SylLy Acres

Science Fun. The goggles are a must – you never know when the yeast will explode. 🙂

Or when a bottle will erupt with “elephant toothpaste.”

And moving right along from science to pretzels. Kitchen chemistry takes all forms!

“You mean we have to clean up now?!”

Remember the mushrooms I started earlier in January? Here they are, popping out of the box.  They were fun to watch and good to eat!

More kitchen chemistry. Again, safety first.

And more cooking. We made food for 2 families – it was Sylvia’s idea to bring meals to our friends. Lily is cutting up spaghetti for the Spaghetti Pie.

Sylvia cutting veggies.  Or something like that.

Spaghetti Pie! Oven ready.

Lily made cookies to go along with the meal. She’s not that into cooking, but she’ll make anything that has sugar in it!  🙂

We spent a week experimenting with cars and ramps. They had fun seeing how far their cars could go, and crashing their cars into various toys.

They kept track of their data and made all sorts of conclusions about their experiments.

Sylvia started a whittling class at the Vesterheim Museum. She love. it! Lily got a whittling set for Christmas so here Sylvia is showing Lily a few things she learned.

We got a mushroom mini farm to grow mushrooms right out of a box. But first we had to soak the medium. More photos of our ‘shrooms to come.  And I’m the only one that likes mushrooms, so they’ll all be mine!

Yesterday, we spent some time building with toothpicks and marshmallows, and making structures with rolled newspapers.

Let’s just say that construction is not my forte. I did not give great guidance, but the girls learned a lot about building through their mistakes!

Sylvia turned 10 on January 16th. Double digits! Lily made her dessert: raw dough in an ice cream cone with chocolate chips and sprinkles on top. Lily said that they LOVE raw dough but I never let them eat very much.  Plus, this recipe didn’t have eggs in it, so it would be fine to eat a lot. 🙂 Sylvia loved it!

With her birthday ring.

Looking for a Christmas tree at Oneota Slopes farm, run by our friends, the Johnsons.  It sure is a beautiful place to walk around and there are so many lovely trees to choose from.  That is NOT the one we chose, by the way!

That’s our tree. 🙂 Lily dragged it the whole way back.

New to our Christmas tree tradition this year: climbing and running on round bales.

We made treats for the little animals this year. We put peanut butter and bird seed on pieces of bark and checked on them everyday. The white stuff is flour so that we could see footprints (since we didn’t have snow).  The food didn’t last long and there were lots of interesting tracks!

We went to Lincoln, NE for several days before Christmas. One afternoon, we took a hike at Pioneer’s Park Nature Center and spent time watching the birds.

We also acted like birds! Turkey Vultures, to be exact.

My mom and I made kolaches for Christmas morning (and every other morning during our stay!).  They are the best!

Grandpa Bruce brushing Lily’s hair on Christmas Eve. My sister Mikaela took the girls to the Children’s Museum, hence the face paint. It came off before church. 🙂

Christmas Eve!  It was Aliyah’s first Christmas.  The girls love their new cousin!

On to New Hampton, IA where we got to spend time with Jon’s family. We frosted sugar cookies one afternoon – a favorite tradition.

The girls and Jon played daily ice hockey games. This was the first day at the pond – making sure it was frozen enough!  I was the only one who didn’t participate – I didn’t want to re-injure my arm!

And yet another favorite thing to do with the cousins – play games!  The girls love being with their cousins, even if they are just watching them play games.  They are getting old enough to play a few, too.

Merry Christmas!

The only decent photo I have of them! This was after supper and before they went out trick-or-treating.

The whole crowd!

70s and 80s kids.

Waiting in line to play at the catapult booth.

I don’t think Lily looks much like I did as a girl, but she’s still cute! 🙂

We took a field trip to the Laura museum. How fun to sit in a covered wagon!

We made some maple cupcakes just like Laura Ingalls used to eat (minus the green sprinkles).

Sylvia played volleyball for Parks and Rec this fall!

Hanging out with friends at Luther while Jon canoed/biked/ran in the Adventure race.

At our friends’ wedding in WI. Jon presided over the ceremony. It was a beautiful day and gorgeous place for a wedding!

