Zoo Day!

These girls worked hard selling Girl Scout cookies to earn their trip to the zoo. Finally we got it scheduled and did the Watching Wildlife workshop to learn all about animals. Even though the day we went was cold and dreary along with some rain, spirits were lifted when the girls realized they could get some candy trick or treating. No worries on the costume, AnnMarie had us covered, we were dressed as Brownies. Always the quick thinker!

After talking about habitats and animal characteristics we took a tour of the North American area of the zoo. Favorites were the Grizzly Bears, (huge) and the adorable prairie dogs (Annabel and I need to learn how to duck in small areas!)

We returned back to our house to pizza waiting and a cake to celebrate our founder Juliette Low's birthday. It was a great day all around! Thanks to all the girls who participated and those whose hard work paid for the day. Great job girls!



Laura took a turn reading the differences between hares and rabbits to us.

Lindy posing in the Prairie Dog photo op.

Annabel, Mary, and Christa pretending to be Prairie Dogs.

How adorable is this Hedgehog!? I forget his name but I am sure the girls remember.

Working together to look at worms.

Our Box Turtle friend

Lindy really does love worms.

Welcome Mia! Laura and Mia enjoyed pizza and getting to know each other.

Annabel and Christa were all smiles all day!

Happy Birthday Juliette Low!

Halloween '09

We were a spooky bunch last night. Kyle had a scary mask that finished off our group, but I had to see his face for our pictures. They all had a great time trick or treating with their neighbor friends, Kyle and Ethan called it a night before the girls. Erin could have kept on going! Kyle weighed in at 4 1/2 pounds of candy! I know that Erin raked in as much as Kyle so we have some serious candy here. Paige and Lindy's stash has dwindled a bit since they had to weed out quite a bit due to their spacers being in place. They took it really well!

Sorry for the delay Whitney! We did you miss you and BJ, not quite the same without you guys here. I know the little skeleton missed BJ!

Ethan loves to be scary. He had 3 costumes he put together and didn't decide until an hour before. I think he did a pretty good job!

Paige changed from her princess costume to this skeleton right before Trick or Treat. I think she really wanted in on the scary stuff!

Erin had to have a little Ethan's blood face paint.

Erin and our friend Lily.

Lindy busy sorting candy. She had such a good time with her sisters and friends.

A Day at the Park

With the beautiful weather last week we skipped school one afternoon and headed to Slate Run for a walk and some playground time. We had the place to ourselves and it was very relaxing! Here a few pictures from our fall day.

Food, Food, Food!

After my sister made Hamburger cupcakes on the 4th of July, I had to make them. I knew my Brownies would love them!

Food was the theme of our first Brownie meeting of the year. This was our 4th annual neighborhood food drive. We collected over 140 much needed items for the food pantry. Doing the food drive is one of the girls favorite activities of the year and a great way to welcome our new scouts into our troop.

Welcome Skylar, Faith, Rebekah, Mia, and Brooke. We are so excited you have joined our troop and are sure we will have lots of fun getting to know all of you. Before we headed out to collect food we played a few games to get to know each other. We started by having the girls line themselves up alphabetically. Annabel and AnnMarie walked to the front of the line and hung out chatting while Lily took charge of the challenging L's and other mid alphabet names. Faith and Faith had to decide who would come first and how we would not mix them up! Then we moved onto a game to help the girls get to know more about each other and what they all like. Calling out two things, girls had to decide which they liked better and get in the appropriate group. Even if they didn't like either choice they still had to decide which they preferred and move into the appropriate group. Hannah Montana was more popular than Jonas Brothers, pink more than green, puppies more than kittens, fairies more than princesses and so on. We also learned that most of the girls in our troop are in 3rd grade and some are older and some are younger. Three girls have birthdays three days in a row one month!

Now that our introductions have been made we are off and running in our last year as Brownies. We have lots of projects planned for community service and holiday parties. Many Try its are in the works!

