Indy Zoo in October

I'm posting pics from October, but I'll post some current news too. I'm catching up with all my digital photos...what a process! I haven't started a Christmas letter this year...I might not get one out. I like the idea of sending out letters at Valentine's better anyway. That way the kids can include Thank-you's and I can respond to Christmas letters that we receive, so don't count on any letters in the mail until February :-)
We're swimming in snow! We've had like 10" of snow already. It's great! I love winter with lots of snow on the ground...it just makes winter bearable. In the afternoons after we've finished school work the kids and I go outside. I get my cardio exercise shoveling snow and they have loads of fun sledding down our hill. I'll get pics soon (promise). Our neighbor usually plows us out right away, but he didn't get to us too quickly this year. That's okay it was incredibly nice that he did this in the past and we were not expecting it at all. Tom shoveled first and was able to get his car out to drive to work. He hasn't been biking because with his new schedule he has to be at work at 6am and just hasn't gotten in the groove of things to leave at 5:15am to ride to work. It's also very dark at 5:15am and dark at 4:30pm when he gets done with work...not exactly fun when you're on a bike in sub zero temps. Each afternoon I spend about 1-2 hours just shoveling snow trying to get a solid path for my car. We've parked all our cars at the end of the driveway near the road, so we won't have far to drive to get out. We had a harsh comeback from our trip down south. The temps are bitter cold here. Sub zero in the morning and then warming up to a balmy 10 or 15F. It's funny because after you experience those daily temps when you finally get a 30+F day you truly feel like you're experiencing a massive heat wave. If it's sunny you feel sweaty and the need to take your jacket off and it's only 33F! Crazy :-)...can't wait to feel those 30+F days again.

At the end of October I drove my Mom back to Indiana after she had helped me with the kids for 2 weeks while I could go be a slave a my job. The weather was still nice there when we went, so we decided to take a trip to the Indiana Zoo...this is a meercat that we saw at the zoo:

Here's Dad with the boys in front of the bears totem:

They have some really neat elephants there:



New this year was a shark petting tank:

They also have an impressive dolphin exhibit. It's a bittersweet exhibit for me. I love to see dolphins, but it's sad to see them in Indiana with no ocean around. It's hard to tell, but it looks like they don't get any natural sunlight in there. That really makes my stomach turn. A couple of the dolphins they have were born in captivity, so at least they don't know what they're missing.



Reeve told me they looked happy and that they were well cared for. That's it for now...stay warm everyone :-)

Animal Tracks at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve

Waaaaay back at the end of October the kids went on a home schooling field trip to the Kickapoo Valley Reserve. The older kids in our home schooling group learned about how to survive in the wild and wild edibles while the younger kids (mainly boys all Reeve & Kyle's ages) learned about how to spot animal tracks.

They had a blast and of course didn't even notice the chilly weather. They all got copies of the animal tracking cards, so they can identify animal tracks around our house...really I don't want to know :-). I know we have foxes and coyotes nearby, oh and tons of deer. I saw a wolf on the property once and the town patrol man said he saw some black bears sunning on our road (this was about 8 years ago).

Here's a pic of Tom in his side job gear. He'll probably be getting new patches and hats in the future as he decided to change the name from Raye Mechanicals to Raye Heating & AC, LLC...that way people actually know what he does, otherwise he kinda sounds like an auto mechanic or something.

He's gaining faithful customers, and we haven't really marketed. Recently he was able to fix a problem and save a customer $200/month on their electrical bill. They were VERY happy!

Kyle's 5th Birthday

My parents were able to come visit just before Kyle's 5th Birthday. We had a great time going to a soccer game and opening presents. Too much fun to stay home and cook, so we ordered pizza from the Viking Pizzaria in Elroy. Yummy!

The kids dressed up as knights in shining armor this year for Halloween. We went to a Halloween party at in my parent's neighborhood in Indiana. We also delivered candy filled pumpkins to Realtors (for Affordable Mortgage). We did this all before Halloween and by the time Halloween was here the kids were sick of candy and dressing up.


They love wearing the costumes but they both agreed the candy was way toooo sweet. Ironically after experiencing a couple of pieces of candy for the first time in their lives they both got a little sick. It's been a very long time since they've been sick, so they both associated getting sick with eating the candy. It's too bad there can't be more tricks instead of treats for halloween. It will be interesting to see what they want to do next year.

Elroy Museum Field Trip

Can anyone tell me the name of this wierd plant we had growing in front of our house? Kyle's certain he planted it and we believe it came from a Dr. Seuss book. I think it's amaranth, but I'm not sure.

