The Trip - Day 4

July 13, 2011

The best part of today was seeing Sylvia skip and jump with joy when she saw "Pal" and "Avalon", her two favorite carousel horses. Here she is, reunited after 2 years with "Pal's Pal", her favorite pony.



Asher tried to look cool while riding, but failed miserably. :)


The carousel can bring smiles to all ages, even Noel.


Mattias kept busy trying to create a math formula to predict who would get the brass ring from the dragon's mouth, depending on how many riders there were, and how many rotations the carousel did. The random variables were too much for him in the end though, and he never came up with a solution. Maybe next visit.



Brad and Liz were wonderful hosts... letting us drag them around to all the sites on our "Must do in Missoula" list. Today was carousel and "Out to Lunch" in Caras park day.

We used to attend "Out to Lunch" every Wednessday in the summers that we lived there. The older kids were too cool to hoola-hooop down in front of the bandstage, but Sylvia went with me. Afterwards, we cooled off in sprinklers in Brad's backyard paradise. Below is Sylvia, eating a popsicle, and getting a "back scratch" from the sprinkler.

The boys had a good time holding each other in front of the more powerful rotating sprinklers out in the pasture area. Everyone came in soaked.

The Trip - Day 3

July 12, 2011

Buffalo Gap campground had a neat badland bluff close by. The kids had explored it at sunset the night before, but were excited to climb it again this morning. They climbed it a couple times, as I packed the van. I climbed it with them finally, just before we left. It had a great view.


Mattias turned out to be quite the mountain climber this trip. He really enjoyed the hiking and exploring.


Sylvia also showed great promise as a mountain climber, feeling very triumphant as she bagged summit after summit.


Speaking of summits, it was wonderful to see the snow capped rocky mountains again. A few more years, and those will be the peaks we will be standing on top of.

We stopped in Bozeman, at the Museum of the Rockis for an evening break. Sylvia is in love with anything to do with Dinosaurs, thanks to the PBS show, Dinosaur Train. She claims to be a T-Rex herself.. but I'm just not buying it. For one, she is dressed in pink... no self respecting T-Rex would wear pink t-shirts.


We rolled into Missoula that night after a thunderstorm had hit. The dramatic lighting made it seem like an epic arrival, worthy of a fantasy movie. - It foreshadowed our many adventures to come.

The Trip - Day 2

July 12, 2011

We zipped through Minn. and N. Dakota today. As we approached our campsite at the far west side of ND, we passed a stunning valley. Mattias sat up in his seat and yelled "Mom! What was that!" Apparently he had been sleeping as we've passed through the badlands before. We decided to spend some time camping and exploring the area more on the return trip.



We pulled over at the rest stop overlooking "Painted Valley", then drove another 15 min to our campsite at Buffalo Gap, in the National Grasslands. Very nice site. We will go there again.

The Trip - Day 1

July 11, 2011

Three days before, I had been talking to my father-in-law on the phone. (He lives in Missoula, MT).

When I heard that he hadn't mowed his long back yard grass all summer, in hopes of a visit from us (because the kids liked making "nests" in it previously) my heart about broke. I knew we were missing out on a wonderful opportunity to see family this summer, and it would be a tragedy if we didn't just start driving and go.

Three days later, found us loaded in a van: 4 kids, one dog, and myself. Sean couldn't get 3 weeks off work at a moments notice... so he stayed behind and held down the fort.


Day 1: drove 5 hours, camped on the boarder of Wisc/Minn. At sunset, a thunderstorm rolled in. At midnight, our neighboring campers started frantically rushing around packing up, because they had heard tornadoes were on the way, and they were heading home. After I heard the local tornado siren go off, I got everybody out of the tents, and into the van, where we spent a stuffy, nervous, low-sleep night.

Favorite Protest Videos

The Hinkypunks have joined the political scene by taking part in several days of the protests at the Wisconsin State Capitiol building. Here are some of the best videos I've seen put out on the web.



This first one starts out with a speaker I listened to. She is a middle school band teacher. She says "This is something I've wanted to do all my life." She is referring to being a teacher.



This next one is the amazing crowd. Lots of nice people - no violence. Well, except for cookie violence. :) Inside joke, maybe. Let me explain. When Fox news started falsely reporting that this was a violent crowd, people starting tweeting that they had just been assaulted by somebody handing out home made cookies. Thus, the local joke about cookie-violence got started.




This next one reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from the past week "Solidarity is better with bagpipes." Go Firefighters!

Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving is more of a multi-day series of adventures around here.
To start the festivities off, Sean skips work the day before Thanksgiving to make pies. It lessens my stress, and fills our house with a fantastic aroma. Noel took a great picture of his cherry pie (see below). He also made pumpkin and pecan.



Sylvia and I had put paper-mache over a balloon a few days in advance. Eventually it will turn into a turkey pinata. This is a tradition from my family. It started in the booming town of Weiser Idaho, after celebrating thanksgiving with lots of cousins on my moms side of the family.