It's been a few months since we have done a flag ceremony! Great job girls!

The A's, Annabel and AnnMarie

To welcome our new scouts, we pulled out our troop scrapbook to share our past activities.

Faith and Faith



Food, Food, Food....

Lily in her new glasses, they look so cute!

Mary our make up specialist!

Troop 120 is awesome! Great job girls!

Aunt Ann

Kyle and Aunt Ann June 2009

My great aunt did not make it through her open heart surgery this morning. It is very sad to all of us since it was very sudden. Even though it is very major surgery she is in great shape for someone who is 81. Aunt Ann didn't ever slow down and told my mom on Saturday while waiting in the hospital for this morning that " she is not a sit around kind of person." She was complaining of being bored! Typical.

We will all miss her greatly. I feel very lucky to have seen her recently and the kids all had fun sharing stories with her. She and Kyle had a nice chat about my Grandpa (Aunt Ann's brother) and she passed along some war stories he had told her. Kyle was very excited to make all the connections since that was as close as he could get to his Great Grandpa.

After she returned home from her visit here this summer she whipped up a quilted wall hanging for me. She and my cousin Debbie worked on it and wrote me a birthday message on the back. Aunt Ann had a passion for quilting I am so glad that she treated us to her talent. We will always treasure her lively spirit, generosity, and love.

Whitney, Aunt Ann, and Mom

Whitney's Rehearsal Dinner, September 21, 2007

David, Aunt Ann, Erin, and Mom walking to the reception.

I love these pictures of her walking with Erin. She loved my kids like they were her own great grandchildren and I loved that! September 22, 2007

Heading into Pioneer Times

I am getting my co-op posting started a little late. We were on vacation when classes started and then the second week I didn't have time to take pictures so welcome to the third week! This session we are studying Kirsten Larson the American Girl from 1854, pioneer times. Lindy, Paige and I have finished reading the series and like the others we have read, loved it. Life was not easy for the pioneers, but despite the cultural barriers after arriving from Sweden Kirsten's family settles into American life.

We did a couple of activities last week. We used Sculpey clay to make heart pendants that we will be finishing this week. The girls got creative in personalizing their heart. Some have added their names to them, others made ruffled edges. We will be adding beads to each side to symbolize the friendship that Kirsten made with Singing Bird, then putting it all on a ribbon. The girls will then have a necklace like Kirsten to symbolize her Dad's saying of "keeping heart."

Mrs. Walton donned her pioneer dress and led the girls in making Swedish pancakes. They all love to cook so this was a hit. We added some apple topping for flavor since they were a little bland they turned out great!

We had a student who has the Kirsten doll complete with accessories. We were able to look at what pioneers would have packed for lunch and what their school supplies looked like.

We are off to a great start and have many more fun projects coming up this session.

Always partcipating, Erin is learning to make pancakes too.

The bucket and the dipper used for getting water to drink during school. We did this last week in our "pioneer school" except we dipped our cups into a punch bowl of water.

Saying Goodbye

We finally got our acts together and all made it to California to have Grandma's memorial service. Mom organized everything and it was very nice, just family, exactly what would have been important to Grandma. This picture was at the service and I had never seen it before. It is now my favorite and I am looking to do something special with it in our house. Despite the 100 degree heat, we all had a good time laughing and crying, crying, and then crying some more, especially me. Thanks to Dave for bring a little humor to the afternoon with stories of Grandma's fierce family protectiveness. I would summarize my speech but since I had to have Bill read it I don't think anyone wants to cry again. Sorry about that everyone!

After our service that was in the Riverside National Cemetery, Uncle Bobby suggested we take Kyle back to the Medal of Honor Memorial. Good call! Every medal awarded is listed on the walls from every type of conflict the United States has ever been involved in, big or small. It took Kyle a while to make his way through but he loved all of it. We all learned about things in history we didn't know about.

