Geocaching By Thomas

We first geocached a while after mom got a Geocaching for Dummies book from the library. We did our first cache near Baker Park this summer. It was a camo-duct taped film canister. Ever since then we've been hooked.

Geocaching is where you have a GPS and you're basically on a "wild goose chase" for a camo-duct taped container that is usually far enough above the ground so that it won't get buried in the snow (at least in Minnesota). There are several geocaching websites that tell you where the coordinates are for them.

When you hide a geocache, you find a spot in some rocks, a log or in the woods. Sometimes they are hidden in the sides of cliffs. You bring your GPS and mark the coordinates of that spot. Geocaches have to be more than 528 feet apart. So then you log it in on the website. And then you wait for them to respond. If they say that there is one hidden less than 528 feet nearby, you have to take it out and find another spot. That happened to us once. If they say that it is an ok spot, then you if you've put it there already, you have to rush it out there. Ours almost got found before it got hidden. That was really funny.

Geocache difficulties and terrain difficulties are rated in stars, from 1 to 5. One is the easiest and 5 is the hardest. We've done a 4 before in terrain. That was really cool.

I do geocaching for the hunt. Irene and Mari do it for the trinkets inside. Mom and dad mainly do it because it's fun.

GPS's are usually about $150. Go buy one and try it!

The Goose Guy

By Thomas 9/7/07

One day while we were driving to Hirschfield's, we saw this guy standing by his truck full of decoys of geese. And he had a knife in his hand. We were wondering what he was doing. So we stopped by and asked him what he was doing. He said he was plucking geese that he had shot that morning in Medina.

I was interested to find out how heavy they were. He told us they weighed 8-20 lbs. I got to hold one. It was really heavy.

We asked him how many he had. He said he had five. His friend got four. We asked him what kind of gun he used. He used a shot gun. I didn’t now that you don’t shoot geese on the ground. You shoot them in the air.

He said that where he shot them, kids were getting on the bus nearby and there were $1 million dollar homes nearby. I thought that was interesting that you could shoot geese right there.

He also told us that a goose had fought his dog the other day, and the goose was beating the dog up so the dog didn’t want to hunt at all that day because he got beat up. It surprised me that a goose could beat up a 130 pound dog! I wonder what our dog Simon would do?

The dog was also trying to carry the geese but they were too heavy.

Irene starts "school" one day early

The rest of us will officially start our 07/08 school year tomorrow, but little 2 1/2 year old Irene started today. She must have been listening to Thomas recently review some of his math facts with flash cards. Today she engaged both her dad and I in some "math facts" as she shouted from room to room "mom, what 2 plus?" I would answer back, "2 plus 0 is 2". Irene answered "K!" and then she'd write the answer on her Yatzee score card (perfectly turned uppee (upside) down). She'd then shout another problem, "mom, what 8 plus?", to which I'd answer "8 plus zero is 8". The routine went on for at least a dozen problems for me and then she got her daddy involved. It was out of the mouths of babes and we loved it! Of course the neighbors may have thought we were crazy - they already are aware of that :-) as our windows were wide open with the sashes being stained and/or painted after replacing all of them in the house the last two weeks.

In general, I'd have to admit that we are in good shape to begin another school year at home. It is always exciting to get a week or so under our belts, iron out the kinks and get back into a rhythm for the year.

New items for this year include the 2nd year of the rotation for My Father's World curriculum on Creation to the Greeks, Learnables language program for Spanish, and English from the Roots up for vocabulary.