Cincinnati, Ohio, to Hershey, Pennsylvania

Add a day just for driving (and visiting every Welcome Center in every state we passed-we LOVE brochures!), and two days later you'll find us, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, well-rested and all swum out, at Hershey's Chocolate World:

They're Hershey's Kisses, doncha know?

 I had planned on purpose to make an early day of this, because I had some work that I needed to get done,  so this smallish attraction (surrounding a GIANT interior mall of Hershey products) was just right. Hershey has a free ride showing how their products are made, an interactive movie that costs a ton, a chocolate-tasting class that costs a ton, and a candy bar-making workshop that costs a ton. The movie sounded silly, the chocolate-tasting class sounded too dry (Willow really wanted to take it, but it had a lecture component, so I knew that Syd would just be bored), but the candy bar-making workshop sounded just right--educational, hands-on, super fun for kids--so I signed us up:

First, you use a computer program to set up your chocolate bar. You choose a base--

--and fillings--

--and whether or not you'd like sprinkles.

See my chocolate bar set-up? It was very annoying that an adult couldn't accompany a child into the workshop without paying a separate admission--not only do I not need a giant chocolate bar all my own, but I couldn't really supervise my kids or thoroughly enjoy their experiences with them because I also had to do my own stuff. I'm glad that I did pay to enter, however, since in our group there was another set of sisters, both a little older than Willow, and they were a little lost throughout the entire process, so it was worth the money to make sure my kiddos knew what was going on, at least.

If you can tell from the photo below, Syd was also VERY annoyed at having to wear a hairnet, but Will and I thought they were pretty awesome:

At the end of the workshop there's a bin where you can return your hairnets and aprons, but I made the girls give them back to me to stuff into my backpack.

After you set up your chocolate bar, you enter the factory, where you can watch your bar being created by the machines on the assembly line. It's meant to represent the real factory set-up in miniature:

You can follow your bar, because the computer knows where it is on the line and keeps it labeled.

All our candy bars--Willow's milk chocolate, Sydney's white chocolate, and my dark chocolate

covering the bar in melted milk chocolate

through the drying oven

 While you wait for your candy bar to dry and harden inside the oven, you use another computer program to design your packaging. Will had a lot of fun with this:

machines for packaging the bar--the docent said this is the only part that's different from what's used in the actual Hershey factory

our candy bars!!!

 After the workshop, we rode the factory tour ride a couple of times--

--and then sat down in the giant food court to eat our packed lunches... and of course taste our candy bars:

It has a lot to do with the fresh chocolate, probably, but our candy bars were DELICIOUS!

Sydney's bar with white chocolate, raspberry filling, and sprinkles

 I guess you haven't really done Hershey if you don't have a chocolate-y face to show for it:

After that, it was a fine afternoon for driving on to our hotel, watching cable TV (I let the girls watch National Treasure, pretending like it was useful prep work for our stop in Philadelphia next week), eating our packed microwaveable meals (I knew we'd score a hotel with a microwave SOMEWHERE!), and trying very hard to let me get my work done without losing my mind from kid chaos two inches away from me at all times (thank goodness for hotel wi-fi, headphones, and streaming Spotify).

Next stop: The Crayola Experience!

To Cincinnati, Ohio

It wasn't *exactly* on the way, but a detour through Cincinnati to visit the zoo did nicely break up our long drive to Hershey, Pennsylvania, as well as let us mark another adventure off of our Momma+Kids to-do list:

I used to have a real problem with zoos, and seeing animals in these artificial habitats still often makes me feel very uncomfortable, but after I had kiddos, I just couldn't continue to boycott them. I could have pulled it off with just Syd, perhaps, but Willow deeply loves animals, and deeply loves to observe them, and takes such joy from a zoo visit that I pretty much put my kid's happiness over my statement about animal welfare. I'd still never take her to one of those private wild animal park places, but for now I take the girls to lots of zoos and I don't bitch about it. Perhaps I'm raising animal rights advocates or conservation workers or the two people who will finally figure out how to save polar bears from extinction or stop rhino poaching--who knows?

I do, now, take special note of a zoo's efforts towards habitat construction, conservation of native animal habitats, and their adoption of orphaned or injured animals, but I also enjoy seeing animals that I've never seen in person before, such as these gorillas:

Dirt, huh? ...right.

And a great horned owl!

The Cincinnati Zoo has a great nocturnal animals section, in which they've gradually switched over the lighting system so that it's dark inside during the day, and the animals are awake and busy with their nocturnal animal business.