Having fun making dragon bread for Michaelmas!

Some friends came over for an afternoon. The day ended with a re-inactment of The 5 Little Pumpkins.

On Lily’s birthday, we met some friends at the middle school playground – her favorite playground – to play.

They love playing chase!

It was a beautiful day and so fun to spend the afternoon with Olivia, Amelia and Sylvia.

A few days later, on the 19th, Lily had a birthday party. She made and sent invitations, and planned the whole party.

The party started with Cobweb Confusion. All the kids had to follow their string to find their goodie bag.

Opening presents – books, rice bags, a fairy lunch box, homemade play dough, stickers and pictures!

We had apple crisp and ice cream for snack after opening presents.

Lily really wanted to play games, so she looked through a book of games and marked all the games she wanted to play. This was her version of Kick the Can – she kicked the can and then counted to give the others more time to hide.

Hot potato!!

Jumping off the picnic table was not in the game book, but still provided lots of entertainment!

Climbing up Pulpit Rock.

Walking along the ridge above Pulpit Rock.

We love collecting cool leaves.

Lunch at Falcon Springs WMA – a lovely view!

We found a rubbing post at Lionberger preserve. We love the Safari program! We have been to many new places because of it.

We like wide paths so we can walk (or run) together. This is also at Lionberger.

There was a wild horse and burro adoption event in Decorah. The Bureau of Land Management rounds up thousands of horses every year from public lands and tries to adopt out some of them around the country. They made a stop in Decorah and we just had to go see the wild mustangs. And actually, I think the burros were our favorite. They were adorable!

This was our 4th year going to the Villa Louis Carriage Classic in Prairie du Chien, WI. We always have so much fun watching the horse drawn carriages. We have a friend who competes and we love to cheer her on. (This is not our friend – unfortunately, my photos of her did not turn out well!)  We had beautiful weather and spent both Sat. and Sun. at the event.

We also like to pet some of the horses, too. This draft horse came all the way from Nebraska to participate in the Picnic Class.

Sylvia and I went to Iowa City last week to help with an event for veterans. We gave rides to veterans from all over the country. One of my riders was a 92 year old veteran of WWII!

And of course Sylvia loved hanging out with horses all day.

At the end of the day, we got to go on a little trail ride ourselves. Sylvia rode this gentle giant, Rambo.

Most mornings start with a morning walk down our road to the next set of mailboxes. Sometimes babies come with us.

Exploring the northern part of the county…We went to South Pine Creek in search for a rubbing post for the Driftless Safari. We had never been here before and it was a beautiful place!

Lunch by the side of the trail. We were losing our shade, and it was a warm day!

Exploring the southern part of the county…We took a field trip down to Spillville to visit the Bily Clock museum. It was fantastic! This old school house was on the museum grounds and we had fun imagining life at school 100 years ago.

Chore time! At least she has the right footwear.  🙂

I love the Coop’s new cow mural! Valerie Miller does a fabulous job.

Hanging out with baby chicks.  The girls love our chicks, especially the laying hens who are smaller (and cuter) than the broilers.  We have 13 layers and 60 broilers in all.  That’s a lot of poultry!  The girls are really good at doing morning and evening chores.  And they like to take some of the birds out for adventures in the yard.  🙂

Finding lots of wildlife.  This is a leopard frog by our pond.  We also have toads and tree frogs around.  And lots of butterflies, caterpillars, grasshoppers, birds (baby swallows in the barn!), deer and rabbits (the last 2 being my least favorite animals to find in the yard).

Freezing peaches.  We bought 2 cases of delicious peaches.  We ate a bunch and still had enough to freeze a couple dozen bags.  They will taste so good in January!  The girls were really helpful cutting and bagging – I was basically just supervising the process.  I love this age!  🙂

First day of school.  Our school year routine started on August 25th.  It was really nice to get back into a daily learning rhythm.  The day started with goat and chicken chores in farm clothes.

There was a quick change of clothes so that they could be ready for a fun day of homeschool. There was yet another costume change later in the day, when school work was done and they had “recess” all afternoon.