Old McDonald Had A Farm....

We spent our day today visiting farmers and their animals and wares in the most unusual of situations. Today was the annual Farm Days celebration inside the local shopping mall.

Our friends the Piseco Peeps were supposed to pick us up and explore the festival with us, but they were having bouts of feeling generally unwell, so we made it out on our own....

OR SO WE THOUGHT.

We started in the mall proper, and the kids took a quick ride on petal tractors near the doors.



After a moment, we made some crafty cotton ball sheep.



It was just after taking that picture with our fuzzy sheep that Nate began freaking out and bouncing around and screaming, "JediBoy, JediBoy and PisecoMom"* at the top of his lungs. I thought he had seen them somewhere in the mall because they'd decided to join us belatedly, but then realized that he wasn't quite seeing what I'd expected. Instead, we'd found the following on the board the kids were posing in front of for their photo op.



After our excitement wore off, we continued through the mall and enjoyed such varied activities as tasting Stone Soup and watching a sheep get her winter coat sheared.

It was a grand day, and we came home with loot bags full of crafts, snacks, and assorted treasures.

For more pictures, you can check out the album...

Wrapping Up the Week

Yeah, it's a day early for most people to be wrapping up their week, but we seem to have managed to drag Fridays into our traditional weekend.

Pictures will follow at some unknown future moment.

Sunday was a rest day, and then bowling with JediBoy and his dad. That's always fun for the kids, and I enjoy watching, but it seems to be a lesson in patience for the Daddys involved.

Monday and Tuesday were spent cleaning up around the house, doing lots of reading and playing outside on a regular basis. Dave had his regularly scheduled activities and we had neighborhood kids over in the afterschool hours to play with Em and Nate.

Wednesday was spent with JediBoy and his PisecoMom. There was some seriously funny Wii action, and lots of bad-guy slayage outside in the back yard when our two sons suddenly became "Links" a la Legend of Zelda.

PisecoMom and I spent a few minutes digging through my boxes of curriculum for Summer-Fall '07 homeschooling and ooohhing and ahhhhing over a few of our favorite things. I think we've decided we'll do Noeo Biology 1 cooperatively this fall, and maybe even invite a couple of others with like-aged kids to join us. More hands = more FUN!

Today we're cleaning again, though not much seems to be getting done. I've got a truly intimidating mountain of laundry in Nate's room to fold and put away tonight. We've got to make a Wegmans trip that was put off yesterday due to a generalized case of BLAH that went through the whole family. After groceries, Kelly and Davy will be coming over for dinner and then we may all go out for gelato and Italian ice...or we may stay in and play Wii till bedtime.

Tomorrow morning a plumber comes out to work on the leak in our hot water heater, and then Grandma and Grandpa Chen will arrive for their long visit. Let's stop here to say a little prayer to whatever deity is listening that there will be peace and grace during this visit!

Ok, that laundry is refusing to fold itself so I'd better get back to it.

~L