Chickens, chickens everywhere...

A racoon got into our chickens, the night before last.  What a mess!  Racoons and vicious creatures, dragging some off, taking a leg off another, ripping a head off of another...all 25 of them dead.  What a waste of time, effort and money.  Let's pray that there are some extra at the feed store with today's delivery.

   For Father's Day, we spent the afternoon at Kings Landing.  Emily is now working there for the summer and we wanted to have a visit with her, since she is staying in F'ton with my Mom and Dad for the summer and we don't get to see her as often.  We were able to spend her break with her, and toured some of the other Kings Landing houses.

  We were also able to visit with some other friends and acquaintances that we met at the Landing.  You never know who will be there!

This is the Moorehouse, the family home that she is helping to interpret this summer.  They are interpreting the year 1820, even though none of the staff in the house are dresses in 1820's fashions.  (Being a reenactor and living history interpreter myself, I am sensitive to matters of historical fashion).  In fact, I am surprised that in a village that takes such pains to be as historically correct in so many other areas, let it slide when it comes to correct dress.  There just doesn't seem to be much consistancy.   I saw a beautiful Victorian dress in obvious polycotton mix, a man dressed in a Regency/Georgian mix (kind of like a "Fashion Frankenstein"), gowns obviously lacking in enough peticoats to hold it's shape, etc... 
  My pet peeve for today: Daycaps!  ARRRRGGGGG!  They have several people throughout the village wearing DRAWSTRING MOBCAPS!!!  They are totally undocumentable, unauthentic and should be an embarassement to all but the most rank beginners (and then it is only forgiven because they just don't know any better and it is hoped that someone would gently guide them to a better choice)...and they don't even attempt to hide the drawstring with a ribbon.  The least they could do would be to provide each girl with a period satin ribbon, attached with a few stitches to the back of the cap.  They could then draw it up to the front of the cap and secure it with a bow, thus hiding the drawstring and making it appear to be more of a corect looking cap. *Sigh*
Okay, ranting aside, I still had a wonderful visit.  My daughter is becoming a good cook over the open fire (I got to sample the cake that she had baked).  She has had a few cooking mishaps, which means she takes after me.  I still remember the first time I tried to bake a pie in the woodstove for Emily's 11th Birthday...it was so burnt that it was black all the way through.  Emily's grandmother (a wonderful woman) came to the rescue with a birthday cake for Emily's birthday.  She set it on the car while we were busy greeting each other and unnoticed by the family, Nan (our Mama goat), slowly sauntered up and started to nibble on one side of the cake.  To her surprise, instead of tasty B'day cake, all she got was a mouthful of plastic wrap.  We managed to rescue the cake with one side only slightly crumbled and still had an enjoyable Birthday celebration.  It wasn't too long after that mishap that I managed to master cooking on the woodstove, and could produce the most wonderful oatmeal cookies that I have NEVER been able to reproduce in the electric oven.

Busy, busy, busy...

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It's been a couple of very busy weeks!  We got to babysit little L, big L, and little A for an evening.  While Erik and I were engaged in the childcare aspect, Bob meandered outside to play on Andrew's wheeler. 

Once they heard it start up, the kids all ran towards the window to watch it go by, and everytime Bob zoomed on by the window, the kids would jump up and down with exitement, waving and yelling, "There goes Mr. Bob...Mr Bob, come back!"

The kids had a great time playing together. 

Big L. is showing off his biggest smile.

Little L. is trying to figure out my thumb-drive.

Ooooo...toys!

The very next week, Andrew and Erik spent the afternoon tearing down an old barn for the beams and boards. At the end of the day, they had a pile of scrap wood that was no good, so Andrew decided to have a bonfire. 

We brought sausages and the musical instruments, and they brought hotdogs and all the fixings for s'mores.  Yum!

Abi came up with a great idea!  Instead of messing with chocolate squares, she bought cookies with chocolate on one side.  All we had to do was pop the melted marshmallow into the middle and voila!  One wonderful, yummy super delicious s'more.

The funny thing is that I was soooo tired and frustrated earlier that day, that I almost stayed home.  I'm so glad I didn't because we had a blast.  The fire was so hot that we had to keep moving out seats back. 

Bob caught his marshmallow on fire.

The best time was when the sun went down and we were singing in the firelight.

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Erik's Project Continued...

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We spent the night working on his project again.  Here are the updated pictures.

A bombed out factory.

A semi bird's eye view of the town.

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Project Time!

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As promised...pictures of Erik's WWII project. 

This is the terrain for his WWII German Town.

This is the part that he needs to paint tonight.  Then, after the paint is dry, he will add sand, grass, etc...  I also finally got a better idea of just how long this model is. It's about 3'x 6' (a bit longer than our couch).

This is the town center.  Those are sandbags surrounding the town fountain.  It still has to be painted.

This is a farmstead.  I love his little garden! 

The river is in the background.

He is making this for the homeschool fair.  Every year our homeschool support group (The River Valley Home Educators) hold two project fairs.  Usually they assign a subject to the fair (We've had science, geography, history, hobby, zoology, culture, etc...) but this time, they are holding an "open" fair (at Erik's request) so the topics will be varied.  Erik has had his "ups" and "downs" during previous fairs.  There was the year that he brought the violin that he was making from scratch.  That was very impressive.  Then there was the year he forgot his notes and couldn't recite his speech (no, he hadn't memorized it), so we improvised by having the audiance ask him questions about his topic (which he knew very well and was able to answer them all)...and the year he had a run in with the podium and the podium won (picture Mr. Bean, if you will, trying to get the music stand at the right height...it went waaaaay down, it went waaaay up...repeat until the audience is in stitches).  Although sometimes frustrating and other times embarrasing, they have really been very good learning experiences.  Over all, we really enjoy these fairs.  As a homeschool group, we are aware that our children may not always have the opportunity to get up in front of an audience and present a speech or a project, so we make sure that they have that opportunity twice a year at these fairs.  It's been great to see young kids just starting out in Kindergarten or grade one, shyly get up and whisper a poem or have Mom or Dad up beside them feeding them their lines.  Fast forward three years, and you see them confidently presenting their projects with Mom or Dad sitting in the audience.  It pays off.  Not too long ago, Erik helped out with a Medieval presentation to 450 middle school students at UMPI (University Maine Presqu'Isle).  His confidence, knowlege of the subject and poise so impressed the professors with who he was presenting that he came away with offers of College recomendation letters.

Okay, I was having a little fun with "Godzilla Rat" last night. The stuffed rat isn't really part of his project.

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