Is Kenny stealing that flag? Nope... As one of the tallest Cub Scouts in the second grade, Kenny and a friend get the honor of raising and lowering the flag every day at his school--a job he's quite proud of, and, according to Hope, he's quite good at. Now that it's finally stopped raining and we have nice sunny skies (at least for a while), we've been trying to enjoy the weather. For those of you who haven't been paying attention to my constant whining about it, we got 8.72 inches of rain in September (most coming in the last two weeks of the month) and a whopping 19.73 inches in October! That's over 28 inches in the last two months!! Rivers are flooding statewide, the farmers' fields are unharvestable bogs with the crops rotting away, and I think the soil in my back yard will be gooey for months. We've still tried to enjoy the nice days while we can--Kenny has the next two days off from school, and we're finally taking our new pop-up trailer out camping. And don't worry, the weather's supposed to be just fine...
Our super-relaxed kitties (Bella, the calico, and Draco, the tabby) have largely enjoyed their stay with us, although I wouldn't ask them if they're happy right now--we took them in earlier this week to get fixed and declawed. Both seem to be recovering nicely, and the kids are sure glad to have them back. They got a little worried when Mommy took the kitties to the vet (the last time we took a pet to the vet, it was Mooch, and she got put down...).
Our big event this last week was, of course, Halloween. Hope and the kids had gotten a bunch of pumpkins ("punkins", as Stephen calls them), and we spent the evening before Halloween gutting and carving the pumpkins. Kenny, of course, had to ham up the cleaning of the pumpkins:
I decided to take a new approach to making jack-o-lanterns:
Hope and the kids called my power drill cheating, but it worked rather well:
Well, at least for a first attempt. Maybe next year I'll try my jigsaw out as well... We always get loads of kids in our neighborhood for trick-or-treating, and this year was no exception:
I spent most of Halloween day up at the Isgrig archeological site. We spent an hour and a half bailing water out of our excavations, and then the ground was super saturated and very mucky. We did find some neat stuff, including a bunch of burned corn kernels and cobs--very important for determining the Indians' diet and this burned organic material can also be dated using radiocarbon dating, so we can get a better feel for the time period. I returned home by 6 p.m., changed into clean clothes, and then immediately took over the candy bin while Hope walked our three kids around Western Pines. Here's what a trick-or-treater would have seen if they came to our house early in the evening:
We get such a steady stream of kids that we just set up chairs in our carport and wait on them--we probably were out for a couple hours before we ran out of candy and called it a night. It was none too soon for our kids, as their long walk had tired them out:
Our other big news is that I've joined a local hunting club. The 30-30 Club (see the sign below) has leased almost 1,800 acres of timberland from a local timber company and some private individuals. I've joined about 20 other people on this lease, and we pay for the exclusive recreational rights to that property every year, which lets us hunt, fish, and engage in other recreational activities.
The land is mostly young pine plantation, with some narrow bottomland hardwoods along the small streams that drain the area. This gives me a convenient place near town to start hunting on, and I'll probably start taking Kenny hunting here soon, too. Unlike much of the upper midwest, the timber industry land in this part of the world is almost entirely leased to private citizens and hunting clubs, and given the limited amount of public land in our area, this was my best chance to hunt. Now I better slay a deer or two this year...
Is Kenny stealing that flag? Nope... As one of the tallest Cub Scouts in the second grade, Kenny and a friend get the honor of raising and lowering the flag every day at his school--a job he's quite proud of, and, according to Hope, he's quite good at. Now that it's finally stopped raining and we have nice sunny skies (at least for a while), we've been trying to enjoy the weather. For those of you who haven't been paying attention to my constant whining about it, we got 8.72 inches of rain in September (most coming in the last two weeks of the month) and a whopping 19.73 inches in October! That's over 28 inches in the last two months!! Rivers are flooding statewide, the farmers' fields are unharvestable bogs with the crops rotting away, and I think the soil in my back yard will be gooey for months. We've still tried to enjoy the nice days while we can--Kenny has the next two days off from school, and we're finally taking our new pop-up trailer out camping. And don't worry, the weather's supposed to be just fine...
Our super-relaxed kitties (Bella, the calico, and Draco, the tabby) have largely enjoyed their stay with us, although I wouldn't ask them if they're happy right now--we took them in earlier this week to get fixed and declawed. Both seem to be recovering nicely, and the kids are sure glad to have them back. They got a little worried when Mommy took the kitties to the vet (the last time we took a pet to the vet, it was Mooch, and she got put down...).
Our big event this last week was, of course, Halloween. Hope and the kids had gotten a bunch of pumpkins ("punkins", as Stephen calls them), and we spent the evening before Halloween gutting and carving the pumpkins. Kenny, of course, had to ham up the cleaning of the pumpkins:
I decided to take a new approach to making jack-o-lanterns:
Hope and the kids called my power drill cheating, but it worked rather well:
Well, at least for a first attempt. Maybe next year I'll try my jigsaw out as well... We always get loads of kids in our neighborhood for trick-or-treating, and this year was no exception:
I spent most of Halloween day up at the Isgrig archeological site. We spent an hour and a half bailing water out of our excavations, and then the ground was super saturated and very mucky. We did find some neat stuff, including a bunch of burned corn kernels and cobs--very important for determining the Indians' diet and this burned organic material can also be dated using radiocarbon dating, so we can get a better feel for the time period. I returned home by 6 p.m., changed into clean clothes, and then immediately took over the candy bin while Hope walked our three kids around Western Pines. Here's what a trick-or-treater would have seen if they came to our house early in the evening:
We get such a steady stream of kids that we just set up chairs in our carport and wait on them--we probably were out for a couple hours before we ran out of candy and called it a night. It was none too soon for our kids, as their long walk had tired them out:
Our other big news is that I've joined a local hunting club. The 30-30 Club (see the sign below) has leased almost 1,800 acres of timberland from a local timber company and some private individuals. I've joined about 20 other people on this lease, and we pay for the exclusive recreational rights to that property every year, which lets us hunt, fish, and engage in other recreational activities.
The land is mostly young pine plantation, with some narrow bottomland hardwoods along the small streams that drain the area. This gives me a convenient place near town to start hunting on, and I'll probably start taking Kenny hunting here soon, too. Unlike much of the upper midwest, the timber industry land in this part of the world is almost entirely leased to private citizens and hunting clubs, and given the limited amount of public land in our area, this was my best chance to hunt. Now I better slay a deer or two this year...
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