Mill Mountain Science Center

Sometimes life serves you lemons...

like finding a leak in your basement. Not just a leak, but one that had obviously been there for a while evident because of the black mold surrounding the area.

And to make matters worse someone in our family is highly allergic to mold... guess who?

that's right me!

So, while Mr. Handy Man himself demolished part of the wall in our school room I thought it best the boys and I hit the road. I was not waiting around to see what kind of yuck was on the inside of that wall.

We decided to head for Virgina to visit Granma and Bapa for a few days until the dust settled back home.

hopefully mold free dust

Another reason I love the blessing of homeschooling is when LIFE happens you can make adjustments as needed. So we just packed up most of our school supplies and hit the road. On the second day there the boys were getting a little cooped up so we decided to take an impromptu field trip.

We ended up at the Mill Mountain Science Center. Here Seth and Noah were trying to build nests like the birds do... it's a lot harder than it looks.

all i have to say is, if i were a momma bird the boys and i would be sleepin in the grass!

Seth looking at turtle shells.

They had this really cool bee hive indoors. The cool thing about it was the sound the bees made. If you put your ear up to the yellow tube you could hear their loud hum.

After exploring everything there was to find inside the science center we went outside to take a hike on one of the many trails.

The boys discovered a small playground and wanted to stop and rest/play there for a few minutes. Of course I thought of all these cool pictures that I wanted to take of them, so they humored me for a little while.

The boys climbing a small rock-wall slide.



Here are a few of the pictures I took of them.






The trail ended at the star.



This was the view at the star.



It was good to get some fresh air. We all had a good time together.

We continued our walk for a little while. The boys found walking sticks and had fun playing around with them... boys will be boys!

We missed daddy being with us, but thankfully he was working hard to clean up the mess. Looks like we discovered the leak before it got too bad. It was nice to have a change of scenery... it did me well!

Apples From Roanoke

This past weekend we traveled to Roanoke, VA to visit my mom and dad. We had hoped the trees would be showing off their brilliant colors...

and we were not disappointed. Each day, they seemed more colorful than the day before.

The drive home ended up being the best view of the weekend.

Joshua took this picture. Kinda cool, isn't it?

On Friday the plan was to go to an orchard and pick our own apples. We had a hard time finding an orchard near by that still had apples left on the trees. And since it was a little drizzly we decided to go to an orchard and buy apples already picked.

not as much fun, but we still got apples!

And boy, did we get some apples! The orchard we ended up at had apples for about $0.50 per pound. So we bought 1/2 a bushel of Brae-burn apples and 1/2 a bushel of Golden Delicious apples.

what can I say, we eat a lot of apples!

Beyond eating and juicing them, I had a few more ideas of how to use all those apples...

I found this blog where the lady cooked in her crock pot everyday for a year. One of her recipes is homemade applesauce. Cooked in the crock pot of course! You can find it here.

First, we cored and cut our apples...

The quick way

...I love this cutter from Pampered Chef!

We then put the cut apples in the crock pot with a little water.



While Seth took his turn cutting apples...



Noah rolled the lemon around on the floor to loosen the juice.



He rolled... and rolled... and rolled it.

sometimes you just have to put a little elbow grease into it, ya know!



Next Seth cut the lemon...



and squeezed it in on top of the apples. We also added some vanilla extract and cinnamon.



This is what it looked like after about 3 hours.

After another hour or so and a quick run through the Vita mixer this is what we ended up with from 12 apples.

I'm not sure I will ever be able to eat store bought applesauce again!

well okay, I guess when I have to pay $2 per pound for apples I will buy store bought... it's not soooo bad!

But until then I'll be goin' to town on all this yummy homemade goodness!

Another Weekend in Roanoke, VA

Last weekend we went to Virginia. While we were there we went to the strawberry festival down at the Market. The boys really enjoyed their strawberries over ice-cream topped with whip cream. I missed some great pictures because I left the camera back at mom and dad's house. Oh, well...

We also visited the new art museum. Here are some pictures... (I remembered the camera this time, yeah!) :0)

This is the outside of the very modern looking art museum. Later we found out that the building was designed to look like the surrounding mountains.

The H&C Coffee sign and the Dr. Pepper sign looked really cool from inside the art museum.

The Star

New Friends... "Packing Tape Guy" and "Purple Fuzzy-Furry Guy"... They didn't have to much to say though.

Oh, come on guys, give me a smile.

That's much better!

That's my man!


Here we are leaving the museum.

We like visiting Virginia. There are a lot of fun and educational things to see. It has many museums to visit and many other neat places to go.

Our trip to Virginia

This past weekend we went to visit my parents in Roanoke, VA. Mike had a long weekend so we took advantage of an extra day off. This is the Mill Mountain Star. At night it's lit up nice and bright. The boys always see who can be the first one to spot the star. (And no, I did not take this picture. I tried taking one as we passed it on the way in but mine looked like a red and blue blur. That's what happens when you are traveling 65mph on the highway and trying to take a picture.)

I did take these...

Saturday was a great day of visiting with family. While we were there my grandparents (Nana, Paw-Paw) and Uncle (Michael Bean) came to visit also. It was great having everyone together. I got this great picture of Nana and Joshua sitting in the sun room together.

On Sunday night Mike, Joshua and I went to Lynchburg to a Ken Ham conference. (He's the big creationist guy) It was really good and we got lots of stuff. I'm very excited about some curriculum I purchased. It's a unit study on the Pilgrims Progress. I have not read the book yet but I hear it is great and I can't wait to start this study.

Before we left on Monday we decided to run downtown to the market and see if there was anything there. There are usually vendors selling all kind of things, but there wasn't much going on that day. So, we decided to grab lunch and hit the road for home, but first one more picture...