Wordless Wednesday

Hometown History

Big Haynes Creek Wildlife Festival

I mentioned last Friday that I'd be out here working for the Aquarium. I took the time after my shift ended to take a good look around. There were many shows I didn't get to see (raptors, disc dogs, etc), but a few that I did. The exhibits, though, from the various groups were really nice.

This one was simple, a big portable tank of fish..

The serval had her own agenda for the day and it wasn't necessarily doing what the trainers asked her to do.

The trains were cute. They were sponsored by a local steam train group, one was display.

One was a ride on..

There were two Native American shows. The dancers I missed, the other group had an encampment at one end of the festival.

The same group did story telling and music on various instruments. They were fun to listen to.

I did get to listen to Southeastern Reptile Rescue (I think that's the proper group name) do a talk on snakes. I didn't get pictures, though. There was a display from the North Georgia Zoo, AWARE and Greyhound Rescue too.

All put together it was a very small festival. The numbers were low too, which was kind of discouraging. I'm sure it was for the vendors too. My main complaint was that there was really only one food vendor, which meant they could set the prices they wanted. This meant that a bottle of water was almost $3, a coke $3.50 and a burger was $4.50. Ouch. I can only hope the turn-out was a sign of the economy and not of the festival. It has a great location out at the horse park in Conyers (a bit far for my taste, but the location is good). It just didn't have enough "stuff" to impress me with what they were charging admission. Hopefully next year will work out better.

Pigs & Peaches

I have to admit, I was impressed by the turn out at the Pigs & Peaches festival out in Kennesaw Saturday. It was my sister-in-law's suggestion for something different to do. The BBQ was very good, so was the entertainment. There weren't as many crafts/sellers there as there were teams doing the BBQ competition and such, but there was still plenty to do and see while we were there. Fortunately, there was a breeze blowing the entire time we were out there, so it wasn't too hot either. Here are a few sights from the festival.

This from Sparkles..

A vendor's pot..

A very pretty motorcycle..

Silver Wing's Paratroop made an appearance as well, very nice display

The Silver Wing's team after on the ground and ready to go..

Weekend Stuff

If you're looking for a things to do this weekend, I have a couple of suggestions. We're going to the Pigs & Peaches Festival out in Kennesaw tomorrow. A belated, but fun, way to celebrate my husband's birthday.

Sunday, I'll be out at the Big Haynes Creek Wildlife Festival for the Aquarium. Find their booth Sunday morning and I'll be there (or not far away).

I know there's other stuff going on this weekend, but those were our choices. Hope everyone has a good one!

American Girl Doll Giveaway

With Irene off the coast, and the anniversary of Katrina coming up, the Not So Blog's Experimental Mommy is giving away the two newest American Girl dolls. From New Orleans comes Cecile and Marie-Grace. Something any American Girl crazy child will love (including mine). Check out The Not So Blog for your chance to win.

Girl's Talk Thursday

I was looking for subjects to write about and came across this one on TheDailyMeme.com Since it was for a Thursday, I floated around and found Girl's Talk. Today's topic is misspelled words. Of course, I will generally misspell misspell, but the main word that I can never seem to get right the first time around is vacuum. I always want to add a second 'c' in there to make it vaccuum. It just looks better, even if it's wrong.

I know the I before E except after C rule, I've been trying to teach it to my kids. Particularly my son, who's not the best at spelling. I've even taken to singing him the SchoolHouse Rock songs, which annoys him to no end, but that's a topic for another day.

Wordless Wednesday

Photographing the photographer

Mega Mart

This has been over at Gwinnett Place Mall for a while now (a year?) and I've been joking with my family that I was going to go explore. I had errands to run (with kids) Sunday and ended up at the mall anyway.. so I dragged the kids in with me and found some interesting things, including these..

This wasn't quite as exotic, just fun to find.

This, on the other hand, had my kids going "ewwww.." In case you can't tell, it's "fresh, frozen" squid.

The shop has 2 floors. The top floor is clothes, the bottom is the grocery. The grocery has mostly Asian flavor stuff and some great things to try. There's also a couple of food stops that you can purchase fresh cooked dumplings and more. I'll eventually go back and check that part out too.

