Happy Long Weekend!

Hope you are all having a great long weekend! We had a good start to it by having a bicycle ride up the side of the Welland Canal. We went from our home, to the Port Robinson ferry, then across the canal and up the bicycle path to the Highway 20 bridge.



When we got to the bridge, a ship was passing underneath! So we had to stop to have a good look!



Here is the happy group of bicyclists! I was the "back-up van" driver, and photographer for this occasion!



It can be fun just to mess around on big pieces of machinery!

From here, we crossed the bridge to try out a new restaurant - "Indian Flames" which is just on the other side of the bridge. It features Indian food and got a "two thumbs up" rating from our food critic (David), and an enthusiastic rating from all the children too, so we'll have to go back.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Well, it has been a busy summer already! Sorry to be so tardy in the blog update!! There's been a lot going on, so I will try to catch up on some of our doings.

We had Janelle visit us from New York City again this year with the Fresh Air Fund. It was a great visit! She grew a lot this past year! (I suppose all of mine did too - but I live with them!) One of the fun things we did with Janelle was visit Toronto, and go to a baseball game.

We drove in to Toronto, parked, and had a picnic lunch at Harbourfront. Here are Emmi and Janelle - with the Rogers Centre in the background. From where they are sitting you could see the harbour, with all the interesting boats going by, planes taking off and landing at the Island Airport, and people getting ready for a kyak class. Lots of fun!

Our seats were behind left field (I think - I haven't been to a ball game in a long time, and am a bit mixed on the left and right fields...). David had printed off easy versions of a scorecard, so the children enjoyed scoring the game, it made it go quickly. There were 6 home runs in this game - and one of them came really close to us! A fellow just about 6 seats to the left of Emmi caught the homer!

We were joined by Granny and Granddad on this excursion. Here we are after the game - it was a pretty hot night, and the Dome was open - which was fun (because you could see the occasional plane fly over, and see the darkening sky) but warm.



The Jays won this game 7 - 2, which put us all in a happy mood! The next day they lost 13 - 3, so we picked a good one to see!

My Downstairs Bathroom

Just thought you might all like to know what my downstairs bathroom looks like right now. No toliet, no sink, and hopefully soon, no floor. That's what the boys are doing in this picture, they're taking up the vinyl tile that was on the floor. The subfloor will stay, so don't worry that we'll fall through to the basement. The tub is staying, and the toliet and sink will return (refinished!) and there should be a nice, neutral colour scheme soon. And, a new floor! Stay tuned!

Chess Club

The spring chess club for our homeschool group has wrapped up. It was the first time we'd participated, and we had a great time! The club is taught by Mr. E. who explains different chess ideas, and gives a lot of time to play and practice. The final two weeks were devoted to a tournament that Emmi and Tim played in.

Even though they didn't play in the tournament, Pip and Ben were part of the chess club too. Both can set up the board, and know how to move all the pieces. Ben can even catch you in a wicked "double rook" checkmate if you're not careful!

Chess can require a lot of thought! Emmi said that was the most important thing she learned in the club - to think through a move before you make it! Tim said he had learned so many things, he couldn't pick just one important thing!

Mr. E. encouraged everyone to play different people, so you got a lot of experience with different styles of play. At the end, trophies were handed out to the top three players in the tournament. I think Tim was the most surprized to find out he won first place! Congratulations Tim!!

Drummond Hill Cemetery

Grandma and Grandpa came down recently, and we thought it would be fun to visit a War of 1812 historic site. We picked the Drummond Hill Cemetery - somewhere we'd driven by a lot, but never stopped in at.


The cemetery is on the site of a huge battle in the War of 1812 - the Battle of Lundy's Lane. It happens to be the highest point in Niagara Falls, and so was a key place to control back in 1814, which is when the battle actually took place. In 1895, the monument was build to remember the battle. The monument appeals to all ages - whether it be the cannon on either side, the cannon balls on the monument, the steps that are fun to climb up, or the interesting facts on the informative plaque - there is something there for everyone!




Laura Secord also rests in this cemetery, you can see her monument too.


We picked one of the coldest and windiest days in May to visit. Shortly before we got there, one of the big trees had suffered a lot of wind damage.

There are other interesting graves and markers to visit. There is a professional stuntman who died in a barrell roll (but not when he went over the falls), and in another corner there is a young, visiting Australian who has a kangaroo on his headstone.

We thought the tree growing over the headstone was another interesting touch to this interesting grave. The kangaroo is right at the top, in almost a starburst. We enjoyed our visit, but the weather along with the solemn feel of the cemetery made us quite ready to get in the van to return home for tea and doughnuts!

Papermaking

Time for another history adventure! Together with our friends, we tried our hand at papermaking, which is something the Ancient Chinese first perfected. It is so much fun - and so much (wet) mess! Next time we'll try to order better weather (it was drizzly and cool) so we can work outdoors!

Before the fun of papermaking, we needed a few supplies. If you are ever interested in making your own paper, there are some good websites with directions like here, but we got hooked at the Ontario Science Centre. We were able to make paper there, and they sent us home with good directions (the link to the Science Centre will take you to their papermaking directions). We purchased a blender at Goodwill, and some old picture frames at another second-hand store. I bought some screen (like you'd use on your screen door) and we cut pieces to fit the frames, and stapled it on - this was to make the mould and deckle - the thing you drag through the pulp to form the paper. We took a stack of cloth diapers (the rectangular variety), and our friends provided some towels because you generate a lot of water with this activity! A couple of tubs to hold the pulp, and some paper out of the recycling bin (including some colourful tissue and construction paper) and we were ready to go! Here's what we did:


The first step was to rip up our scrap paper into little pieces - keep your colours separate!


Then paper bits go in the blender with water and get blended up into a pulp. The pulp goes into a tub, with more water for a nice, soupy, pulpy mess. We also added glitter to the pulp to make our paper fancy!


Emmi is forming a piece of paper with our mould and deckle. You push the mould and deckle to the bottom of the tub, swirl the pulp around evenly, and slowly lift up the mould and deckle, letting the water drain away. A pulpy sheet of paper is left behind.


Then you turn the pulpy mess (still on the deckle) over and squish out as much water as you can onto the cloth (diapers in our case). Lift up the deckle, and hopefully your wet paper remains behind on the cloth.


To get out even more water, the wet paper is sandwiched in cloth diapers and then between two books (or pieces of wood), and a weight (in this case, Pip, jumping up and down) is applied.

Very carefully, transfer the damp paper to a clean cloth to dry. As you can see, we made orange and green paper. The orange paper was thinner, and we tried some cool effects on it, like making green shapes in it (lower left, you can see a piece of orange paper with the top of a green tree in it - very cool!).

By the time we'd cleaned up, and had a recovery cup of tea, the damp paper was dry enough to handle and take home.

Springtime Ramblings

These photos are actually from last month, but I thought I'd put them up now. We went for a ramble with Granny and Granddad in the Shorthills Provincial Park, and saw a good display of these bloodroot right about where we turned around to head back to the van.

As it is Mother's Day, here is a great photo of my mother and me! Happy Mother's Day all you mums!


We heard a good sermon in church today about a faithful mother in the Bible. This mother trained her son (with the help of her mother - the son's grandma) in the faith so well that when the Apostle Paul came through their town, he took the young man along with him to help minister on his travels. Later this young fellow got 2 letters written to him by Paul - his name.. Timothy! The faithful mother was Eunice - my own faithful mother's name!

Here's a gang of us just wandering along - somehow neither of the 2 men on the outing made it into the photo (of course, one was behind the lense of the camera!).