Emily's Week at Woldumar Summer Camp: Wild 'Em'gineering

The day finally arrived for Emily to attend the week at camp she won during a raffle in April!

Each morning I took a picture of my favorite little camper!

Notice the bigger backpack? Each day she thought of new things she needed/wanted to bring. lol.

 And she took a bunch of pictures too, so here she is adding her own pictures and descriptions:

On the first day, we built shelters and ours passed all but one of the tests. 

We had to take them down because other campers were going to build there.

We went through the Prairie, and I saw a pretty butterfly 

This was a picture I took from the trail!

The natural playground was really fun to play on.

A cool wolf spider we found on the second day.

and a toad!

We made some sundials on the third day, and I took a nice picture of the river

we made edible beaver lodges with Jell-O, sugar, and pretzel sticks

we went kayaking on day four

On day five we went to the pine forest again to play a game called "Thicket".

on the last day there, we got fire staring kits and I started a fire.

we did a bunch more stuff, but I didn't take pictures of everything.

Potter Park Zoo, at Alice's Request

One day, while William was travelling, we were going on an adventure, much to our surprise, Alice wanted to come, and not only that, but she also wanted to go to the zoo!

Avia treated us to McDonald's before we drove over to the zoo.

I still have the old pictures pop up from when even Emily and William were shorter than the sign*, but it is fun to see the sign as a kind of growth chart. = )

The otters were very active right before we left!

Aside from Alice's full and happy participation, the trip was mostly unremarkable, but very pleasant.

We stayed longer than anticipated, so that we could watch the penguin feeding!

I love our little local zoo!

later days

*circa 2018

End of the Year Homeschool Pictures

We finished our school year just before Memorial Day, and looking back, we sure did we read some good books this year!

I still feel like I would homeschool them until High School!  Even though they are registered for public school in the fall, I am storing all of my supplies in Sarah's basement, just in case the schools go back online.  We will pick back up right where we left off!

In the meantime, they are all looking forward to going back, and I love seeing their teachers again, so I can't complain too much. = )

later days

Ophthalmologist and Holland State Park

This is the latest post in the series of William, grace and Juliet's journey with hypophosphatasia.

Early in the summer, we had to make a 'dilation' trip to the ophthalmologist.  While not a fun trip, we made the most of it by going to a state park afterward.  It must have been on a Monday or Tuesday, because Alice didn't go, and must have stayed with Billy.

Everyone got a new prescription, no major changes, just tweaks.

They got rubber ducks from the phlebotomist!

The cloud cover was nice, and we knew a storm was due to roll in that evening.

We appreciated the cloud cover, but did not expect the storm to start thundering hours before it hit. Once the thunder started up, it was time to get out, but Avia treated everyone to ice cream!

On the way to the ice cream stand, they found some "summer snow*."  

Since we were forced away from the beach, we went in search of adventure.  We found a giant castle, full of private residences in Grandville.

After checking out the exterior (there was nothing fun to do yet, as they are just finishing up construction) we went to a nearby playground and walked a trail.

We outran the storm for a while, but it did eventually catch up to us.  We squeezed in one more adventure to the airport in Grand Rapids.  They have a park at the airport fields.  It has lots of seating, trashcans and even restrooms!

They braved the rain to watch the planes, but the lightning put a quick end to their adventure.

It was a pleasant day, considering it started at the doctor's office.  And we persevered, despite the rain.

later days.

 *Floating seeds, if you are unable to tell from the picture.

<what happened previously

what happened next>

Edited 7/18/2023: This post is now a part of my project: 78 State Parks! #61

Tahquamenon Falls #15
PJ Hoffmaster State Park #52
Grand Haven State Park #53
Waterloo Recreation Area #70a
Van Buren State Park #73

Our Pocket Garden, Year 1

When it comes to mowing my lawn, I use a tractor type mower.  This means it is a pain to back into an area to mow it.  The area between our house and carport never looked all that great, and for 2 years now I've been wanting a garden, but did not want to "mow around" it.  

Well, the obvious solution finally hit me: put a garden in the spot I don't like to mow!

I put sand in the corners to kill off some weeds and shoveled 1.5 yards of cubic dirt out of my sister's truck when the weather was still trying to kill me.  I followed all the advice, from everyone.  We started some plants inside, and some plants outside, and bought the tomato plant already started.

All of the work and waiting was finally worth it, when we spotted our first baby cucumber last week!!

Billy's onions.

My still green tomatoes.  There are like 20 of them on there, but none are turning red!!

Our little sugar snap pea plants.

Well, it turns out our vines had more than 'baby' cucumbers.  We found some giants hiding under the leaves on the ground!  And now, we really have so many cucumbers, I don't know what we'll do with them all!  If any locals need a few, please feel free to stop by and help yourself!  

But we made a start with cucumber sandwiches and a side of cucumber!

And, excitement of excitements, we found a baby pumpkin on one of our vines!!!!! Then we found two more!!!!! I have images of filling my front porch steps with pumpkins from our very own garden!  We'll see how they do; my sister says they need a lot of water.

We've had enough success, that Billy is talking about making a couple of raised beds in the back, so that we have more room to grow things that need full sun.  

I'm just thrilled that we got anything! And hopefully you'll see a picture of our "orange" front steps come October. ; )

later days