It's not the best rendition he's done but he gets nervous when I turn on the camera....enjoy.

Story Share

I read this story yesterday:
There were two warring tribes. One lived in the lowland and one lived high in the mountains. One day the mountain people invaded the lowlanders and as part of their plundering they kidnapped a baby and took him back up the mountains with them.
The lowlanders, despite not knowing anything about mountain climbing, sent out their best fighting party to bring the baby home. The men tried and tried but after several days of attempts they had climbed only a couple of hundred feet. They decided that their cause was lost and prepared to return home empty handed.
Just as they were leaving the mountain they saw the baby's mother walking toward them. She was coming down the mountain and she had the baby strapped to her back.
One man said to her, "How can it be that you were able to climb this mountain that we, the strongest men, weren't?"
And she said, "It wasn't your baby."
Jim Stovall-Bits and Pieces

Goin' to the Zoo

We were so lucky today. When we arrived at the zoo the orangutangs were just heading out over the O-line (an overhead climbing system the zoo has for them).

This guy had me wondering about all those sightings of Bgfoot. Orangutans maybe??

They may not be exotic but my kids love the turtles.

This was A's favourite animal today....the prairie dog.

They even have a place where the kids can pretend to be prairie dogs.

There are misters all over the zoo for cooling down on a hot day.

The big cats were out to see what was going on.

This guy was a cutie.

We took a visit into the invertebrates building.

Here the boys are with a very cooperative sloth bear.

And of course the pandas.

The zoo is still working on the elephant walk but we caught sight of them today.

I was loving the look of these blue crested pigeons in the bird house.

One disappointment today was that because of the elephant walk construction we didn't get to see the beavers.

The other was that because I lost the phone number of the friends we were supposed to meet up with we never found each other. (Somehow despite spending over four hours walking around we were not able to find the group of three adults and seven kids (one in a wheelchair) we were trying to find.)

After our post-learning ice cream we went to feed the birds.

A wanted to see how close the birds would let him get.

He waited so still....a lady on vacation took a picture of him...she thought he was so funny.

Obviously they have been watching too much "Annie"...they were cleaning off the table and broke into song.

Weekend Report

On Friday night we went to the park across the street for a group get together...they call it pizza in the park...but we ate at home before we went over.

Here's M helping A climb the swing set.

E and his friend.

1-2-3-Jump!!!

On Saturday A wasn't feeling that well early in the day so he stayed home while E went to a birthday party. Then we went for a walk downtown to see the art show and had dinner at LaMad. Little guy was obviously feeling better by then but was still in his p.j.s

This a.m. we had church.

And then we joined some friends for skating.

M helped their little girl get her ice legs.

Too much fun skating....I couldn't believe how quickly the kids picked it up. Don't they both look like such big kids!!

Here's A on the way home from our Sunday dinner out with friends.

When we got home tonight we saw that our neighbours had a catering company working out of the garage....the serving staff were all dressed up......interesting.

Back At It

Back to school and back to 'the office' for me. I use the passenger seat as my centre of operations...books to return...list of things to do...stuff to mail...cheques to deposit....

And our daily 'to-do' list. I do love lists. E devised the plan that if it is on the right side then it's done...the middle means we're doing it right now...the left means it is still to be completed.

We're currently studying Canada as our unit study. We did a KWL on beavers today. Did you know they are NorthAmerica's biggest rodent?!

They have been loving their place value work this week. No sheet work just manipulatives.

Final Installment of Vacation Pics

The night before we left the kids wanted a little more bird time.

And a little puppy cuddle too.

We left after breakfast and went to NiagaraFlls.

Here are the falls....from the Canadian side.

And as we approached them on the MaidoftheMst.

Here is where E felt comfortable on the boat.

Here is where A felt comfortable.

Family Shot.

We went for a walk the day we got home...here's the view across the river.

Last Day Together

We went by this cool hotel and were looking around. I thought it was funny to see all three boys walking with the same foot forward.

The real purpose of our day was to go to Collingwood Caves.

These two are like little mountain goats.

These two too.

So beautiful.

Voila....la famille.

Voila....l'autre famille.

We all took up the challenge and squeezed through FatMan'sMisery.

This was a mushroom growing outside one of the caves....beautiful.

And our professional frog catcher found this guy in the moss outside one of the caves.

Here the guys are in one of the caves.

We rode a tractor to get to the suspension bridge.

E was not loving the suspension bridge.

A was loving the bridge.

There was a little train ride we did ride on.

The boys did get to sit in the front for a picture.

A decided he didn't want his pic taken anymore so M chased him down to get this one.

You can see the grown-ups are getting tired....we're sitting down. Day is done.