Some more collages

This was taken on the Eno River- I got the best pictures on this day. We left Bronwyn and daddy for a few hours and went for a walk in the woods along the river.  The painting picture in there is the making of some binoculars. 

This picture is of Bronwyn eating ice-cream on the water in Wilmington.  A few weeks before I had her in a sling and she dove into MY ice-cream and I was left no choice but to surrender it to her. I knew when I gave her the ice-cream on this day that I would be recreating the scene of that day.

This collage marks our first "Family Day" and our family's first Christmas in the USA together.  We went camping in Key West at Bahia Honda where we camped right on the Ocean. A marvelous State Park in the Keys.  Some cute things captured...the most amazing sun sets, our favorite restaurant "Martin's" where we celebrated our family day dinner and Christmas Day brunch.  We hit a few saloons and bars and in one were surprised to look up to see a big picture of Hemingway with "KARSH" written under it!!! The boys played Christmas Morning Football with a coconut.  The picture of Reichen and Karsh sitting outside of the tent in folding chairs is of them waiting to see "our raccoon" that visited us often.  We fell in love with one certain reggae player and actually followed him around on a few nights to where he was playing. The boys came home loving Bob Marley...and "Buffalo Soldier". The picture of the boys with a man playing the conch shell was taken while our favorite reggae player was on break. This guy was so nice to have the boys up on stage and tried to teach them to play.  One of my favorite memories will always be those red netted stockings. We stopped at a store to buy a tarp for the tent and the women behind the counter gave us these stockings to give to the kids.  Who would have ever known that these stockings could have provided so much entertainment. We hung them behind our driftwood Christmas tree and they waited for the boys on Christmas morning.

This collage is of a week in Newport Rhode Island...I spent two days with the family there camping in Jamestown and then took extensive sailing lessons with JWorld in Newport RI from Monday - Thursday. On Friday I did a live aboard and left Steve to fend for himself with the kids while my small class of three sailed to Block Island and around the area. It was a wonderful course and a long dream of mine.  One of my favorite places was Mystic Ct...the picture of the children on the bridge was taken there.  Steve took my favorite picture of the kids out at a lighthouse (I was on the boat and was not there)...I love that picture!!!!

For some reason we have had our share of box turtle rescues!!!! I forgot the story on this little guy but we let him go behind our home on the 14th hole of the golf course. I have let all of "our" turtles go there and have since found out that you should not relocate turtles that they will spend their lives searching for their home. I know most have been close enough to our home to probably by OK however I saved many from the road to bring them home and to release them only to find out this news. Tristan on his own put this flower on the turtles back, I love the picture of Bronwyn laughing at the turtle as it walked away.

On a sad note...in late Summer or Early Fall Reichen came running into the house to say that Buoy (our dog) was biting on a box turtle in our yard. Sure enough I go outside and Buoy does have a box turtle and is chewing on the shell as if a bone, thank goodness the turtle was closed up protecting herself. I got her inside, she hung out in our bathtub till we could get her to NC State's vet school and their "turtle team". She had a small chunk taken out of her shell in the front above where her neck would be, there was no damage in what would effect the inner body cavity. It was hard to decide to put her back outside or take her to the turtle team, we chose to take her. From the second I brought her inside she was VERY social, head out, ate what we fed her and we took her to the "turtle team" where they agreed she was very social, said she was a "she" and said they all really liked her. They were to hold onto her for about a week to treat her with antibiotics and then were going to get back with me to rehab her and release her here near our home. I called them at 7 days and they said she was doing GREAT (as expected) and that they would be calling me in a few days.  About five days went by and they called me to say that "Jedi" (the boys named her) had died. I was so crushed, evidently another turtle came in that was pretty sick and spread an illness that took out many of the turtles that were at the school. I questioned them thinking they might be making up this story thinking that we planned to keep her as a pet and wanted to reassure them that if they felt they had to say this due to that that I never would have kept her....they convinced me that it was true. We were all really attached to Jedi and I am saddened in that I highly suspect she would have lived if I had not taken her into the vet school.

