Andelin Adventures

The older kids received some free admission tickets to the state fair for reading 10 books and mailing in their forms, so we got to go to the fair today. We decided to check out some of the stuff we have never seen before at the fair, and found an emergency preparedness fair. Right in the middle was a CERT relay race that kids could participate in. First they had to scoop three shovels full of sand into a bag.

Then they had to put on the CERT vest hard hat, and goggles, and then pump some water 10 times.

They had to put some supplies in their CERT backpacks:

Then they had to spell LITE with some glow sticks:

They finished up by moving the cans to a box, and then they got to blow a whistle (just a cheap plastic whistle that they got to keep).

We went around to the other booths too but most of them were just for giving out information. We decided to go check out a building that we had never been in before, but it was full of vendors, so the kids were bored in no time. I found it interesting that there were some guys from a mortuary there. I did like checking out the different sewing and quilting and embroidery machines. Someday I will have a nice new machine, but that is not the kind of thing that I wanted to buy at the state fair. Then we were sucked in by the Winder guys. They seemed bugged that we stood there and listened to their whole spiel, and they gave everyone in our family a piece of bread and gave the kids juice and then we told them that we are going to turn their offer down. They almost demanded a reason why. Um because you are offering me $100 in free groceries to try you out, BUT I must order a minimum of 40 times, and each order must be at least $10 which means spending $400 in order to get $100 in free groceries, that means I would still be spending $300 that I DON’T HAVE, just to try you out for awhile! Ya that’s why! I don’t think we will ever be visiting that building again.

So we went to check out the building next to it, where there were some arts things. The kids got to go on a scavenger hunt to find art of different seasons, then they got a ribbon bookmark when they were done. I thought the butter sculpture was pretty awesome:

We went across to the other side of the fair to go to Little Hands on the Farm, because the kids were anxious to go there. They remember it from the past couple of years and they look forward to it every year.

Lydia was bigger this year and therefore more able to participate:

After they finished being little farmers and they had sold their goods and used their money to buy a treat at the store, it was starting to rain so we decided to go check out the livestock.

We wandered from building to building checking out all the animals. We made a point of finding the pigs this time, because we have seen them listed on the map, but hadn’t ever really seen it in real life. They ended up being under a long tent in between two other buildings. Once we passed through the last of the livestock buildings, and we found that it was still raining, we went to check out the 4H building. The kids like the 4H building because they know that everything in there was made by kids. The kids really liked the giant ferris wheel built of k’nex that actually had a motor that made it spin. By the time we were done wandering around this building Dinah was throwing quite a fit, and it was still raining quite heavily, so we decided that it was time to go home, and that we would come back on another day.

This has been quite a busy week for me. I bought a large box of pears over the weekend and I got to spend Labor day washing, cutting, peeling and canning pears. I decided to turn them all into pear quarters this time. I really love pear jam, but it’s not often that we have enough pears to just quarter and bottle. I finished the day with about 18 jars of pears, some of them spiced. 🙂

Tuesday we got a call from Aunt Linda inviting us to come over and pick some peaches. So after my Girl Scouts meeting was over, we loaded up the kids and went to pick peaches. We found out when we got there that we got to pick everything that was left on the tree, which turned out to be all of these:

So I got to spend Wednesday, yesterday and today canning peaches. Adam liked being a little helper:

I made spiced peaches, plain peach halves, some peach, cantaloupe, and orange nectar (which I think turned out too orangy for my tastes. I made peach pie filling, spiced peach syrup, spiced peach jam and peach jam.

I just LOVE seeing my counter full of sealed jars full of yummy things. 😀

Kyle and I took the family grocery shopping today. I know that is something so exciting that everyone should blog about it….well not really. But we were in desperate need of groceries. We usually keep a supply of the stuff we use, in the storage room downstairs, but it was getting to the point that everything we ran out of upstairs, we would go downstairs to get more, and there was no more. And this was becoming WAY too common, so we needed to go restock. We filled two carts with all of our groceries, and we didn’t even get everything that was on our list, we just felt we had been there too long, this was going to cost a lot and we could do another trip in a few days or next week to get the rest. We checked out and the cashier hands us this LONG receipt!

Just seeing that receipt, and my large brood of kids made me think that I need to come home and watch “Yours, Mine and Ours” again. I am talking about the one with Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda, not the newer release that just looks like they butched the story. 😉

We had a meeting with some other homeschooling families in our neighborhood at the park today. I think it was good for the kids to see who else out here is home schooling, and see that these kids like it. Ethan still complains about wanting to be at the “real school”, as he calls it, but I noticed that he did NOT complain about getting to spend the morning playing with Pokemon cards with a few friends at the park this morning. 🙂

The kids got to play with other kids that are also doing home school and I got to sit and chat with other moms who teach their kids at home. Everyone talked about the things that they are doing already, the different curriculums they are using, and we talked about other tips and ideas. We each brought a picnic lunch for our families and we brought something to share. So every kid there got to ice their own cupcake. I think Lydia really liked hers.