Been a while

It's been a while since I wrote.. I just haven't really had the time to sit and compose my thoughts.....

I really don't have the time now either..... J is sitting next to me waiting for her turn at the computer...lol

We have been doing so much the past few weeks....visiting the Lefferts House in Bklyn (a colonial home stead built in the 1790's), visiting the Prospect Park zoo, planning for our vacation to PA and going upstate to see my step daughters and grand son :).

Upstate was nice...we haven't seen them in a while.. and the kids had a great time seeing their nephew and sisters, playing on the trampoline, digging for worms and slugs, running around in the big yard, picking flowers A especially loves this, and seeing the pet goats they have.

It's a long drive, 4 hours each way but the kids love it, the girls are so great on long trips. They usually play and talk and make up songs in the back seat... they get along really well and I love that they are so close in age. I noticed that lately they will play together almost the whole day. F usually reads in the car, looks for license plates.. so far I think we have seen cars from at least 45 states.

Went on a Friday, came home, finished packing, saw my mom for a few hours, sent F to spend the night at her house because it is his favorite place to be... and was off on our vacation Sunday morning, picked up F in SI and drove to Philadelphia. We drove to the historic section and saw Ben Franklin's house(or what's left of it), the First bank of the US, the first library, started by Franklin and other historic places.... F loves to see all these things and I think him and I could spend weeks looking at all these things and not get tired.... I love that he has such an enthusiasm for History. We decided to go back on our way home.

We had a blast in Lancaster PA, the hotel was really nice and comfortable, we stayed for 4 nights and 5 days....Amish country is so wonderful and peaceful and so great to visit we try and go every year. We came across a very old church and cemetery, F loves cemeteries as do I. The gates were open, that's how you know you are in the country...we walked around for about an hour and saw graves for all types of war veterans, all the way from the French and Indian War to WWII... F loved this....then we went inside the 200 year old church, built in 1756, it is still in use by the congregation in Lancaster. It was so beautiful, it still had a wood burning stove to heat it in the winter.

We also went to Harrisburg to the Civil war museum. It was a great experience, it was so different from other museums. They had animated soldiers, forts, cannons, and lots of artifacts from that period. The girls really liked the music station where they listened to songs from both sides, Confederate and Union. A whole section was dedicated to slavery and the horrors of it. It was a good representation of a period in our history. It was equally divided to cover both Union and Confederate experiences. F liked how all the reading we have done on the subject came alive there.

Afterwards we drove around the capital of PA for a bit and saw another cemetery and walked around that one as well.

Back in Lancaster me, F and J went to a real one room school house. It had wax children and teachers that came to life during the presentation. J was so fascinated by one of the boys who kept pulling the hair of the girl in front of him. The school house was in operation from the 1870's till 1969 and then made into a historic site.

The presentation showed you how a typical school day was in the 1930's with Amish, Mennonite and English students, children from grades 1 to 8 were taught by 1 teacher.

There are one room school house still in operation today in Lancaster county by the Amish people. I still prefer to home school :).

On the way home we saw a bargain book store and had to stop... I spent $90 on 5 civil war battle tapes, 2 history books, Atlas of the Frontiers, a book on Ben Franklin, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn classics written for children, and a few more books for us all...not bad for brand new, all hard cover books.

We went back to Philly on the way home and stopped and visited Ben Franklin's grave site and 4 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Then we stopped by J's god mother's house in Jersey to pick up her b day present.. a Webkinz toy so now she has her own account and can play in her own virtual world with her love frog :).

Needless to say none of us wanted to come home, but..... now back to normal... dentist appt. next week, geography clubs to attend, math to learn, reports to write. We will home school during the summer as well. I have already finished all my paper work for this school year and will mail them out this coming week.