Month: June 2012

I am having a fun time playing with some of the toys that I have collected along the voyage. Mommy sat and did these dinosaur puzzles with me for a long time. They were tough!

We painted some animal figures.

I got exposed to poison ivy and had it on my wrist, chin and nose.

We have been having fun exploring the backyard and making forts.

We found a dead chipmunk and had a burial ceremony for it in the backyard.

My tee-pee fort came out really neat.

We made “ultimate hopscotch”!

Mommy noticed a lump behind my ear. Swollen lymph node? Mommy called the doctor and they said to keep an eye on it.

The next day we took Grandma Susie to the hospital for surgery. I was more whiney than normal and just wanted to sleep. Doesn’t this look comfy?

How about this?

I cam home and threw up. Mommy got me cleaned up and changed into pajamas and I slept the entire afternoon and all night. I refused all foods. Mom did manage to get me to eat some popsicles and have some crackers the next day.

Two days later and I was feeling better. We had school outside int he back yard. The weather was very pretty.

Feeling well enough to go to the playground. Mommy said I am too big for the bikes now but I proved her wrong!

We hiked in the woods at Boardman Park.

We decided that tonight is the night we got lightning bug hunting. We made Mommy buy us black pants so the bugs wouldn’t see us when it got dark outside.

We caught about 100 lightning bugs! We used them for night lights but by morning several had died and several had escaped! OOPS!

Up early and learning how to do double digit multiplication!

Suddenly, in the middle of school work I came up with the idea of opening a lemonade stand! We squeezed lots of lemons and make a simple syrup.

Soon we were in business! We each make $3.75 after the split! We had a lot of fun but lost interest quick because there weren’t a lot of customers.

Off on another adventure in Poland Woods. I love the big trees and asked to go see them again this year.

Tree hugger!!!

I look through this hole every year!

I remember the river where we have found crawfish before. I turned over every rock and was SOAKING wet from the knees down.

I caught 3 crawfish!

So far we are having a great time here in Ohio. The weather has been great for us and the adventures have been grand.

We stopped for the night to stay with family in Columbus, Ohio. They live on a cute little pond that has swans. The swans had TEN cygnets this year!

We had a great time talking to the swans.

Emmer and I got out of control and in a lot of trouble this day. I ended up having to sleep on the floor!

The next morning we got up and had breakfast and headed out to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. It has been a dream of mine to go there ever since I first learned about Jack Hannah.

We saw these cool bird feeders and I decided I wanted to make one later.

I wanted a picture with all off the large animal sculptures.

The polar bears were awesome. We sat and watched them plan and swim for a long time.

I found this good looking green frog and actually was able to touch it!

More animal sculptures for Mom to take photos of.

I loved all the rides. I was off on my own for about 30-45 minutes riding the bigger kid rides while Emmerson and Mommy did the little kid rides. I felt like such a big boy.

🙂

We went to the middle of nowhere Indiana to visit Fair Oaks Farm and hopefully see a cow being born.

It was a big chilly out. We needed jackets to get though the day.

I love my little brother!

HAY! This is just PART of the hay that they had lined up for the animals.

All these cows produce a LOT of manure. The farm has a processing plant to break down the manure into usable parts. They generate enough power to power 750 homes! WOW!

I was not pleased with how they treat the boy cows. The calves are all separated from the moms as soon as they are born. The boys and girls get shipped off for 2 years until the girls are old enough to have babies. The boys, well…. That is the part I didn’t like. Some are used for sperm harvesting while others fate they would not discuss. I assumed that they meant that the boys were turned into hamburgers after 2 years.

The milking carousel was HUGE! Some cows were stubborn and took extended rides.

I had fun in the “String Cheese Maze”.

I was a demon on the tractor races.

The pillow for jumping was super fun but a bit hot on the feet in the sun.

I was completely in awe with the birthing barn. I had no idea what was actually going to happen.

I was frozen like a statue watching the cow have her calf.

The hooves were really neat. We all learned that calves are born hoof first. You can even see the amniotic sac hanging down. I thought it was odd that the cow kept licking at what dribbled out of the sac.

This is the other cow that we were watching and her new baby calf. The calf will be bottle fed and never drink from the mama. In fact, as soon as it leaves the holding pen 30 minutes later it will never see her again. Well, it may if it is a girl and comes back to the dairy farm in 2 years. This was a boy, so bye bye mama! I was very sad at this fact.

They had a jumping machine out back.

We went on the pillow a few more times.

I climbed the rock wall (milk bottle) without incident!

We had yummy farm milk.

We checked back in on the calf a few hours later. He was all cleaned up and looked really comfy. They had just fed him his bottle. He was 84lbs!!! HUGE baby!

The two calves we saw today.

I took a shot at milking a plastic cow. I didn’t like the vacuum machine so decided milking wasn’t for me.

What an awesome memorable day!

Wow, Chicago has some HUGE buildings. The super tall one on the left is the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower).

We made it to my dream destination… The Field Museum.

I could see Dinosaur Sue from the entrance way.

Such a happy boy!

This is a pronghorn. I learned a lot about them in gifted class this year.

I had to check everything out. Some kids like amusement parks… I like museums!

Sue’s skull! It weights about 800lbs. An artificial one is on the skeleton downstairs because it would not hold the 800lbs.

I read all the signs to Emmerson.

Today we got along great!

We visited the underground and I became a cicada!

I tried to eat the giant crayfish.

Goodbye Chicago. I may come back someday when I am older and can enjoy more of your beauty.

We had a very boring drive from St. Louis to Chicago today. We talked a lot about corn. We did so because that is all we saw… corn corn and more corn. We did see a few soybean fields!

We stopped for a potty break and leg stretch and they actually had a mini playground at the rest stop. I slid down the sea saw and got splinters in my pants. Mommy changed me and while doing so Emmerson did the same thing.

We had fun playing board games and swimming at the hotel.