiing. Pat's Peak has tubing as well as skiing. Tubing is very fun, a lift carries you up the hill and then you ride the snow tube very fast down. The snow at Pat's Peak felt a little fake, I think it snows more at Sunapee and they make more snow at Pat's Peak, I like the real snow better. I like to go tubing too though so I hope to visit both MT. Sunapee and Pat's Peak again before winter ends. I wish I could ski every day, it's a great sport. It can be cold skiing but you can stay warm by wearing lots of layers. Dressing warm helps prevent you from getting too cold or getting frostbite. If you're getting cold take a break and warm up for awhile. After skiing it's nice to get hot chocolate. If you haven't tried skiing before you should give it a try. See you on the slopes!

by COLIN

Webelos-We'll Be Loyal Scouts

Today was the Blue and Gold Dinner for cub scouts in our pack. This is when the highest ranking cub scouts move forward into boy scouts. Next year Colin and Tristan will be doing that! Today they got their Webelos Badge, which means basically that in one year they will be Boy Scouts. They also got some other pins and achievement awards for things they've been working on.

Colin and Tristan are acting silly because I want to take a picture! Tristan is wearing a table decoration on his head. He did most of the work on it and loves his table decoration. We were supposed to make something patriotic so we put a map on a poster board and made it a cylinder so it would stand up on the table. Decorated the map with regional stickers (which came with the map) and made "fireworks" coming out of the top. Hard to explain so I'll post the pictures Tristan took of it.

Table decoration.

Receiving their Webelos patch. They will transition to the khaki shirt of the Boy Scouts now.

We enjoyed some dinner there although being vegetarians we brought our own since the meal was hot dogs and beans. Soon it was time to clean up and Tristan helped a lot with that. He's very good at pitching in and helping as needed.