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Making Memories Monday: Just Add Water for Unforgettable Summertime Memories

 What do you get when you put FOUR BOYS and TWO MOMS in a LAKESIDE CABIN in Vermont for ONE WEEK?   Hours spent at the LAKE: Endless SMILES. More FISH than you care to take off the hook so it’s a good thing the boys learned to do it themselves: Contagious GIGGLES. And Summertime MEMORIES…

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Works for Me Wednesday: Travel Bin of Changes and Extras

It never failed.  The day my kids found the park flooded, I didn’t have a change of clothes; the day Connor cut his foot, I didn’t have a first aid kit; and the day, the boys were freezing after playing in the creek, I didn’t have a blanket… or even a towel.   UNTIL… Photo coming!…

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Works for Me Wednesday: Child Safety Bracelets

  Summer is here.  School is out and families are beginning to plan vacations:  trips to the beach, an amusement park, a museum… all wonderful places, full of fun, unless you and your child are separated, and then they become places of sheer panic:  crowds of people coming and going and large areas of ground…

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Finer Things Friday: We Did Science!

  The boys started their morning, picking up where they left off last night:  playing outside with  Cranium’s Super Fort Building Set.  In their adventures, they happened upon a baby bird that had fallen from its nest.  They were sad that its life had ended so quickly, but fascinated by its appearance:  translucent skin, HUGE…

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Making Memories Monday: A Camping We Will Go

Tin foil dinners cooked in the open fire, s’mores, skits and songs, sleeping under the stars… well, in tents, but after saying goodnight to a sky filled with stars….  I have such fond memories of camping with the Girl Scouts… and my Mom, who was my Girl Scout leader all the way through Scouts.  And…

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Beware of Tigers… and Wolves!

What an exciting, informative, fun-filled, LOUD night!  Connor’s Tiger Cub Den went on a Go-See-It to a local nature center, Hidden Pond Nature Center, in Springfield.  Hidden Pond is known for its, well… pond… and the tadpoles, frogs, turtle, snakes, and birds that live there.  The boys received a naturalist-led tour of the nature center…

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Build it… And They Will Come! We Hope!

The Saturday before Easter, the boys built a butterfly house at a local Home Depot Kids Workshop.     Today, we took advantage of the beautiful Spring weather and invited a neighbor to join us in painting the houses to attract our colorful, winged friends.  Butterflies prefer bright reds, oranges, yellows, and purples, so those are…

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They’re Taking Over!

On several visits to local parks and gardens, the boys and I have heard talk of the difficulty Virginia parks are having with invasive non-native vines overtaking native undergrowth, shading out and replacing native wildflowers, and climbing and eventually killing native trees. Unfortunately, when native plants are edged out, the diversity of plants needed by…