11/02/08- 11/08/08- Fall Foliage, Vultures & Politics

I declared this week the peak of fall foliage on our little mountain. Dh and the kids made some simple leaf presses out of wood and bolts. The kids and I identified trees and pressed some leaves.


Good thing. The latter part of the week was windy. Quite a few trees dropped all but a few of their leaves. This golden beauty- a black walnut, we *think*- was bare by the weekend.

The kids and I talked a lot about elections- the process of voting, the different

parties, the major issues in the presidential election. We talked about local races too. (Pictures related to the one tight county race fell behind the couch.) We voted as a family. We went home and watched the major networks call the EST and CST states. Dd kept a list of electoral "points," while ds colored a map. I packed them off to bed pretty early, once Obama's total + the as yet uncalled west coast assured his victory. We watched his victory speech online the next morning.

We attended a combination geology class/ Hawk Watch at Caesar's Head State Park. (Can you see the face in the pic?)

The naturalist/ranger there, Tim Lee, is just awesome with the kids. Hell, I think all of us parents learn just as much as the kids do each time we see him. We talked about the escarpment and the minerals of which it is made. We hiked through a crack in Caesar's Head called "The Devil's Kitchen" and through the woods a bit as well. We were supposed to watch for kettles of hawks migrating last month, but that event was rained out. So, we spent the last half hour of our time on the overlook watching for migrating vultures.

Otherwise, dd had a violin lesson and practiced almost every day of the week. Both kids took gymnastics, visited the library and spent a couple of hours at our group's park day. They went back to the gym a few days later for a three hour "fun gym," a.k.a. parents' date night.