This collage was taken of Reichen doing his first dissection!!!! A local mom's club member had sent out an email to the area saying she would offer such a class to some of our "older" children. I approached Reichen to see if he'd be interested in doing it and he jumped at the chance. I was glad when she said "sure".  I had no idea what to expect, I did think he'd go thru with it though. I was TOTALLY shocked when he stayed a good hour after everyone else had left and was the only student to dissect the brain and to get into the skull.  He had turned 8 that week and I think the second youngest child was 13.  This week he is doing a shark disection with the same teacher...Karsh has asked if he can do it too. I still need to check with the teacher to see if Karsh is welcome. I hope she says yes. Santa brought them some anatomy models and Karsh has really enjoyed them.

The boys made lap books of Claude Monet's home in Giverny. We spent the month of January studying Claude Monet, his life and his art after Raleigh had a wonderful Monet exhibit. 

Obsessed with my new camera I captured our study of Osmosis. It sounds a lot more intimidating than it was...we just made "naked eggs" by putting eggs in vinegar until their actual shell came off. From there we put the naked eggs in corn syrup, water and colored water. The boys really enjoyed this. Just putting the eggs in vinegar would entertain the youngest of children I am convinced.

This just captures Bronwyn being Bronwyn!!! She sports this little look more than any... These pictures were taken at our local museum Exploris. Every Saturday they offer some different craft from a different country. We have really taken advantage of this due to a membership at the museum. On this day the kids learned about Prayer Flags from Tibet, how the wind blows the message of each etc... Here is Bronwyn making hers :)

These were taken at an Air Show we went to.  The lines were large to get to talk to the pilots...Tristan waited to ask his question, "do you count airplanes?", the pilot was sweet and responded, "I love counting airplanes!!!!".

Kiddos around the table.

The Wilmington's Children museum has been marvelous to us. We bought a membership there when we bought the bungalow in Wilmington to gut and restore. Many weekends Steve pulled up to the museum and dropped us off so that he could get stuff done without us under his feet. Here are three collages from the museum. A membership there has allowed us to actually hit several other Children's museums for free due to a courtesy that the museums have with eachother. It has been money well spent!!!!

When it was time for Bronwyn to have her first haircut I knew I wanted no one else to do it but George the owner of George at the Four Seasons in Georgetown, Washington DC. I love George and he did my hair for almost a decade when I lived up there. They treated my princess like royalty and she just stayed put as if prepped for the occasion.

Kris Kringle Day!!!! We celebrated this growing up in Germany on December 6th...we put our shoes outside and if we had been good all year Kris Kringle would come and visit us with goodies, chocolate coins and just a little treat of some sort. If you were bad you'd get a chunk of coal and some switches from a tree.  I remember getting pre packaged chocolates wtih switches and coal in them. World Market sells European candy and advent calendars and I found some marvelous "coal candy". I loved the pics of the kids looking out in the morning for their shoes (which I had to move onto the porch swing since I feared our dogs might get into them). They looked out and thought, "where are our shoes?". I had prepped them that if they got coal and a switch with their candy that it was probably a joke...and of course they did :)  This is a wonderful little tradition costing no more than about $7 a child. I was so happy to find the candies of my childhood at World Market.

May 2006 -  Ukraine reunion in Georgia!!!!

A special weekend at my college roommate's small farm in Virginia!!!! Anne lost her hubby when she was about 5 months pregnant with her second child. Her husband was a Hornet fighter pilot but sadly went down in a helicopter on his last day at a base in California.  Their dream was to retire in Virginia and to live on a farm together. Sadly she is doing without him, but she did share that the day she looked at the farm three jets flew overhead, a sign from Jason that she should make the move from Arizona and move to Virginia. She broke down at the site of the jets in an area no where near a base. She asked the owner of the farm who I think had lived there a decade atleast if it was normal to see jets such as this fly overhead, he shared he'd never seen them before and she has never seen them since. Anne does more in an hour than I could do in a year...a marvelous mom to a daughter age 6 and son age 4...and horses...and dogs...and cats!!!!!  Just in the past few months Anne found someone to move onto the farm and just a few weeks ago packed up her kiddos to go on a mission assignment to Mexico for I think two years.  I am so proud of her!!!!