It's an exercise..

So I thought I would share something brainless but fun..

Happy 45th Birthday to Hubby

Geocaching/GCA at Picketts Mill

GCA sponsored a Meet & Greet out at Picketts Mill Battleground yesterday. It sounded like a lot of fun, plus there's a part of the GA State Parks Geocache history trail there, so we went. We did find the geocache clues and open the box, so the kids were glad the 2 mile hike was fruitful.. and we did all agree that the trail was very pretty.

In the museum, my son was given the opportunity to hold a 10lb single shot rifle.

Outside there was a demonstration from a docent with gear a soldier would carry and a peek into the life of a Civil War soldier.

Part of the trail

Just because..

They were just too cute eating popsicles from the "King of Pops" at the Lilburn Farmer's Market last week.

2012 Chick-fil-A Calendars for sale

My girl is selling 2012 Chick-fil-A calendars for her American Heritage Girls troop. The calendars are $6/ea and are loaded with coupons that don't expire. I'm happy to mail, but it makes more sense to mail more than one since it looks to be about $4 to get one mailed.

We love to take multiples of the coupons in and end up with a 'free' (or greatly reduced) meal. Though if you use 2 coupons you've pretty much paid for the calendar.

Bargain Hunter

My daughter has turned in to a bargain hunter. I gave her and her brother $50 to spend at the sale today for clothes for the year. My daughter got the above stuff for $43.50 total. It's a dress, top & jeans, pj's and bathrobe, sneakers and sandals. She also picked up a Halloween costume which took her over a bit, but I didn't "charge" toward her total. My son on the other hand, picked up 2 pair jeans, a pair of blue slacks and a pair of tan slacks for $20. Gotta love it.

We saw some things 'extra' we'd like to pick up, but we're going to wait and see about going saturday morning when everything not marked "NR" goes down to 50% off.

Kidsignments Sale

It's Here! It's here! The big Kidsignments consignment sale of kids' stuff is out at the Gwinnett County Fairgrounds this week. It starts today, though no kids or strollers are allowed until after 2p. Saturday everything not marked "NR" is 1/2 off. I love to get my "need" stuff during the week early, then go back on Saturday and check out what's left (which is more than you'd think).

For those of you that have never gone, take a laundry basket or something to carry your goodies in.. armloads get awkward after a while. They have a bit of everything.. toys, furniture, books, videos, and (of course) clothes. I think I have about as much just exploring as anything. This year, my kids are in charge of figuring out what clothes they need and then (with a budget) have to shop for it. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with.

Official First Day of School - GCA

In honor of our official start date for school, I thought I would share this..

May your conference calls be much more productive. ;)

GCA outing

My son was thrilled yesterday when we went to an outing with other GCA parents. One of the teachers was hosting an event for ALP Middle school students out at a local park. We went and discovered that for once, most of the students were BOYS. I think he enjoyed it much more to find BOYS to hang out with. They even decided to walk the park while we were there.

The BOYS

My boy. :)

TrendMicro Online Guardian

My kids don't appreciate it, though they seem to understand the why of it. Our first year of online school my kids found that I wasn't always as observant as I should have been. So they'd finish an assignment (not all of their work, just the one) and then go play games or watch youtube. I eventually caught on, but didn't have an "easy" way of taking care of the issue (yes, they were punished, but I'm trying to retrain their habits, not teach them ways of avoiding being caught). Thanks to BZZAgent (yes, I'm an agent), I was able to test drive TrendMicro's Guardian software earlier this year. I have to admit, I really like it. I can control what they access and the times they have to access it (easy enough to change too). I can also skip the time limits and just have it tell me what they're going into. For the most part, I already knew it was YouTube, Wizard 101, etc. But I can actually see WHAT on youtube they're watching too.

It's a very straightforward interface. It will email you the reports, though you can view them online as well. It also doesn't seem to slow down anything as far as the network or the system goes with it's monitoring. I won't go into depth on the hows of it all, but will note it works (for me anyway).

