Reed's Toes!

Reed can grab his toes!

What a talented little boy!

Fossils and Sunflowers

Sunday we went on a walk through Stewart County Park.

It was a pretty park, lots of lovely trees turning color in the Fall.



one of the first things we saw were a bunch of fossils in the Limestone bricks lining the trail. These had been brought in from somewhere else, so we couldn't see the entire strata together, but just to find so many fossils anywhere was pretty awesome.
This is the largest one we found, it is about the six inches across. I believe it is the cross section of an ammonite. Martin saw it first. Our little geologist.





The trail is pretty fun. After climbing up this little rocky slope Maddie told us to call her "rock climber Maddie".


Reed seemed to enjoy his little frontpack. He is out front and able to watch everyone run around.

The kids ran around the trail, up and down the hilly tree-lined way. They all had a lot of fun. Caleb had to be carried a lot. He is only 3 and is easily distracted and upset. The older two kids would typically go on ahead, and Caleb and Benjamin would stay back. When they went down a steep hill Caleb would run down first then Benjamin would get a running start and leap over Caleb!!

he loved it and said "you jumped over me" a very coherent sentence for Caleb. It was fun. I am sure we will be back.

***Sunflower house picnic***

Saturday we were invited to the 'sunflower house picnic' a friend of ours ran a daycare for several years and she would always plant a sunflower house for her kids. This year she invited our kids and some other families from church to plant the sunflower house with her. We went out and planted in the spring, and this saturday it was ready for playing. It was about 10 by 12 feet inside. There were 3-4 ft tall sunflowers for walls and morning glories grew on strings for a roof.

It was a very fun little place.

We had chocolate chip cookies and lemonade for a snack.

This is the inside to the sunflower house.

What a fun Saturday!!!!

devils' lake

we went to devil's lake state park.

There were lots of rock for climbing. All of thekids had a lot of fun.

here we are in the 'devil's doorway', It is a little cavity in the rock.

Today Maddie wore purple pants with flowers on them, and a pink and black zebra striped shirt. I will try and get a picture when she comes home today. It was pretty bright.

I suggested she change, and she said "it doesn't care what you look like, it is how you act"
And she was correct, so she is wearing an interesting outfit today. In the future I will suggest she wear matching/weather appropriate clothes, but ultimately it is her decision.

One rule I will enforce: No animal costumes can go to school.

I love watching Maddie's personality develop. She is very creative and expressive. I hope her theatre class is able to help her learn how to act and perform.

More To love-- is it good or bad for society?

More to Love; a brief synopsis; Luke is a single 26 yr old 300+lb guy he started with 25 women, and now is down to 3, one will be eliminated tonight, then the finale next week when he choses one and perhaps even proposes to them on national TV after dating them for 6 weeks

I am currently watching the latest installment of More To Love, a reality dating show by the poducers of the bachelor and Biggest loser.

I enjoy Biggest loser, generally positive, it motiviates and inspires. The Bachelor is fun to watch, the girls are all interesting, most in a good way, but everyone just makes a complete fool out of themselves, it is terribly scripted, and they all drink WAY too much. Hence the funny parts.

Here I am not debating the merits of meeting your spouse on a tv show, or dating 25 women including your future wife at one time, but rather this latest twist, making everyone fat.

What does this show say about our society?
We all struggle with weight issues, our country has the largest per capita sugar consumption on the planet, though they are not 'in style' right now, eating disorders abound as we reconcile our diets with our ideals. This generally results in binge eating, yo-yo dieting, or people who just throw it all out the window.
I once read a book that argued that compusive overeating, exercise aversion, anorexia nervosa, and bulimia were all the same disease, and the solution (in general terms) was to love yourself and make your body healthy.
I had hoped that this show would give us strong beautiful successful women who have been perhaps overlooked because of their size.
I expected a biggest loser style message of "healthy as you can be, beautiful from the inside out"

I was sorely disappointed. Early episodes dwelt on a few clingy needy girls who worshiped Luke, despite now knowing anything about him. They were basicly losers who blamed their lack of dating, social skills, etc. on their size. Perhaps in High school , when everyone is insecure, this would be plausable, but really sometimes you just need to get over yourself. In their defense they were well liquored up during their interviews. The remaining girls are pretty normal, but ofcourse normal doesn't sell air time so the focus is on the crazies.

Every girl has her name and age along with her weight displayed on screen during interviews. I do not know why this is there. We really should just take everyone at face value, look beyond their size, but this is difficult when you are reminded of it so often. By reducing these women to a number, they are just objectified further. It doesn't open anybody's mind.

The show goes out of its way to remind us that everyone is big. One episode they rode horses, they were careful to say that the horses would be able to carry the extra heavy people. Ok, this is a real issue, (as my family now knows thanks to our interesting relative who rode in a parade on a horse, wearing a loin cloth and was investigated by the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, but that is a story for another day which you really should ask me about)
The next episode they broke a bike. Do extra heavy people really break bikes? Not very good bikes. I think it was a gimmick.

The whole show is a gimmick. It is not empowering, nor educational, does not promote empathy, and is not good for society except in that is shows people can embarrass themselves on tv at any weight.

Alas reality TV will not cure all that ails society.

visit 2009

MArtin's Birthday; Isak picked up the birthday cake, which ruined it. then Gma smoothed the frosting and it was okay. MArtin got lots of great gifts. He can't wait to try out his 101 science experiments book.

Caleb and Isak played together pretty well.

Maddie and Lucy May be the cutest girls on earth. Maddie said "I hope she grows red curly hair"

Martin's Birthday Party was great.

Caleb and Isak visited the Crane Foundation.

They both found sticks. Grandpa Campbell supervised them.

We visited a Wisconsin Dells Water Park.

Lucy playing with Reed

Isak and Caleb playing with Guns. They both pretended to shoot Lucy and Reed.

Maddie and Martin started school.










lena & valerie after our half marathon
valerie 1:59
lena 2:09

So I won, not that we were racing. But if we were I would have won.

Reed Got Blessed. August 30th 2009.

He is a great little baby, we all love him very much.