What's up with the running?

I'm not sure how Caleb got so interested in running recently, but he's been running sometimes 4 or 6 miles a day. The first day he ran in Crocks, but I convinced him to put on some running shoes instead.

Caleb ran in the Eastman Road Race on Friday night and took eighth place.

One side-effect is that he seems to be much better behaved since he started running. Maybe he just really needed to run off some energy instead of focusing all his efforts on getting the best of his brothers.

How do you like my new bathroom?

The mirror is the biggest change. First I painted the room, then Terry bought and installed this new mirror and lighting, changed the hardware to chrome (including the towel bars) and fixed the blinds.

This Week's Science Lesson

We did a unit study on the children's book "Lentil" this week, and for our science lesson we studied how tastebuds work. We built a model of the tongue out of playdough and tested our taste buds with all sorts of sweet, salty, bitter and sour tastes. Sweet is preferred around here as you can tell by the "Koolaid smile" on Noah.

Caleb, the civil engineer

I am preparing to teach a Bridge-Building class this year at our co-op. I imagine there will be a little more interest in bridges due to the collapse of the bridge in Minnesota.

In our family, Caleb is our bridge-builder. This week he built a model of the "Firth of Forth" bridge in Scotland. He likes to pretend he has super human strength.

The canon crew

We had a great time on our trip to the Northeast in June. We had twenty-four days of camping and sightseeing in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. We saw lots of cool Revolutionary War sites and the boys got to drill as an artillery unit using the canon. We saw a huge re-enactment of the French and Indian War at Fort Ticonderoga.
We also spent time in big cities like Philadelphia, Boston and New York and traveled by train, subway, ferry , tram, sailboat (and conversion van).

The purpose of this trip was to immerse ourselves in early American history. We also threw in a little family fun by visiting the beach, biking on Cape Cod and hiking in New Hampshire.

Our favorites: Once Upon a Nation story stops (Philadelphia), Monmouth Battlefield (because the curator took the time to teach the boys how to use the canon), U.S.S. Constitution Museum and Plimouth Village

Our not-so-favorites: taking the train from Newark to NYC, visiting the observation deck of the Empire State Building (most of the kids were scared of heights and we had to wait in a long line), Cambridge (though we did have some great burgers there)