Mountain Top Youth Camp 2019

Year 4 of Mountain Top Youth Camp! Well, for Olivia, anyway. It's Gabe's 3rd year and Ezra's second. They absolutely love this camp each year. They get to stay up there the whole week and spend time with friends from EMMA classes. They hike, play games, worship, study the Bible, and all kinds of other activities. 

Unfortunately, in the chaos of unloading and getting them checked in, I forgot to get pictures of Olivia. 

Next year, it will be Emma's turn!

A Sad End and a Living History Lesson

When we bought our house, one of the things we loved about it was the old dogwood tree right out the back door that bloomed big and beautiful every year.

Sadly, the last couple of years it has been slowly dying, with fewer and fewer limbs showing those beautiful blooms. And this year, it didn't bloom at all. It was finally dead.

However, out of the sadness came an opportunity. We have been studying Ancient Egypt all year and one of the things we learned about was the various tools they used to make life easier along the Nile. One of these is the shadoof, a tool used to raise water out of the flooded canals and into the fields to irrigate them.

Since the Dogwood had a nice split on it, we took the longest limb and made one for the kids to try out. Now, a real shadoof is much loonger and has a significanly bigger weight at the end, but this worked well enough for them to get the idea.

No question, we're going to miss our beloved Dogwood, but the kids got to experience a valuable history lesson we might not have otherwise had the opportunity to.

Trail Life Awards

The boys had their Trail Life awards ceremony last night. 

Ezra finished up his second year in the Hawk Patrol and managed to earn all of his branch pins and stars! He now moves up to join Gabe in the Mountain Lions.

While Gabe has already done two years in the Mountain Lions he technically is too young to start the Navigators, which is the middle school group. When we started Trail Life, we weren't quite sure which patrol he should be in, so we put him in Mountain Lions. Unfortunately, we figured out after the first year that he shoudl have done a year in the Hawks first. What does this mean? Well, he's going to do another year of Mountain Lions. It will give him a chance to earn the last couple of branches and stars that he didn't quite get to this year and better prepare him for the additional work of the Navigators.

Great job, boys! We're proud of you!

High Point Homeschool Band Spring Concert 2019

Olivia performed with the High Point Homeschool Band in their spring concert last night. It was great to see all the hard work she and the other students put into practicing both in a group and on their own come to fruition. They did a fantastic job!

Outdoors Skills - AHG

One of the badges Olivia has been working on for AHG is Outdoor Skills. 

 As part of the badge work, she got together with the other girls in her squad and learned to make tarp-and-rope shelters.

 She also learned how to start a fire using a flint and steel. 

Of course, it isn't all work when the girls get together... 

We'll see if she can put those skills to work later this summer when we go camping! 

Spring 2019 Recitals

These guys work so hard to improve at their piano and it shows!

Gabe didn't have the easiest term and has decided that he will not continue with piano lessons. He has asked to try playing the drums, which isn't exactly something we are cool with, so we are narrowing it down to playing the bells and snare drum in the High Point Homeschool Beginners Band. If he does well and works hard, we can see about going further with that...

In the meantime, we are very proud of him for sticking with piano for three years and thankful to Cathy Lamb for all her hard work and patience with him.

Olivia continues to excel at her piano studies. She going to attend UNCG's piano camp this summer, giving her a taste of college life a little early! She does so well and works so hard that we can't possibly complain about the results!

Lake Townsend Hike

We took advantage of a beautiful Friday afternoon to hike along Lake Townsend. 

 Olivia needed to do some orienteering for one of her AHG badges, so as we went along, she documented every turn we made, noting the number of steps and the direction we were facing after the turn. 

 A few weeks ago, we had some storms that knocked down some major trees. the root balls were just massive!

 We saw some evidence of the beavers that live along the lake somewhere.

 The littles loved the brides that we had to cross and wanted to pose on each and every one. 

 The downed trees that fell across the trail had been cleared, but the stumps and logs were still there. This gave us the opportunity for a little science lesson. We counted the rings on one tree and looked at the spacing between them. This tree was about 75 years old and we could clearly see years when the tree grew more than others.

 Like I said, there were a lot of trees down.

 We even found some little friends along the way. 

AHG Mom/Daughter Tent Camping

The PiPa Mom/Daughter camping trip this year was to Morrow Mountain State Park.

The girls camped out in their tents. Fortunately, they had some good weather. :)

The ladies got up early in the morning to climb Morrow Mountain and see the sunrise. Notice... no girls. Hmmm....

They did rouse themselves later in the day for a hike. 

On the last day, the girls rolled up their sleeves and got to work! The park needed some boardwalks repaiered, so the rangers equipped them with the tools and materials to get the job done.

They did an amazing job! Way to go girls!!!

Oak Hollow Lake Camping

Since we got our camper, we have really loved getting out and using it multiple times a year. We camped for a few days last year at Oak Hollow Lake when my parents came through town in their RV and really liked the campground. So in April, we decided to camp there for a week on our own. We picked a site that was close to the lake and gave us great views out our door of things like this:

Rebecca got out on her paddleboard and spent most mornings out on the lake with that view!

We don't always remember to take a picture of the caper itself, so here's a shot Rebecca took while I was cooking dinner.

The coolest thing about this lake was that we were able to put our boat in the water for a couple of days and dock it only a few yards away. We got to go out fishing and exploring on the lake a few times and really loved it.

The kids absolutely fell in love with fishing from the bank. They could stand on the rocks and toss a worm out and have a chance of catching a crappie or two.

Ezra showed some aptitude for it and had a bit of success. 

One thing we never got a good picture of was the snakes that nested in those rocks. Not sure if they were Brown Water Snakes or Cottonmouths, but there were a lot of them and they completely ignored us. However, we did spot one with a catfish halfway in its mouth!

Besides fishing, there was a good deal of time spent just hanging out and reading books. 

The nights on the lake were super peaceful and quiet. We're hoping that we can reserve a site here for Sukkot this fall!