All Gone

What was here:



Is now there:



I guess that means that Fall has fallen and winter is wandering in. By the calendar Winter begins in late December but it tends to arrive sooner here in NH. Time to get ready.

Outdoor cages and such to clean up and bring indoors (never know if they might be NEEDED for some animal, a rescue, an orphan, a new pet...over the winter and they'd be no good buried in snow. Another kitty litter box needs to be set up too since the cats spend much more time indoors in the winter.


The pool is draining.

A few stray apples look out of place on the leafless tree.

Snowflake the cats fur is thickening.

Fire wood is being stacked and covered.

Flower is thinking who knows what but I imagine it to be...... winter is not to my liking... or maybe...... why did you put a mini pumpkin in front of me.

So fall has fallen and we get ready for winter.

Not many photos from the past week. It was a quiet week with only Thursday being a day out. Colin and Tristan had their first visit to a Boy Scout meeting that day. They are cubs and will move up in February. I took photos (of course!) but they have too many other peoples kids in them to publish. The big boy scouts looked so old! The group of 10-11 year old cub scouts looked so little in comparison, most of those boy scouts looked like they can shave or will soon! I must admit don't know how I feel about them moving into a large boy scout troop. It will be the first regularly meeting activity my kids have had which is NOT all or mostly homeschooled children.
From what I could tell the boy scout troop is a diverse mix of all sorts of boys some seemed nice, some maybe not so much. I did hear a few bad words spoken from a boy or two which I found odd with all the cub scouts parents hanging around. It's a new phase and I'm not sure, just not sure. I think there would be benefit in my boys being in the boy scouts but are they ready? Am I? They will be further out of our safe cocoon of home education, carefully chosen activities and like minded friends than they have ever been before. Sure we see a mix of kids at the beach and in the community but for the most part they don't turn out to be a big part of our lives. It's a subject which I need to spend some time thinking about. Are they ready to stay strong to their own convictions and relatively good behavior?????? Yes this requires some thought.

Our home ed. has been going well. We're...8-10 weeks into our year now? Going on week 10 I believe. We are doing well, starting to get a little antsy. The kids have done by far the most formal schoolwork these past weeks than in years past. It's a good thing but I can see a break might be beneficial soon. It's getting a little monotonous. Both for the kids and me. I see them feeling a little bored since nothing is "new" by this point in the year. I find myself less perky about planning "next week". In fact "last week" is not completely wrapped up and filed away in the binders and next week starts in mere hours.

My job search is mixed. I had a job offer from one ski place but despite the fact that I'd said I could work any day of the week until 2:00 pm, the job I was offered was Saturday-Sunday and Monday 8am-5pm. I had to turn it down since hubby needs to head to work-with our one vehicle-at 2:45. Not to mention the fact that I don't drive well, especially in the winter but really not well pretty much anytime. I also don't like the thought of the kids being alone for too long just yet. Sure they're old enough but there is still good reason to have a parent around most of the time. Too much bad in the world that children can come across accidentally. I may get another offer from the ski mountain this coming week but at the moment I have my sites and hopes set on another ski mountain which could in fact be a better fit. I will interview there on Saturday. I just want this whole thing to be decided. I don't like not knowing and don't like waiting.

On the home front, I think Tristan is coming down with a cold or flu. I dread to think it might be flu but it's come on suddenly for him and at the moment I sense that something might be about to come on suddenly for me. Hoping it turns out to be minor for us or that the others in the family don't get it at all.

On the pet front, The Degus are in a bigger cage now. They are heavy chewers so can't have any plastic. We had them in a small aquarium tank while waiting for a lid to arrive for the 36" long aquarium tank. The lid arrived Friday and Hayley got the Degus settled in. They need more toys and things to climb on there is plenty of space in the bigger tank. The photo below only shows around half of their new home. These are great pets. We had some inconclusiveness about whether we are allowed to have them where we live but it turns out we can being rural and this being for educational reasons.

The other pets are fine. Dogs lazily sleeping by the wood stove. cats spending more time indoors. Guinea pigs indoors for the winter and squeaking constantly for treats. The ferrets also seem to enjoy lazing about when the wood stove is on. Fish doing well now that Colin has their tanks set up correctly. Everything else turtles, frogs, gerbils and hamsters, puttering along as usual. Hayley is campaigning even harder for a tarantula these days. maybe, but I'm not feeding it! I'm not scared of them but hate to see something eat another living things and she would have to feed it crickets. I don't know if I can bear it but if she keeps it in her room I guess.

I will leave with this thought...I really hope my next post isn't that we have the flu or had it and were out of commission for days! Mainly because we have Animal Academy again this Thursday and that is THE highlight of the year for the kids.

Octoberfest in November

Today we attended "Octoberfest in November". Pat's peak, one of the local ski mountains, holds this event the first weekend of November each year. There is a used ski and snowboard sale, German entertainment and foods, lots of activities for kids and unusual things such as chainsaw carving and mud snowboarding. We got some used skis and boots for the adults, kids already have some, contending with the large crowds all trying to find a deal on the right size skis boots of equipment. That was not fun, I don't like crowds but did manage to find some things eventually. After the crowded ski sale it was a relief to get back outdoors and enjoy the various activities.


Bouncy castle:



make your own candy apple, as if they didn't already have enough candy from Halloween!

Pumpkin Painting

It was a nice weather day, a little chilly but not as bad as some days lately have been.

Tristan and Colin tried the keg bowling, a strike wins a prize but no prizes for us. It was hard!

