Salamanders

Each year, my inlaws haul our camping trailer to their house and store it for the winter in their yard. They have nice, wide open, mostly tree-free space; we have hilly property that's full of trees.

A few weeks ago, it was time.

As Clarence and his dad worked to hook the trailer to the truck, the girls and I stood nearby with Grandma, chatting. The guys jacked up the tongue of the trailer to take out the cement blocks they had under it. Underneath was a surprise. Two salamanders.

Clarence tried to hand them to Julianne but there was no way she planned on taking them from him.



For whatever reason, she changed her mind.

At first, they were cold and just laid on her hand.

Then they seemed to wake up and started to scurry away. She wasn't quite as keen on holding them anymore.

The girls played with them for a few minutes, then released them into the garden.

Hopefully, Clarence's mom didn't have flashback nightmares to his childhood when he put a big washtub with salamanders under his bed and she, unsuspecting, pulled it out to see why he'd have a washtub under his bed. The dark skittering movements drove her quickly from his room-never to return, as the story goes.

More Air Zoo shots

These shots are from the main campus at the Air Zoo. We were particularly delighted to see this P-40 Warhawk. In the book we read, the main character wants to learn to fly one of these. It was interesting that it was pink, too, since the character in the book is an 11 year old girl. This plane was owned, and flown, by Suzanne Parish, who co-founded the museum with her husband.

There are various rides available but my girls only went on this very tame one. I was concerned about the long ride home if they didn't feel well after riding, so we avoided the more exciting rides.


It ended up being a long day away from home but we really enjoyed ourselves and learned some interesting things.

Air Zoo

Our small literature co-op read the book Born to Fly this month and took a field trip to the Kalamazoo Air Zoo. One of the moms had discovered that the Air Zoo was offering free admission until the end of the year and we wanted to take advantage of that.



They have two campuses and one of the moms got docents scheduled to guide us through each campus. They both did such a great job! I figure if they can make it interesting and enjoyable to someone like me, who has no knowledge and very little interest in airplanes, they must be very good at what they do.

We got to climb inside this plane, which was a WWII era plane for hauling paratroopers. (Don't ask me what kind of plane it was-I have no recollection whatsoever.) The kids are huddled in the front looking at the shower stall they found there. One of the moms asked about it and the docent told us he thought the "shower head" was a microphone so someone could talk to the troops over the PA system. We giggled a good bit about Julianne's guess that it was a shower but she insists that it even looked like there was a spot for soap.

One interesting thing I learned was that during WWII, the military trained pilots to take off and land on aircraft carriers on Lake Michigan. I don't remember ever hearing about that before. They couldn't get actual aircraft carriers into the Great Lakes, of course, so they improvised by adding decking to a couple boats, creating the runways they needed for training.

As you'd expect, some planes were lost in these practice sessions. The Air Zoo, with help from others, pulled one fairly intact plane out of Lake Michigan a few years ago and worked to restore it. The above picture of the info board shows how it looked before restoration started. (You can click to enlarge it.)

Here it is today. I was amazed, as I always am when something so far gone is restored so beautifully.

These pictures are from the East Campus. I'll try to share a few pics from the Main Campus in the next few days.

Flower Child

Our church had its annual "Trunk or Treat" event on Saturday. Clarence handed out candy from the back of the van and the girls helped at the craft table inside. (I stayed home where it was warm, peaceful, and quiet. I am not a fan of Halloween.)


Costumes were optional. My girls love many things about the 70's look, so these are actually clothes that Allison wears normally.

She added a long ribbon as a head band

and made a "Peace" necklace to complete the look.

She was wearing the necklace again yesterday, so I think I'll probably see this "costume" again. Won't that be groovy?

Allison's helmet

You may remember that Clarence helped put up some hay this summer. He really enjoyed it and was able to go help on another occasion, too.




Are you wondering what that has to do with this picture?

The people who were haying have horses. They recently got a horse back from having the Amish break it for them and need to ride it every day. The wife said that she'd like someone to ride her other horse when she takes the new horse out and asked if Allison would be interested.

Interested? Are you kidding?

Finally, she found something she really wanted to spend her saved birthday and Christmas money on. Her very own riding helmet, in a lovely light purple.

We've been slow about calling them to set things up and now, unfortunately, one of the horses is injured and can't be ridden for three more weeks. Allison is trying to be patient.

Twins!

Well, almost.



The girls have discovered that Salvation Army and Goodwill are great places to find interesting and unique clothes. They love making their own fashion statements and both have a particular affection for paisley.

Julianne got these pink paisley capris last year. They are one of four different pairs of paisley pants she owns. Allison was lagging behind with only one pair. I tried to console her with the knowledge that Julianne would be handing them all down to her some day.

That was fine until she found a pair of paisley pants identical to Julianne's in our local Goodwill last week. I told her I didn't think I needed to buy them, since we already had a pair at home that she would eventually get. Mean, aren't I?

Yesterday we stopped in looking for something else I had seen the last time I was there (which, of course, was long gone) and everything in the store was half price. Allison went looking and came back with the pants.

I guess I'm an old softie after all.

Presto Change-O

Ta-Da!

This is our "new" van. The Montana was, indeed, totaled and we were happy to find this '03 Chevy Venture. We intentionally ordered the Montana mud-colored. This one is actually red but, as it's been raining since we drove it off the lot yesterday, you'd think it was the same old color (which gives you a hint as to why we ordered that ugly brown in the first place).

Some friends told us they'd seen a used Montana at a local dealer. We went to look at it Thursday night but it was a smoker's car, so not for us. This Venture was sitting next to it. We didn't want to look at something that old, as we were hoping to get at least 5 years out of this vehicle. However, the relatively low mileage made us reconsider.

It seemed like God was putting all the pieces into place, in perfect timing. We even got a much more generous settlement from the insurance company than we expected.

We are excited have both a cassette and cd player so we can listen to audio books in either format. There's also a dvd player, which means we won't have to haul the inverter, tv/vcr, and dvd player along when we drive to Florida. That will be a huge space saver, plus this has headsets so the girls can watch a movie and we can still talk or listen to the radio.

Our poor Montana was 10 years old and showing its age. Over 200,000 miles, the air conditioning, rear wiper, automatic door, and gas gauge had all broken, the driver's window would go down but had to be helped up, and some of the trim was loose where it had been repaired after the first deer ran into it. "But there ain't nothin' wrong with the radio." (Although I don't normally listen to Country, when I heard that song a few years ago I thought it was hilarious.) Having all those extras working makes this seem like a brand new car to us. We feel very blessed.