The petting zoo cracked me up, however, just because they have a whole section for Nigerian Dwarf goats and another habitat for red jungle fowl. A good friend of mine has a little hobby farm outside town, one that the girls and I occasionally visit (she's the generous benefactor of our chickens, for those of you following along at home). And know what she has on her little hobby farm?

Nigerian Dwarf Goats. Red jungle fowl.

The girls LOVED brushing the goats with these hairbrushes (must tell my friend about that...)--

--but when they asked for quarters to put in the goat kibble vending machine so that they could hand-feed the goats, I was all, "If you want to pay to feed goats, I'll drive you over to Mrs. Betsy's house when we get home. You can give her a quarter and she'll let you hand-feed HER goats."

We went back to the gorilla habitat later, when the grown-ups were off public view and instead we could see the new baby! She was abandoned by an inexperienced mother in another zoo, and was being fostered by a team of humans here:

As I write this, however, the baby is now off-exhibit, getting acquainted with a real gorilla foster mom.

One thing that I noticed at the Cincinnati Zoo is that almost all of the day camp kids on field trips there were HORRIBLE! Most groups of kids looked like older preschool, elementary, or young middle school-aged, and they were mostly escorted by, not the college kid staffers that I'm used to seeing at the camps around here, but middle-aged female staffers. The staffers by turns ignored the kids or yelled at them, shouting at them to hurry up or keep going--kind of defeats the point of being at a zoo, you know, if you're not allowed to stop and watch the animals. And the kids, over-stimulated and constantly frustrated and who knows what else, were AWFUL. They pushed and hit each other, screamed and banged on habitat walls, milled around on narrow walking paths and generally made nuisances of themselves.

While we were watching the baby gorilla, and the viewing was pretty crowded, one group of older preschool-aged campers came barreling up with their adults, who immediately took positions off in the background to stand and stare off into the distance while their charges raced up to the viewing fence. The first kids there claimed their spots, and all the other kids behind them screamed at them, pulled on them, tried to shove them aside, and tried to shove my kids aside, while the fence kids aggressively defended their territory. Nobody was watching the baby gorilla.

After a minute, one kid, apparently deciding she needed to go off-road to score a choice spot, climbed OVER the viewing fence and began to work her way past the other kids in the narrow space between the fence and the shrubs that hide the big concrete moat. Having seen all the YouTube videos of kids falling into zoo habitats, I was horrified. I looked over for the staffers, but they were off staring into space, not paying attention, and the ambient noise was too loud to call for them. I looked straight into the kid's eyes and said, "You need to come back to this side of the fence right now," but she totally blew off my random grown-up authority. I briefly imagined just hauling her back over the fence myself, but I didn't want to put my hands on her, so instead I just sort of hovered, helicopter parent-like, ready to snatch her back if she tried to step through the shrubbery and into the abyss. Thankfully, the staffers soon decided that the children, who still hadn't managed to settle down and actually look at the baby gorilla, had seen enough and started screaming at them to get over there and get going, etc.

If nothing else, the experience was quite educational for my sheltered little girls. They watched everything about all these day camp kids with big eyes, and for the longest time couldn't stop talking about how badly some kids behave and how some kids don't listen and how it's dangerous to break rules sometimes and why weren't those camp kids getting to have any fun? Why did those camp kids act so bad? Why were those camp kids hitting each other? Why didn't the grown-up stop that camp kid from pushing me? Why didn't those grown-ups let those kids watch the tigers?

Eye-opening stuff for two pampered little kids. Our family rule is that everybody gets to look at everything for as long as they like. That's why I bring my ipod, so that I can listen to RadioLab while my girls play "spot the salamander" for twenty minutes running--

--or squat and just stroke the turtle, stroke the turtle, stroke the turtle:

I did put my hands on a strange kid in this habitat. Just as the zookeeper was saying, "And if you're wearing brightly colored shoes or have painted toenails, watch out, because the turtles might nip at you," and as I was looking down to see if a turtle might take a bite of my girls' candy-colored Keens, I saw one of the turtles snap at a kid's bright pink flip-flop strap. She was right in front of me, so without thinking I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back so the turtle couldn't get her toes. The goofy kid looked up into my face and laughed, and I said to her, "You just had an adventure!" She ran off to her mom, yelling to her, "I had an adventure! A turtle bit my shoe!"