Thanks mom for taking us all to dinner, following in Grandma's footsteps and getting everyone together and treating. The only thing that wasn't right about that was Grandma was missing.

I love this picture because it has our reflections in it, Kyle, me, Dave, Mom, and Jeannie.

Whitney at the kid table keeping things under control.

Lindy, Erin, and Kiarra deep in coloring.

Looking at this picture makes me a little sad because Grandma never saw all of her great- grandchildren together and didn't even get to meet all of mine.

These two are best buddies!

Fall is Here

Fall is a favorite season for many around here, Bill is at the top of the list. Apple picking and going to the pumpkin patch are his favorite fall activities. We all love it because of his homemade applesauce! We ventured out last weekend I am just really behind in getting my pictures up here. My California pictures will be ready soon for those waiting to see them.

I remember when he was 2 and sitting in the apple trees. He is so big now!

Erin spent a long time looking for a clean pumpkin she was not interested in taking home one covered in dirt!

Mahalo Hawaii!

We had a great time in Hawaii and even though we were excited to get to California to see our family we were a little sad leaving. We will return someday, there is so much left to do! Until then thank you for a wonderful time and many, many, memories.

Coffee Anyone?

One of our last activities was to visit Greenwell Farms Coffee Plantation. It was a great tour and we learned the entire process of growing the coffee cherries. Our tour started with seeing the various plants that were on the grounds. The avocados above were growing on one of the trees near the road.

There were also pineapple plants. One plant can produce one pineapple at a time. We eat lots of pineapple and guacamole so the kids really enjoyed this part.

Coffee berries grow on trees and are picked when they are ripe and red. This is a picture of the nut inside of one of the coffee cherries.

The cherries are put in this machine to take the fruit off.

Then they are soaked to remove the last bit of coating.

Then they are laid out in the sun to dry. They rake them and turn them throughout the day. Then they go into the warehouse to dry or "rest" for six weeks then sorted by size. After they roast them they are packaged and sold.

These are freshly picked coffee cherries that are about 100 pounds each.

Here we are in the orchard of Kona coffee cherries.

Even Lindy liked real Kona coffee!

Sunset, Hawaii Style

When we returned home from snorkeling we had no electricity. To make a long story short we had to pack all of our stuff up, unload the refrigerator, and move to another house. It was a pain but once we got settled and unpacked (again!) we sat by the pool and watched the sun move through the clouds and then finally set. This was our next to last Hawaii sunset and it was amazing to watch. The kids swam and we all talked and watched this gorgeous site.

Even though we had a great view of the Pacific we also could see Kona at night which was very pretty.

Swimming with Sea Turtles

This is the bay area that came highly recommended for going snorkeling. Everything we needed was right there to rent and there were reef conservation people available to explain and answer questions. It was a perfect place to take kids and they all did a great job.

As soon as we got in the water huge sea turtles would make their way to the rocky area. We had just climbed in and they were there to feed on the algae on the rock. The conservation people told us about all of the fish we would see, taught us about coral, and gave us some turtle information. They said to try to keep a couple of feet distance (!) from the turtles. They don't want them to be injured by people so you are not to touch them. I asked if they were afraid of people and they said that they were more hungry than afraid. It takes them most of the day to get enough food. They either get used to the people or starve. People are really good about giving them space. It is quite surreal to be wading in the water and a turtle is right there, inches away, and you have to back up to give them space.

Bill took Kyle snorkeling while I hung out with the little ones. Ethan tried the mask but had some challenges with it so he took one of the boogie boards we had. They had a tall mask area coming out of the top that allows kids to view what is going on under the water. The kids were ablt to see all kinds of beautiful fish. Having crystal clear water makes it really easy to see. I have never swam in water like that before! Just standing there we saw dozens of turtles. It was truly unbelievable. The pictures of the turtles in the water really don't convey how neat they were. I couldn't take any pictures until I was out of the water so they are from standing on the edge. Imagine they are right next to you!