Sean the Hunter...

Our local conservation department put on a Pheasant Hunt along with many sponsors this past Saturday. Sean signed up and had a great time. He learned a lot and thinks it would be cool to become a hunter, momma thinks he is a bit busy to get into ANOTHER hobby/sport :-) He was there with many other friends... you had to be 12! They went through "classes" learning about safety, dog handling of a hunting dog, and more. They shot clay pigeons for practice. They had donuts and then sandwich boxed lunches. Then in the afternoon it was hunting time. They relocated and there were two pheasants per youth to be released. Sean said one of his went right over the instructors head, so he only had the chance to shoot at one pheasant and he missed. Once shooting time was over they all got to learn how to clean pheasant and they each got to eat some that had already been cooked. It was a full day for Sean, but he had a blast!
Sponsors and all the participants
The group gathers before heading to the hunting grounds
Pheasants that didn't survive that day
Yummy, tastes just like chicken!
Our good friend Michelle with one of the hunting dogs
Ben & Cody
Sean and Daddy headed to the van
Drew, Sean's good buddy
Drew, Tim, and Sean ready to rest for the day

POW Bus-eum

This week we had opportunity to visit a moving museum called a bus-eum as the bus held the memorabilia for POW's in and around Iowa. It was very interesting. The bus had a movie going on 1/2 of it and on the other had there were lots of items from the past. We learned there were POW's held here in Wapello at the fairgrounds which is where the kiddo's play baseball/softball in the summer. Interesting...

TEECH Leaf co-op/field trip

We are members of the local homeschool support group TEECH... (To Encourage and Educate our Children at Home). I guess you could say Ed and I are a bit more than members as we were voted in to the Presidents position last school year. Crazy how that typically seems to happen to us...

Anyway, our first activity together this year was at another local park. We all met and had lunch together, and then went hiking down trails to collect leaves. The leaves were then used to glue into collages or do leaf rubbings, etc. We tore apart some acorns to inspect the grubs that were inside. We watched one acorn as the grubs crawled out, there was like 6 grubs all inside one acorn. Isn't God's creations just awesome!!!








A special THANK YOU to a great friend, Teri as she was the one that set up this great event! We had plans for a beautiful leaf book, but that will have to wait till spring...

Family Fun at the Park

While daddy was off work, we took a day and enjoyed one of the local parks! We hiked for hours, not just the seven of us, but the 3 dogs also.







This one probably needs some explanation... Well while hiking, of course some were further ahead than others. Well Corben, one of our jokester children :-) Took the side of his hand and made a "footprint" in the mud then placed four, yeah he was in a hurry... four fingerprints. Well then he waits for us to come to the spot and says WOW check out the rabbit foot. So here we all are bent over check out the print, this wasn't the first print of the day or the first "check this out" of the day. Well Ed and I are examining it and trying to decide if it was a babies foot or a rabbit foot... Ed said something like that is one large rabbit. SO Corben procedes to bend over making another print and him and Logan bend over laughing... Saying "Look at the size of that rabbits foot". So we all burst out laughing. I know one of those had to have been there to get the whole picture, but we still tease each other about the size of that rabbit :-)

Our 4-H group...

We joined 4-H a few years ago, it only seemed natural as 4-H has been in Ed's family for generations :-) Our group is a great group of homeschooling families. We do basically everything as families which has been wonderful!! We had our annual family picnic last month and we had about 5 new families join us to check us out. WOW!!! I found out we need to have a maximum cap for our group or we will be unable to do many activities. SO if these families all join, we are all MAXED OUT!! That is totally awesome!!! We just finished our second year of 4-H with this group and now Logan gets to join us as he is in 4th grade.

Sean moved out of the position of Secretary/Reporter. He now has to sit out from a position to give others a chance to have a position. Corben was 2nd Historian this past year and so he moved up to the Head Historian's position this year. You can't be in a position for the 1st year, so Logan is in his learning year.

You will see picutes from the picnic, changing positions, and a fundraiser at the Heritage Day's in a local park. Our group sells water/pies/ice cream at the annual Heritage Day's activities.









Did you notice the snake... Logan thought that was the greatest having a snake in his pocket :-)

Sean as a Civil Air Patrolman

Sean joined the Civil Air Patrol earlier this year. This is basically a junior branch of the Air Force. This program is for ages 12-18. Sean is pretty sure he will not join a branch of the military at this point, but he really enjoys what CAP has to offer. He is tested both physically and mentally.

They had a family picnic to explain about what the CAP members have been up to. They have been doing rocketry and so Sean was able to send off his rocket at the family picnic. They went several yards into the air before releasing a devise that worked much like a parachute to slowly land onto the ground. Sean's worked just great and so he was very excited! There was a good picture of the take off of Sean's rocket :-)





Here the CAP members and any family that wanted to follow to check things out were using a handheld device that enabled CAP to find the ELT's on airplanes. The Commander placed one "somewhere" for the CAP members to locate. Sean has not yet been trained on this machine, but he was able to go along and learn. It took about 45 minutes and the help of the commander to locate the hidden ELT. I am thinking more training is needed for all :-) The ELT is located in planes and they are used to locate a downed plane or a plane that may just have a dying battery in the ELT.

Our 7 inches of rain...

A few weeks ago we had just over 7" of rain. This caused our ditches, yard, and drainage ditch to fill up and slowly drain. The kids had a ball with all the water! Daddy and Mommy were worried it might start to run into the lower level of our split level home :-( PRAISE GOD... we didn't get any water in the house!!!

The kids and dogs played for hours in the water! A few days later they found a large snapping turtle in the drainage ditch. Lane butchered it for us (or should I say for the kids and Ed, as I don't plan to even taste it!). He is now in the freezer waiting to become a meal, I think I will have to plan a ladies night out!! We have pictures, but they were taken with our friends camera, so I will post them at a later date...