Late fall days

Still getting in many walks to the lake and in the woods with the dogs. The kids have been continuing classes at the Weare homeschool group, every other Wednesday. We also went to see a show at the Capitol center for the arts, this one was rocket science themed.

changeable weather week

Over the past week the snow has melted and we were able to get back to fall weather rather than winter, what a relief! The weather has been changeable though with some days being clean, sunny and 50 degrees and others foggy, rainy and below freezing. We are still getting outdoors as much s possible and also resigning ourselves to the fact that winter is coming.


Photos of Comet and the beach below were taken just one day apart. The top two are on a clear, calm, warm day and the next two are cold and foggy, at least to start, it did in fact warm up that day.

We've gotten a little out of sync with our Zoology book so a giraffe blood pressure experiment was conducted early in the week and then we went on to reptiles. Colin takes a turn demonstrating while the other kids, and dogs look on.

Later on Colin is pressed into service to help repair the lawn mower.

The cats are staying indoors more with the cooler weather, Flower looks very comfy!

Walks in the woods continue safely now that the dogs have their orange coats. Spot the puppy! In some ways it's still easy to loose sight of the dogs where they are all black and their coats do blend in with the foliage.

On Thursday we went ice skating with the tween and teen group. Trevor and Hayley opted out, I got right in there with the kids though and took some pictures. I didn't fall down even once. I guess skating is one of those things you don't forget, or it comes right back to you.

Friday, on 11/11/11, what a cool date, we had a boy scout skills day. The boys were able to work on things that needed signing off in their books. I think Colin and Tristan are now almost ready to become first class scouts.

On the weekend we got to visit Kiwi, Comet's mother. There is a noticeable difference in how they react to each other now. It's not Oh my Mother, how great to see her, it's more like "Playdate, let's go"!

Comet enjoyed visiting kiwi and also very much enjoys rides in the car. He seems to think Tristan is there as a piece of furniture or something though! Comet looks comfortable, not sure about Tristan!!

Since bunny in the snow photo was written about last week but didn't post for some reason I added a photo to this week. The bunnies did enjoy taking walks in the snow. Thankfully the snow is gone now except for a patch here and there.

Early November

The past week was fairly busy. We had Halloween on Monday. Typically we would visit my Mother on this day but the kids are older now, and also it was on a day that was hard for Bobby to get off from work, so we stayed home. With the snow and multitude of power outages a long trip wasn't a great idea anyway and many towns changed or cancelled their trick or treating. The kids had fun dressing up the dogs instead. Bonkers was a ladybug, Freeze a pumpkin and Comet was the super hero Batdog. I think the dogs had fun but they also tried pretty hard to pull off Bonkers' ladybug antennae!

Comet loves any and all new experiences, the Halloween decor called out to him as possible toys.

With close to 2 feet of snow the start of the week was about playing in the stuff and showing it to the pets. Hayley took her bunnies for walks in the snow, one at a time. The dogs loves it, the cats hated it.

In our geography study we are leaning about some Asian countries and in our Zoology studies we learned about Ungulates. We didn't do any physical science labs this week due to general busyness. We did attend Lego class at homeschool group. The kids learned about gears and had to make vehicles that could climb a ramp. They had a lot of fun with that and we plan to buy a motor or two for use with our legos at home.

Mid week there was still a lot of snow on the ground. Taking the dogs for walks in the woods I was struck by the fact that the fall leaves are on top of the snow rather than under. Some thing's wrong with that picture!

Thursdays we often join together with other homeschoolers for homeschool PE which can be anything active, games, hikes etc... This week the field was snow covered so we met in the church parking lot. Kids played informally for awhile and then the Mom who leads the group introduced them to the game of handball.

 Later in the week kit 2 from Lego master builder arrived. These are really fun and educational sets from which a variety of models can be made. Hayley and Tristan especially look forward to these kits.

 Comet is a little more used to his Batdog costume by the end of the week.

 Saturday I took Comet on a long walk while the kids were busy getting ready for rocket club. We were close to two miles from home, and had just turned around, when Comet found this stick make that log, photo below, and insisted on carrying it all the way home. He is one determined puppy!

 Saturday afternoon the last Rocket club was held. The leader set off a big, loud powerful rocket. He said that he doesn't often use that one since it needs a big engine which takes some time to prepare. Our family had fun launching a variety of rockets and only lost one to the trees!

The kids wanted to work with terra cotta clay more after experiencing it last month in art class. AS only two of the kids take the art class I wanted to have the other two work with this type of clay too so I bought some at the craft store.

Sunday we went apple picking, which is always fun. We weren't sure what it would be like since it has already snowed and the weather has been very cold. There were still a good variety of apples to be had although the trees looked a bit frozen.

As a finale to the weekend Hayley invited her friends to see Puss N Boots in 3D. With a December birthday it's always hard for Hayley to plan something and have people actually able to attend. One year she had a half birthday in the summer and this year she asked if she could invite friends to see this movie instead of trying to have a party in mid. Dec. It worked out well, everyone enjoyed the movie and Tristan managed to convince Hayley to invite him too!

Autumn with a chance of Winter

The week started off normal enough, walking the dogs, hiking in the woods (well Comet and I did have a near run in with a black bear but all's well that ends well) doing science experiments, learning about Mexico and some about Brazil, dissecting owl pellets, getting ready for Halloween and autumn in general. It was just a normal October week until the first snow arrived and then the second much larger snow! WE are certainly not ready for winter yet, hopefully it will melt and then the temperature will warm up again for a month or two.

Tristan keeps asking for more science experiments. I pulled out a few science kits that never got finished or just the older kids did them. Tristan had some fun making a telescope, and testing out his puppy's senses (well Comet kept wanting to be involved!). The  Tristan said isn't it about time we did some serious Chemistry!? So yes we'll work on that Tristan. He means crash,bang, make a mess and some explosions chemistry so I think we'll have to buy a kit.

Here are a few of the science experiments Tristan worked on this week:

Outdoors we see many signs of fall and winter to come. This wasp still refuses to leave it's nest (it was there last week too).

 Lots of leaves have fallen.

 Something is working hard on this tree below:

Midweek we went to see a presentation about Ulysses S. Grant with our homeschool group. How funny to learn that there isn't really an S that starts his middle name at all! We learned many fun facts.

 The dogs pose for Comet's 26 week photo as our first light snow of the season arrives.

 Comet is baffled by this cold, white stuff!

 We did some owl pellet dissecting as part of our week on rodents since we would most likely find rodent skeletons in the pellets. We have dissected many an owl pellet before, it's one of the kids favorite science investigations.

With winter barging in so fast and early we got the dogs these matching coats.

On Saturday we went to a farm one town over where they do a big pumpkin carving event each year. In addition to carving pumpkins we were able to watch squash and pumpkins flung with a trebuchet that the teen son build as a homeschool project. Colin and Tristan are thinking that they might like to do such a project too. We also saw quite a few oxen.

These below ended up all out of order but are mainly the mess that was the first big snow from Saturday-Sunday.

This photo is so funny, Comet pulled too hard on the slick snow and Tristan went right down and slid along. Since I could see Tristan was unhurt, well there was over a foot and a half of snow to cushion him!!!, I said wait don't help him, to his brother Colin, I want to get a photo of this!

 Hayley's Halloween decorations, her pumpkin and legos and some spider lights she has mainly because she likes spiders.

More snow pictures, Bonkers was unimpressed, being a little dog it's hard for her to walk in deep snow.

 CRAZY dogs chased after the soccer ball that had gone into the water!

So unexpected October snow, that's for sure. I'm typing this on Monday and the snow is still hanging around.