I don't want you to think I'm being reimbursed or compensated for this in the slightest. I'm not. In fact, the campaign through BZZAgent ended a while ago, so this isn't even part of that. I just wanted other parents to know that this was an option if you wanted to monitor your kids online more.

SwagBucks

I've been using this as my main search engine for a while and earning swagbucks as a result. I love easy point programs, I use the rewards as gifts and extras for family. SwagBucks is having a great promotion through this friday. New referrals using the code AUGUSTBONUS - it's worth an extra 50 Swag Bucks when entered during the registration process. Give it a try, it's free.

Michael C. Carlos

My kids and I went to visit last Friday. The Michael C. Carlos museum on Emory campus is a very interesting museum to visit. They were hosting a "Free Friday", which made it even better. My kids had never been there, I hadn't been since King Tut's exhibit briefly stopped there. It took us around an hour to see everything.

The front entrance

Earrings from approx 2500 BC

Falcon funerary statue

African mask

African Diviner's Pouch

Sarcophogi from above

Back to School

Gwinnett County goes back to school today. Fortunately for us, we don't go back until next week. So, we wish our friends that are returning today the best of luck and a great school year.

Jif Travel Pack Giveaway

Mom Spotted is giving away a great travel pack of Jif products and a Garmin GPS. There will be 2 prize winners. The contest ends August 7th, so swing by today!

Drat - Thundershirt update

Well, the unexpected (sort of) storm happened last night. Around 2:30-3 the dog was antsy and started wandering the house. Around 3a she decided to try to join me in bed (this doesn't work). So I put her Thundershirt on (I downsized her shirt recently as the other seemed big) and gave her a bone. Lately, that's all it's taken to calm her down for a lot of the smaller storms. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough. She increased her pacing, continuously tried to get in bed with me, until I decided it was valium time. I then had to sit with her downstairs with TV and lights on to get her to settle. She fell asleep around 4:30, though I waited a while longer before I figured it was safe for me to return to bed.

So, for now, the Thundershirt with a bone is enough to distract her from the short storms that crop up during the day. It's not as effective at night with bigger storms. Ah well, we'll keep trying to find the right balance for her.

Wow .. I missed a day

I missed a post yesterday, how did I do that? Actually, I know very well how I did it. I've been caught up in getting settled in to my new job. For those that know me, I worked at my kids' school when they were in a brick & mortar. I have managed to do that once again, getting a job with K12 working for GCA. I'm thrilled. I'll get to work from home while my kids are doing their school work. My schedule will be flexible enough to work around my kids and their activities.

I've also discovered how lucky I am. I'm working with a great team of women, all Learning Coaches themselves. We've had a couple of in-person training sessions as well as some online. It's going to be an interesting school year, for certain.

I was able to meet my children's teachers for next year as well. My daughter will continue with her teacher from last year. Second year for her as well as for us. My son's teacher has changed (last year's teacher moved up to 8th grade), but that's not a bad thing. He'll be with a teacher that has been there since the school started. She's also an Advanced Learner math teacher, so he'll definitely get challenged with his math class. He was recommended for ALP science last year too.

School doesn't officially start until the 15th. We're going to get started on some of our classwork on the 8th. Primarily getting a head start on our novel reading, but we'll do some other things as well. That way we can "ease" back into the swing of it and make it easier on everyone. Especially since we'll be hosting a pre-k student this year too.

So, busy busy getting ready for school. Busy, busy getting settled in to work. Hopefully my blogging won't be affected too much, but we'll just have to see.

Way too hot

My kids and I went out to Six Flags last Friday. They'd earned tickets through the Read to Succeed program. I had "purchased" my ticket using Coke reward points. I made sure we had plenty of fluids, but we still came home over heated. It didn't help that the Batman ride had no air circulation while waiting (the line took about 45 minutes to get through).

We arrived as early as the park opened and managed to get through approx. 6 rides before the heat (and crowds) truly hit. By the time it was lunch (around 2), the kids were just about done. We managed one more ride after and gave up. I was drenched and had a headache started, by the time we got home my daughter had a headache too.

So, word of warning from experience.. take lots of breaks in the shade (or air) if you go to Six Flags any time soon.