We perhaps spent the most time in the zoo on the sidewalk in front of the cafe, where this peacock, who apparently has the run of the place, was hanging out and showing off:

People would walk by, stop and look, take a photo, and walk off again, but we camped there, first with both girls curious about the peacock, then with me and Syd sitting at an umbrella-covered table and watching Willow follow the peacock around and around and around, totally lost in it:

We spent similar ages in the bird habitat. I told the girls before we went in that I wasn't going to buy them any nectar (we have this at our zoo, so we've done it before), but as soon as we came through the door people were practically lining up to offer us the rest of their nectar cups that they were done with. When those nectar cups were drunk, the girls would walk around empty-handed for about two seconds before being offered another one that someone was finished with. It was excellent:

The kids have way more zoo stamina than me. I don't know what this exhibit below is, just that Sydney was mesmerized by it while I sat on a bench and rested my feet:

I practically dragged the kids over to the manatee habitat, though. I really wanted to see the manatees the last couple of times that we were in Florida, but didn't want to devote the time to trek down to the Everglades when we already had plenty to see and do.

And leaf cutter ants! I'd never seen these before, much less the elaborate habitat that was set up for them, with their tree at one end of the insect building, their nest at the other end, and a system of clear tubes connecting the two along all the visitor walkways:

As would become habit on this trip, we closed that zoo down, not leaving until we were practically kicked out, and even then dragging our toes and stopping for photos:

I drove two exhausted little girls to Columbus, Ohio, then, where we stayed the night, swam, ate sandwiches, and perhaps lost my planner (I haven't quite given up hope of recovering it, nor have I stopped fretting about it every single second of my life since).

Next stop: Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Road Tripping

Bloomington, Indiana to Cincinnati, Ohio

Cincinnati, Ohio to Hershey, Pennsylvania

Hershey, Pennsylvania to Easton, Pennsylvania

Easton, Pennsylvania to New Haven, Connecticut

New Haven, Connecticut to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to Bloomington, Indiana

See you in a couple of weeks!

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Bookbinding and Bubble Recipes

a round-up of homemade bubble solution recipes

and a look at the Zutter Bind-it-All, which the girls and I use to make homemade books

our most recent creations

Syd made this "coloring book" using my stash scrapbook paper.

 I'm sure that one day I'll use the binding tool to craft beautiful handmade books for myself, but so far in its life, I've mostly used it to bind the children's creations. I have to say, though, that it's been massively useful in this respect--the kids adore making books, and it's turned out be a great culminating project for many of their studies. For instance, over the course of a few weeks the girls made a Civil War book--the pages are just coloring pages from The Story of the Civil War, printed at one-quarter size, colored, and trimmed, but over that same period we've been seriously studying the history of the Civil War, so the book is an accurate representation of their knowledge now, and they both enjoy reading through it:

Syd's cover illustration is a weeping, blood-red sun.

This officer's uniform has such depth because Syd colored it yellow before Will reminded her that Union soldiers wear blue. Oops!

The sun sees, and is dismayed.

I like the extra battle effects, because the ones already drawn in are clearly insufficient.

As part of Willow's exploration of multiplication, I found her sets of circles divided up into different numbers of points around the circle, and Willow skip counted around each circle by a different number, connecting the dots as she went, and saw what she could see as far as shapes that were made and the patterns therein. The result bound up quite nicely as a little book: 

a circle divided into six points--it sometimes took her a couple of tries to get the counting right, but the pattern of shapes made is always intriguing

a circle divided into eight points

a circle divided into ten points

a circle divided into twelve points--she's got a better grasp on the process now!

 I've been struggling with how to present and store the girls' work lately, and I'm just loving these books for that, as well. Finished, they go on the girls' bookshelves in their room, where they can be taken out and looked at as often as the girls like. In that way, the girls can review information stress-free, at their leisure, as their minds compel them, and they can look at them with fresh eyes as they learn more context to go with each one.

I think this is the method that I'll use to make each girl's grade-level portfolio this year.

Here's what we used to make our books:

Graveyard Workings

Once a year, my family travels to a tiny town in northern Arkansas, to visit a few tiny old cemeteries in the area where loved ones lie. At a couple of these cemeteries, we simply visit graves and lay flowers down, but at one, our "family" cemetery, there's a work day and reunion on the day we visit, and often we clear branches and leaves, make some repairs, and contribute to a potluck lunch.