This was a fun day. The boys are now quite in the mood for snow and skiing- me, I can wait longer! The days are getting cold though, we've already had some flurries, soon the snow will be here to stay.

Halloween 2009

For Halloween 2009 we went to my Mothers house, as we do most years. She lives in a suburban area with neighbors where we live rurally-not best for trick or treating! To start the day we had planned on a girls day at the salon. The guys went shopping for last minute Halloween needs while the girls had hair or manicures done. I was not able to take pictures as we were all being worked on in different places at the same time. I did take a pic of Hayley's nails after the fact0 her first manicure! Hayley said it was kind of fun but a little strange.

Pretty nails.


Later we had dinner, then the kids got ready for the main attraction...trick or treats!

Not many photos since they mostly didn't come out well after dark. I got a few. Hayley was Tweety bird, Colin a ghoul and Tristan a star wars guy (Jenga Fett? I think he said). Trevor didn't dress up but the other kids shared candy-of which they all got way too much! Some houses just give a piece or two but some give handful after handful! The bags were breaking by the end and we only went up 4 not very big roads.

The kids were very tired by the end of the night and having a 2 hour drive home meant we were up well past bedtime. We got home about 11:00 and the kids went happily to bed.

Fish on Friday

After two busy days out romping with reptiles you'd think we'd need a day of rest. In fact we had shopping to do on Friday. We needed some Halloween things, some supplies for our new pets from the animals class and Colin wanted a couple new fish for his tanks. Colin now has two fish tanks going, one for gentle fish and one for the aggressive sorts. He has learned that certain fish don't mix! Friday he was able to have a good talk with the fish department person at the pet store, who also started HIS first aquariums at age 11-same as Colin. I think Colin has a better idea of how to keep his fish happy and healthy now.

Just a couple random pet store pictures because well .........must take pictures!

Animal Academy-October

This month at Animal Academy the lesson was about snakes, this went along very well with the previous days visit to N.E.R.D. (post below). In fact the owner of the place which hosts Animal Academy said he worked at N.E.R.D. in his younger days.

The kids had a lecture about snakes, their anatomy and some fun facts and then learned about snake handling tools. They were then able to try the tools and wrangle some snakes back into their cases. Later we went to the reptile room to meet more snakes, a legless lizard and other reptiles. We have a wonderful time at Animal Academy. 'm glad we made the choice to take on this course even though it's a 2 hour trek each way. The people at Animal Academy clearly love their work and enjoy sharing what they know with the kids and the parents. So far the classes all have run long too, it a fun way to spend a morning.

After class we were given a chance to choose an animal or two to adopt and learn more about at home. So this was a special treat. The Animal Academy takes in quite a few rescues when people get pets and then decide it's too much work. Or have pets they aren't allowed to have where they live or other such reasons. Often these pets which have been turned in are pregnant and when they become over run the animal place looks for new homes as was the case today. they had quite a few rodents and turtles for adoption.

Snake Handling 101- I like how they don't talk down to the kids here. They assume the kids are intelligent and want to learn much about the animals not just a collection of cute facts.


Colin loved snake handling!

Did I meet your twin yesterday at N.E.R.D.?

Not a snake-Legless lizard

Lizards

Our new friends...

I think the kids have named them Pumpkin and Bongo. We will be breeding them one time (they are easy to sex and are not prolific breeders) and setting up two habitats, one for males and one for females for these social creatures who like to live in groups.

New England Reptile distributors Trip

Last Wednesday we attended a tour of New England reptile distributors. This is a large facility that breeds all manner of snakes. They had thousands of snakes from fairly common ones to very, very rare. We saw one snake which there is reportedly only 4 known from that exact species. N.E.R.D. as they use for an acronym, ships snakes worldwide and had just shipped a $20,000 snake to the UK. Some of their snakes retail for up to $200,000!

The tour began in one of the snake rooms. These rooms we extremely hot, humid and smelly! A couple of the children in the tour had to leave as the heat was just too much. The rooms need to be very hot since these snakes come from much hotter areas than New Hampshire. We were shown 2 or 3 snakes in each room, with the kids being given a chance to touch some snakes and hear some information bout snakes and their care and also info about specific types of snakes. There were 4 or snake rooms, a lizard room and a fun cave room where a variety of reptiles were kept and brought out for the children to see and touch. This included one snake that was more than 10 feet long, some lizards and a large turtle. I didn't get many post- able photos of the snake rooms since there were quite a few kids in the group whom I don't have permission to post their photos.

I did take pictures of a few snakes, this top one was my favorite.



The varied colors of the snakes were so interesting and often beautiful.

a sleepy lizard below.

In each snake room there were rows and rows of bins as in the photo below. Each bin houses a snake.

Some snakes live in larger enclosures but the tour leader said many prefer the bins. The tour was informative, we learned a lot about snake reproduction, snake genetics and snake laws-quite a few snakes at N.E.R.D. were police confiscated from people not licensed to own them or pets that people could not handle. Our tour leader said they are called out at all hours to help catch or confiscate dangerous snakes.

There was also a large pet shop attached to N.E.R.D. The pet shop had all the usual cats, dogs, fish, more reptiles, small furry things and of course pet supplies. We ad almost as much fun i the large pet shop as on the reptile tour.

Large fish tank:

Hard to see but there were kittens in these cages, we wanted them! They were pricey though.

Tristan decided to dress nicely for the animals :-).

Much time was spent with the puppies, what fun!

We spent about 4 hours at N.E.R.D. and plan to return again another time. Fun place!