Taking a break from pie making, Sean parks himself on the floor of the kitchen and helps Sylvia paint it.

Why can't they they paint on the table? Well, there is a fierce game of Magic going on between the boys and their gaming buddies in the dining room. It makes the day before Thanksgiving loud and festive, with laughter and the smell of fresh pies in the air.


Thanksgiving morning comes, and we watch the Macy's parade while baking dinner rolls, and cooking the turkey. Noel puts the final touches on the pinata with Sylvia, filling it with candy, and making feathers.

Noel is definitely a better turkey artist than I am. We had the most handsome pinata ever. It was sad to see it whacked into shreds within 10 minutes.

Sylvia did a good job setting up the pilgrim scene, to add to the holiday atmosphere.




A trip to the dog park in the brisk freezing cold air, got everyone's appetite up, and mellowed out our dog.


Asher got into a funny stick game with Maya. He had this huge, thick branch and would taunt Maya with it, then run and toss it. She would chase it down, and they would wrestle for control of the stick. It wore them both out. :)



When we got home, we finished dinner preparations, and set the table. After much cracker snatching and munching, we finally got everything onto the table, and all the munchy mouths to smile for a picture.




In the days that follow Thanksgiving, there is much game playing, movie watching, and staying up late. We pull out the Christmas boxes, and turn on the Christmas music.

Sylvia loves listening to our ipod. Her favorites are Mussorgsky and Enya. We decided to load a little Mannheim Steamroller Christmas music onto it for her, and she loved rocking out with Maya today. Maya is very tolerant of Sylvia.





Sylvia was very excited to pull out the Santa Lucia gear out of the Christmas boxes. She put the crown on and stately walked around the dark house. Asher did an amazing job singing "Natten går tunga fjät" in Swedish for her.


Then, Sylvia decided she needed a prince. - And that her prince needed a crown. Sean helped her cut out a paper crown, just the right size for her prince.




Below, we have the handsome prince modeling the latest in prince headgear.




While Sylvia was in princess mode, the kitchen was full of candy elves. Ever since Brooks chocolate party, where Mattias learned the trade secrets of candy making, Mattias has been begging to make all sorts of goodies. Earlier this week he made fudge and carmel, which disappeared with shocking rapidity. Today he wanted to experiment with higher boiling temperatures and go for a hard toffee.


It was a success! Our resident candy maker has done it again! A small ocean of beautiful golden toffee, which cracked into perfect bite sized shapes.




Asher was excited by the possibility of dipping it, and helped with melting some dipping chocolate.


The boys ran into a snag in the production line, when they cooked the chocolate too long and thought they had ruined the whole batch. But with much stirring, and a high stress level, they were able to salvage the chocolate and dip the toffee after all. A near disaster was averted.




It all turned out brilliantly. My favorite comment was from Noel. As I poked my head into the kitchen to make sure nobody was getting scalded or setting the kitchen aflame, I asked "How's it all going?" She slyly grinned and said "Just fine. We are doing just what unschooled children would do. Being creative and learning together. "

(This is a humorous comment if you are in the homeschool world. Unschooling is a much looser type of schooling than we do. Noel has read about it in some of my education books, thought it sounded great, and has been lobbying hard for it.)


Asher and Sean just took bags of the finished chocolates out to some church families they visit. The holiday cheer spreading has begun! Definitely a good Thanksgiving week.

Grandparents tour Madison

We had fun doing several things in Madison while Brad and Liz were here. One that I especially enjoyed was our tour of the Capital. I had heard it was the most beautiful building outside the capital in Wash. D.C., but I thought it was all talk. I have a different opinion now.

The building is full of skylights, gold leafing, and colorful marble.

Many murals adorn the walls. The skylights go through all three floors, filtering in natural light, so it feels open and bright.

We were lucky enough to get in with a tour of Vietnamese judges. It was neat to hear the stories about what the paintings symbolized.

The rock work was amazing. I never knew there were so many different colors of marble.

Another favorite stop in Madison was the zoo. Here is Liz and Mattias with the giraffes.


Here is Brad the zookeeper and his wild animals.

Asher was a sweetie and rode the carousel with Sylvia. He secretly loved it, but as a 12 year old boy, didn't want to look too excited.


Sylvia was in heaven. Carousels are one of her favorite things in the world. We rode the one at the fair this summer 30 times. I was starting to feel sick.


Finally, some pictures for Mattias. These are pictures of a capybara - an animal Mattias is in love with. He wants one for a pet, but being an Amazon rainforest kind of animal, they would not do well in Wisconsin winters. The zoo actually ships them out when the weather gets cold.

They are related to guinea pigs, but are the size of small dogs. Their feet are webbed, like a duck. It is exciting to catch them swimming in their little pond.

Who knows, perhaps in 20 years, Mattias will actually be a capybara breeder, living someplace warmer. The dream all started out at the Madison zoo.