We're involved with an active home-schooling group, and at least every month there is a field trip we can attend.

A couple of weeks ago we went to the Elroy Museum. We'd never been in this museum before because it's only open on the weekend and we've never made the time.

It was a cute little museum all about the history of Elroy, Wisconsin. There is a lot of rail road history here.

This won't be on the Top 10 favorite field trip list because the kids were kind of bored with it. The librarian gave the tour and while she's wonderful with story time she was quite long winded on this trip. She was also pretty nervous about the kids in the museum...home schooled kids are very inquisitive and they tend to take a hands-on approach to learning. This museum was strictly HANDS OFF everything.

Horse Parade by our house

I think these were taken the last weekend in September. Tom was outside and noticed the yearly "horse parade" by our house.


A group of people who get together to ride their horses around our area. It looks pretty neat when they all ride by our house. Reeve and Kyle even had candy thrown to them. The horses were beautiful...it was all so unique.

Kyle had his 5th Birtday yesterday! He was sooooo excited to be finally 5. I'll post some more pics soon of that. Last weekend we celebrated with my Dad. He and my Mom drove up for the weekend to watch the kid's soccer games and celebrate Kyle's 5th Bday. My Dad drove back on Sunday, and my Mom stayed to give me a reprieve from home schooling while I focused on work. My boss was originally going to take a vacation, but now we're using the time as more training opportunity and we plan to make presentations to Realtors next week about what our office does and what programs we offer. Then I'm going to take a break with the kids and drive my Mom back to Indiana.

More Soccer

Our Saturdays have been filled with soccer...three more games to go. It's been a really good experience for all of us.

Tom has really enjoyed coaching and both Reeve and Kyle love the excitement of playing and meeting new friends.

Reeve really loves to charge the ball.

It's nice for us because they don't have to travel...those days will be in a couple of years.

Kyle's group is pretty young, but there's still a couple of kids that are interested in playing.

Kyle stayed right with the ball the whole game.
Life's been good outside of soccer too. We've been very busy with schooling and work. It's been hard to keep up with the blog! In the next couple of weeks we're going to be getting ready for a visit from my folks... I have MAJOR HOUSE CLEANING to do :-). Reeve has already started to decorate for Halloween. He's making a skeleton to go on the pantry door. Next he plans to make a bunch of bats to hang everywhere. Sometimes I think he's a bit disappointed in my lack of decorating enthusiasm.
Kyle's excited about his 5th Birthday. Oh boy! He likes viewmaster discs, rubber snakes (Reeve has one and Kyle now wants one), games for his busy hands. He's not really into drawing or art like Reeve. He loves action and music.

Norskadalen Art Class & 1st Soccer Pics

Friday the kids and I went to Coon Valley, WI with our home-schooling group. We all took a Nature Sketch art class at the Norskadalen Nature Center. I thought I had my camera in the car, but I accidently left it at home :-(. It was a beautiful day, and we all enjoyed learning how to sketch in nature. Reeve really loved it. The teacher told him that he drew better than a lot of 8th grade work she's seen. Kyle did really well, especially since the class was geared toward 4th - 8th graders.

In a couple of days I'll upload my recent soccer pics, but this pic below was from Reeve's very first soccer practice. There are about 30-40 kids in his age group for soccer.

The Fall soccer session is more laid back than the Spring session. Tom is helping to coach both Reeve and Kyle's teams. He's never coached before, so he's learning a lot, but having a lot of fun too!
Kyle loves it and can't wait to get right in there and kick the ball.

Hustler Fest Pig Wrestle

I'm behind in posting...as usual. Every year our little town of Hustler has their 3 day Hustler Fest. We usually ride our bikes down to walk around, see neighbors, watch a tractor pull, etc... This year Reeve rode his own bike to Hustler. It's about 4 miles to get to the bike trail, and then about 1.5 miles on the trail to get to Hustler. We walked our bikes down the huge hill. Reeve did great! We were all pretty proud of him. Kyle took it easy in the Burley bike trailer.

New this year to Hustler Fest was the pig wrestle. It was hilarious. There was a team of 3-4 people and they had 1 minute to catch a pig and put it in a bucket.

I think some of the people just wanted to get real muddy...totally gross.

One group of high school boys decided they were going to really go for it and wore their football helmets.

Those little pigs were fast!