Most of my family can drive up from their home also in Arkansas (although it's still a long drive on small roads), but other family drives down from Illinois, and this year, for the first time in too long, we, too, drove down from Indiana:

my great-grandparents--my great-grandfather died just a few months before I was born, but I was fortunate to have spent my childhood living just down the street from my Nana, who I spent the night with sometimes and who would bake me peanut butter cookies with cherry icing.

one of my Pappaw's baby siblings--you're going to be heartbroken at how many died in infancy or as very young children 

I do love the homemade markers, although most from this time haven't lasted. This one is by far the best.

Most of Pappaw's siblings are marked just by stones at head and foot, and Pappaw simply knows who is who and  points them out to us each year. At one point, my aunt and uncle hand-stamped stones for each sibling, but it's a hard climate there and they didn't hold up. This year for Christmas, all of us chipped in and each bought Pappaw a marker for each of his siblings--seems like a morbid gift, but he loved it. During our work day, then, we dug out a space and set each marker in dry cement that will naturally harden over time--sooner rather than later, as we happened to do all this during an utter downpour (of course).

Pappaw's father, who died when Pappaw was a child, leaving Pappaw as the head of the family.  I want to say that he was approximately Willow's age, but he quit school and went to work then.

Since we're studying the Civil War, I was thrilled to have the girls visit the grave of their great-great-great grandfather. It sparked some great(ly difficult) conversations about why your average person would choose to fight for the Confederacy. The girls don't approve, of course, but I hope that they can eventually learn to respect their ancestor's service, if never his cause.

 It was a whirlwind trip, and it played hell on my diet, but stuff like this, the very stuff that I used to think was SOOOOOO boring when I was a kid, is the exact same stuff that it turns out that I want my own children well-versed in, too. I want my kids to know their roots. I want them to know what the teeny little rural mountain area my side of the family comes from looks like. I want them to know what their great-grandfather's childhood was like. I want them to wonder why one of their ancestors fought for the South in the Civil War. I want them to count the years on the stones, and think about who lived when, and what the world was like, and what their lives were like, and why they died when they did.

I hope it becomes real for them, one day, even though their own lives seem so out of that context. During our trip, Willow, of course, asked why we had to go and look at all these graves. Matt said, "When Pappaw looks at these graves, he doesn't see the graves. He sees the people that he loved, and he remembers them." Willow's a lucky girl in that she doesn't have any loved ones yet at whose grave she must stand and remember them, but someday, of course, she and her sister will know exactly what Matt means, and they'll come to appreciate our graveyard workings more as they become sadly more familiar with how grief and memory work.

The Curious Case of the Completely Concealed Coop

A happy ending to report:

An animal control officer popped by today to check out our chicken coop, in light of the anonymous complaints they'd been receiving about it. She found our coop perfectly acceptable, said that the complaints they'd received had no validity, and gave us permission to continue keeping our babies there, saying that we could call her when we'd finished building our complete chicken yard and she'd come back then for her "official" inspection.

And thus the Curious Case of the Completely Concealed Coop draws to a close, it seems.

On to the next case!

Kid and Kitteh are Watching You Suspiciously

So, drama update: Animal Control finally called Matt back this morning, and the officer was very nice, except that she said she'd come by the house today to informally check out the coop and see if we needed to do anything to make it comply before the "official" inspection... but she didn't. But hey--the back deck and backyard and front porch could always stand to be tidied, right? No, ma'am, no hillbillies here!

But, but, BUT, she said that the real gist of the anonymous complaint was that the person said that they could see our chicken coop from their back deck. The city regulations say that there has to be a visual barrier between your coop and the neighbor's property, so that's why they came out that first time. EXCEPT you can't see our chicken coop from any of our neighbors' decks at all, as in their decks aren't even on the correct side of their houses to be able to see our coop. So the caller was definitely lying! I mean, I knew that they were lying, because our coop doesn't smell, but I figured that could always be a mistake, as in "Hey, I smell something gross! I bet it's those people's chickens!", but you can't make a mistake about being able to see your neighbor's chicken coop from your deck, especially if your deck doesn't even face their house.

All this means that the anonymous caller might not even be one of our next-door neighbors. Could someone down the block just hate chickens? Could the caller have named the wrong house, and it's just coincidence that we, too, have illegal chickens? Hmmm...

The benefit of this new development is that I'm not even stressed about it anymore, because now, it's a mystery! You know how much I HATE unresolved issues? Well, that's the exact same amount that I LOVE a mystery!

Next up: the kids and I begin to search for clues.