Who watches the shopping channel anyway??

My kids do!  When they first decided to check it out, I thought, "oh brother, this is going to be so boring." But, as always, they make everything fun!  They are so funny.  They love to laugh at the hosts, their funny expressions, how excited their voice gets.  And you know what....they've actually learned a lot from watching it.  They have learned about several gemstones and minerals that I had never heard about...even going in to their history and when and where they were discovered.  Of course, we got into talking about the value on rocks!  On how the more rare ones are given a higher value, which gets into the supply, demand discussions. And they've learned the names of different muscles of the body from the fitness infomercials. They crack up when they show the before/after photos of people's butts and always say, "why does anyone care what their BUTT looks like!?" LOL. And then there are the advertising tricks.  They know how advertisers want you to buy their product.  They have never been one to hear, "you need this toy, it is the best, everybody has one" and come running to me and ask for it.  No, they are pretty smart cookies...takes a lot for them to be fooled! We try to use our critical thinking skills here. They've even discussed making up their own commercials as a spoof, and filming them. I think that would be great!

Healing from a Virus

I am writing from the laptop.  The desktop has some type of virus!  I have run scans from four different security systems and found some things with each.  Re-ran the scans and nothing shows up.  Yet, I know it is still infected because the internet browser goes wacky!  Argh.  I have spent a lot of time trying to fix it...scans take a long time!  And the computer wouldn't get into safe mode at first.  Poor thing.  Hope it is healed up soon.  All my photos are over there! I have the older ones on disk in our fire-proof safe, but not the newer ones from the last three years!

This has obviously spawned some deep discussions on computer viruses, spyware, bad people, internet safety and all that good stuff.

I'm giving it a break today....have to go run some errands later and know if will take at least another four hours or so of cursing, running to the laptop to look things up, running back, trying something else, rebooting....

Happy Chinese New Year!

It is the year of the Rabbit!

We had fun looking up our animal zodiac and reading about who we are compatible with...and NOT compatible with, lol.

Mid Winter has come

And boy it was a cold one!  Today is the halfway point between the Winter Solstice and the Vernal Equinox...winter is half over!  The past couple of days we have had freezing rain alternating with sleet and snow.  The ground is covered with a couple inches of ice, which then got covered with an inch of snow.  Very dangerous out there. The wind didn't help much either...gusting beyond 40mph in some spots.  Looking outside it just looked like a big white nothing.  Though when the wind died down we saw the effects of all that heavy ice and the strong winds.  We have tree limbs down everywhere, but luckily nothing else worth noting.  The barns are all intact, as well as our siding, lol.

We did lose power last night around 10 PM, and it didn't get fixed until around 11AM the next day.  With no electricity we did not have heat! The interior temperatures went from 67* to 40* when the electricity returned.  We were just in the midst of planning our escape, to my husbands parents' home, when the power came back on. It's a good thing, too, because it was dangerous outside...and they ended up losing electricity right after that.  Can you imagine...packing up and making the dangerous treck over there only to have to turn back around?!

This day also reminded us that we are not prepared for such emergencies.  We are in tornado territory. In fact, the past two years we have had tornadoes touch down within five miles of us. But we never seem to get around to gathering our necessary supplies. No water, no crank radio... And we definitely need an alternative heat or power source. I think we may want to skip the generator and go straight towards solar power.  Oh, one can dream, huh. But then again...if the power goes out it is up to us to fix.

So we began the day with double socks, sweatshirts, pants, hats, gloves, and piles of blankets playing board games on the guest bed with candles as lighting...to shedding our layers and getting back into technology.  Kids with their Wii, and internet searches for oddball marine life, Dad watching a hockey game on satellite tv, and me blogging away at the laptop.

We did watch some pretty interesting TED talks on ocean life.

David Gallo on Underwater Astonishments and Life in the Deep Oceans.

And Brian Skerry on Ocean's Glory and Horror.

And we watched the movie Finding Nemo...love that!

Aquatic Life Exploration

Along with the girls' interests in learning about crocodilians and the oceans and rivers of the world, the girls have also been into learning more about ocean and freshwater creatures.

Georgia has been very interested in the Amazon River, and especially the arapaima, largest freshwater fish on Earth.)  Through her research, she's also come upon the ceolocanth, a fish previously thought to have been extinct! At PBS she viewed its' anatomy.

We made a trip to the Newport Aquarium where we all met Might Mike the American Alligator, on tour from Florida.  We also saw the....ARAPAIMA!!!  She was so excited.  Said while in the Amazon exhibit, "I know these fish the best, this is my favorite part."

We saw several species of shark, rays, jellyfish, freshwater fish from around the world and from our own backyard, shore life, coral reef life, and fish from the Amazon. We experienced the touch tanks both at the shore life gallery, and in the shark exhibit. We even got to watch scuba divers in the tank, as it was apparently cleaning day.

The girls have also been playing the game Endless Ocean, Blue World on the Wii. They have learned so much from that game! Not just about different types of fish, but learning about the different habitats, life in the deep verses the shallow regions, food webs, conservation, geology, salvaging, taxonomy, diving safety, budgeting and saving, geography, and so much more.  We keep a piece of paper handy while playing so the girls can jot down creatures they want to research further.

After playing, the girls gather their extensive collection of stuffed animals and small toys of the animals they were learning about.  They have quite the collection, too!  I love listening to them...Olivia asking Georgia about different animals, what they eat or where they live.  We just did some quick research this morning from their play...they wanted to know the life span of their animals to see which ones lived the longest!

They also enjoy the Zoo Tycoon PC games. They have learned SOOO much from that as well.  Again, not just about animals. That is another game that we really like.