Last of the Canada Pictures

I apologize for not posting in a week and leaving the gross post up for so long. We've had a busy week with work, home school, and soccer. I'll post soccer pics this week...or next :-). We have a busy week ahead with Tom's 39th birthday on Thursday :-). Some friends are coming up from Madison to ride the bike trail. Laura has a conference in Wausau on Wednesday and the kids have a field trip to the Norskadalen Nature Center on Friday (www.norskadalen.org).

On our way out of Banff we stopped at the Icefields.



To break up the trip to Prince George, B.C. we stopped at little scenic areas. On one stop Reeve had enough time to make a dam...


On our way out of Prince George we saw our first bear. It was a black bear just eating along the roadside. We were in the minivan and didn't really come to a complete stop, so this is the only picture that was clear.

not feeling well

I'm probably going to take a few days off before I post the last of our trip...I'm going to the doctor today, but I'm about 90% sure that Kyle and I are now exhibiting symptoms of giardia...caused from little protozoa (animals!) living in water that we must have consumed on our trip.

Did anyone else that went on this trip get it too?

Has anyone reading this blog ever had it before? I know that doc will prescribe something, but I've read the medications can have worse side effects than what the giardia's doing and that they might not be 100% effective.

I'd appreciate anyone's knowledge of a natural cure.

Thanks!

Sulphur Mountain near Banff, Alberta, Canada

(pic taken from Sulphur Mtn...view of Tunnel Mtn. & Banff)
After hiking all the way up to the Tea House at Lake Louise we decided to take it easy the next day. Auntie Mary Lea and Uncle Rye treated us all to a luxury Gondola ride up the side of Sulphur Mountain to the top. We'd heard stories from Gord about the difficult hike up Sulphur Mountain...many switch-backs and instead of taking 3 hours to get the top it would probably take us 6 hours.

I must admit I was nervous to ride in the Gondola and the ride probably could have been more enjoyable if I had kept certain comments to myself, so I apologize for being grim on the way up. I didn't time it, but it was a long ride up. The Gondolas were very safe and I don't know why I was in such a funk.

I couldn't believe how many mountains we could see when we got up there! The view was astonishing. We visited one of the oldest weather observation stations. In 1903 the currator of the Banff Museum, Norman Sanson, was also a meterologist. He would climb to the peak (now named Sanson Peak) every 2 weeks or so to record his weather observations. He would make this trek even in winter storms, and sometimes the journey would take him 9-10 hours one way. He had a little kitchen and bunk bed in his observation station. In 1931 he made his 1000th trek up and in 1945, at age 83, he went to the peak to observe a solar eclipse. This is the view from Sanson Peak.

We soaked in the scenery and actually saw a couple of mountain goats.


Next we soaked in the Sulphur Mountain Hot Springs. Basically it was a really HOT pool. We had fun heating our worked muscles in the 104F water, then after awhile we'd take a cold shower and then go back in the pool for more heat. I think it would be a really neat thing to do in the winter after a day of skiing. These hot springs were really responsible for the creation of Banff as Canada's first national park. The natives there had told 2 fur hunters, Willard Younge and Benjamin Pease, about the springs and in 1875 they were the first non-natives to visit the site.

Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada

Lake Louise is a stunning turquoise-colored glacier-fed lake. It's an extremely cold lake, but it's beauty more than makes up for that.




We started out wanting to take a leisurely stroll around 1/2 of the lake. We read that it was a 5.2km (about 3 miles) hike to the Tea House. We had just hiked the HooDoos the day before and this trail was better, so we decided to go for it.


We saw many rock climbers around the lake...here's Austin showing us he can climb rocks with no gear...GO AUSTIN :-).


Kyle and Reeve did an awesome job keeping up with everyone. A couple of times Kyle had a shoulder ride, and a lot of the time he wanted to go back, but overall he did excellent for being 4.


We just didn't know what to expect when we set out. Initially you think oh 3 miles that's easy we can do that, but when you're hiking over a mile up in elevation 3 miles can seem like FOREVER. Many times on the trail we thought surely we've hiked 3 miles...it can't be much farther. Well some in the group made it up to the Tea House in a cool 2-2.5hrs and the talkers (Auntie & Me had fun talking) made it up in about 3 hours.

It was an incredible accomplishment for my Aunt, because she has asthma. She was awesome though and not once did she say she wanted to turn around.

Our reward for the long journey was lunch at the Tea House. We had delicious sandwhiches, soup, fruit drinks (no tea for us) and their famous home made chocolate cake.



We felt really good after lunch and we were looking forward to the easier hike DOWN to the lake.

You can kind of see how high we went in this picture...Lake Louise is in the background and we are very near the top where the Tea House was located.