Home From the Land of Cotton

We arrived home this afternoon from LA (lower Alabama). We had a great trip. It was so nice to disconnect from the world for a few days and just enjoy the family and a good book. I uploaded a whole bunch of pictures, it's late, and I'm tired. So--in no particular order--I bring you "Our Trip."
Some cotton, somebody (not sure who) picked this out of one of the cotton fields so that the kids could see it up close. This picture is sideways but you get the idea. We saw fields of cotton everywhere we went.

This is the famous Boll Weevil Monument in Enterprise. They are all about the Boll Weevil because a long time ago the Boll Weevil ate the cotton crops and forced them to try something new. They started growing peanuts and were able to make a huge amount of money, much more than they were getting for their cotton. So, they are indebted to the Boll Weevil down in LA. We risked our very lives to get this picture. The monument is right in the middle of the road with no sidewalk or anything around it. Thankfully there isn't too much traffic in Enterprise. You probably need to click on the picture to get the full effect. It's a woman holding a Boll Weevil over her head.

After a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner some of us headed out to a state park to go letterboxing. We were successful--we found "King Cotton" and "Boll Weevil." Also in this state park they were having a scarecrow stroll. There were scarecrows all along the path in the woods. There were some very clever ones.

I liked this picture--just a picture of the woods and Hannah and Billy looking at a scarecrow and Grace hiking along.

This one was a Harley Davidson scarecrwo complete with a beer belly.

Here we are finding our first letterbox. Grace was the brave one who chose a stick and dug for it. She's actually the one most into letterboxing. Hannah and Joe enjoy the thrill of the hunt but are not terribly interested in the stamping part. Grace did all their stamping for them.

Here Joe is molesting the scarecrow checking out her upper body. I think her "jugs" were made of milk jugs and all three had to really check her out.

Thanksgiving dinner! We had a delicious, traditional meal all cooked by Aunt Harriet.

We spent the morning watching the parade and coloring and then watched some of the dog show. That was pretty funny.

Here's Hannah playing dominoes with Aunt Clara. This little table was the site of lots of games--dominoes, Skip-Bo, Phase 10, Bananagrams (speed scrabble), and Trouble.

We had a great time during our visit. I didn't get any pictures but on Saturday my GA family and some aunts, uncles, and cousins all came over to help us celebrate Aunt Clara's 95th birthday party!

Letterboxing again!

We went on our first family letterboxing adventure today. We just looked for one but we found it so we were very excited. I was showing Ollie our stamp and all the other family's stamps we got yesterday. He said, "I see a common thread here--homeschooling women." I had to remind him that our book only has stamps from the event yesterday with homeschooling women. Men do this too I assured him (at least I assume they do). He's skeptical but is willing to go along with us. He loves being out in nature so he's happy for whatever reason takes us out. He's more of a geocacher and I would imagine that there are parks where you can find geocaches and letterboxes so we can combine the two. I am loving letterboxing because I have never been good at figuring out the GPS. Below you can see the girls running around a big tree. That was part of the clue--they had to run around the tree twice so the "bat gnomes" didn't grab their fingers as they reached for the box. Cute.

Hannah found it! Joe is here as we find it with his first stick but he was soon off chasing imaginary bad guys.

Grace and I were the champion stamp colorers.

Here's our stamp in the box's book and the box's stamp in my book. We were especially excited to see the stamps of two friends who had been there before. Pretty cool!

Joe put the shirt of his Jedi costume on yesterday, slept in it and then wore it all day today. I'm sure it made his stick play that much more exciting. He was so cute to watch, lost in his imaginary world.

Ollie found an orange tree and ate quite a few. I had one too and Hannah had two I think. They were a little underripe but really good nonetheless.

Sister talk.

Letterboxing

We went to our letterboxing event yesterday and it was wonderful! We got so many cool stamps in our books. I'll have to get a picture of them later. The girls really got into it and had a lot of fun. I think we are going today to find some others in our area. Some of the kids yesterday already knew where the box was and it was disappointing to the girls to not get to really follow the clues and look for the box. So, they'll get to do that today. The event yesterday was more than just looking for letterboxes though. Cris had done some special event stamps that were hidden around the picnic tables and everyone had to get those stamps as well as trade with everyone else. It was fun to see everyone's stamps and hear the trail names. Our trail name is Hillside Hollow. Sound familiar?

Letterboxing and Little Books

We are going letterboxing tomorrow for the first time. It occurred to me today that the girls (and maybe Joe) might want their own book to collect stamps. If you are unfamiliar with letterboxing it is basically a "treasure hunt." You follow clues that you find at a letterboxing site online and then go find the box. In it will be a stamp--usually hand carved and you stamp your book and then use your stamp and stamp the box's book. You also have a trail name that you record. You can read my friend Cris's blog to learn more. So, tomorrow we are going to a letterboxing event where we will swap stamps with other letterboxers and then find a few letterboxes. Anyway, back to the books--we are in a spending freeze around here and so I couldn't just go out and buy a book for each of the kids. I had one book that I am using as our family book and I decided to make books for the girls. Below is a tutorial for making a book out of paper that is really sturdy and uses no staples or anything else to hold it together.

Step 1--Take 5 sheets of paper (for a 40 page book) and fold them in half. Open the fold and using a ruler measure 5.2 cm (approximately) from each side on the fold. Then cut in between your marks to make a slit right down the middle.

Now, this next step, I did in three groups of five. Take five sheets of paper and fold them in half and then open up. On the crease--measure 5.5 cm. from each end and make a little mark. Then cut out a notch maybe a quarter-in. wide and 5.5 cm long. You just want your notch to be a little bit longer than the ends of your slit. Repeat with two more sets of five sheets.

Step 3--put all your sheets that are notched in one pile and bend them (but not fold) long ways and put them into the slit. This will be a really tight fit and may require some twisting and shoving. Push it in halfway and then when you get to the middle start opening the 15 sheets and work the notches into the edge that's there (this is really hard to put into words!--I hope you get it.).

Below is your final product--a little book. Fold firmly to make it stay closed.

Last step--decorate! I combined an art project from Exploring Countries and Cultures with this. They had to do a "Fraktur Certificate" style drawing. Joe hasn't decorated his yet because he was doing his school while the girls were decorating. I doubt he'll even care to collect stamps anyway but if he does, I'm ready!