Since the kids have been indoctrinated in the New England tradition of apple picking, we have not missed a fall season of apple picking in recent memory. And since my Groupon Summer of 2011 is spilling into autumn and beyond, we tried a new apple picking farm featured in Groupon this year.
I was first intrigued by the Groupon for Schartner Farms because of the corn maze attraction, or "corn maize". The aerial photo reminded me of crop circles which I've always wanted to experience first hand. How do they mow it so precisely?? (The maze, not crop circles. Crop circles are real, right? Right??)
The kids were a little apprehensive about diving in, but once we had maps in hand, we didn't get too lost (except in the tractor wheel). Four acres of corn maze is pretty expansive, but we got through in about 20 minutes.
And for another new activity, we tried out the corn cannon. I am so not "country", that I had to google "corn cannon" before we went to see what the heck it was. I described it to a co-worker and he said, "You mean a potato gun, but with corn?" I don't even know what a potato gun is. Obviously not a native New Englander.
The kids could have done the corn cannon all day, but my wallet dictated just three shots per kid. Here's Adam trying to shoot the corn through the hoop in the woods. (First day using the video mode on my new Canon Rebel T3i, so I couldn't get the hoop in focus.)
After this apple picking photo op, I relaxed on this bench while the kids did all the apple picking. I enjoyed the fresh autumn air and the view of the corn maze in the distance. It was so peaceful.
Let's not forget a pumpkin or two to bring home. Adam picked out this perfect 25 pounder. He is so photogenic with pumpkins! Remember this technicolor pumpkin picking from two years ago...
And no apple picking day is complete without the bubbly goodness of apple pie. Mmmm pie!
Before school started this year, I had to spend several days convincing nervous Dova to take the bus on the first day of school. She insisted that someone drive her to school and walk her to her classroom because she wouldn't know where to go. Second grade is now her third year at our elementary school, and I was confident that taking the bus would not be a problem. Maybe she was concerned that it was the first time she would be taking the bus without older brother Adam, although she would never admit it. She couldn't understand that every kid starts out not knowing where their classrooms is and that the teachers magically escort each and every one of them. No students wander the halls lost all day! Anyway, all my energy was spent of calming her down, that I completely dropped the ball with Adam, who was going to middle school for the first time.
Starting middle school in fifth grade at the age of ten is definitely innocence lost in my book. But I can't change the school system so into the pool he went. Since the earlier school start time matched well with my morning commute, I left a message at the bus service over the summer to let them know that he would be driven in the morning and would take the bus home. I never heard back from the bus company and when I checked online the week before school, they had not yet published the bus schedule for our town.
The morning of the first day went pretty smoothly. I finally got the "first day of school" action shots to come out clearly in the early morning light (put the camera in sport mode, dummy). I drove Adam to school in my car, listening to NPR podcasts as we used to do. I was a bit nervous about doing the drop-off line for the first time, but it was very clear where to go. When I pulled up to the curb, I suddenly realized that I didn't find out which bus Adam should take home. I said, "Oh no, Adam, we don't know what bus you need to take home. Will you be able to figure it out?"
Adam responded with his usual, "Yeah, Mom." At the end of the day, Doug went to the bus stop to pick up Adam. A good hour after school dismissed, he called me from his cell phone to let me know that there was no sign of a bus. I assured him that it was late because it was the first day of school. We chatted a bit longer, as I checked online for voicemail on the home number (thanks to Ooma). Finally the bus arrived and he was home safe. I heard from Doug later that he actually had gotten on the wrong bus, got driven back to school, and then our old bus driver saw him standing there with blood all over his shirt from a bloody nose, took pity on him and drove him home. OMG, what a nightmare!!!
When I got home, I felt so bad for Adam that I wanted to cheer him up and calm him down if he was all shaken up. Apparently none of that was necessary, he was unbelievably calm like nothing happened. This is the rough transcription of our conversation.
Me: Did you freak out when you realized that you were on the wrong bus?
Adam: No.
Me: Did you realize it was not going the right way?
Adam: No.
Me: What were you doing, reading your book?
Adam: Yup.
Me: How would you know when the bus got to our street if you were reading your book?
Adam: I don't know.
Me: Did you stop reading and look out the window once in a while?
Adam: No... well I stopped reading when my nose started bleeding.
Me: Did you freak out when your nose started to bleed?
Adam: No.
Me: When did you finally realize you were on the wrong bus?
Adam: When I was the last person on it.
Me: Did you feel embarrassed?
Adam: No.
Me: You didn't freak out at all?
Adam: No, why should I?
Me: OMG, I would've been freaking out if I realized I was on the wrong bus and my nose started bleeding!
Adam: Why, Mom?
Me: Because! I would've been looking out the window, thinking is this going to my street? OMG, am I on the wrong bus? OMG, my nose is bleeding everywhere!!! No, it's good that you didn't freak out, that you're so calm, I need to learn that from you. Dova needs to learn that from you. We all need to!
Adam: I still don't understand why you would freak out.
Me: Good, just keep being like you are.
Adam kept shaking his head like I was the crazy one. It may sound like incredibly zen-like calmness and acceptance of his circumstances, but most likely it is Adam's brand of total obliviousness. He can be incredibly unaware of his surroundings and so involved in whatever he is doing that nothing can break his concentration. Still, to have those events transpire and not be perturbed in the least is quite remarkable. I did explain to him that he should feel free to actually ask the bus driver whether they went to his street instead of just taking one that "looked right". He managed just fine the next day. I guess he'll manage fine in everything he does.
Everyone who knows me knows that I love a deal. So after I signed up for Groupon earlier this year, I couldn't pass up all the great family activities they offered. Some were from places that we've gone before, some were things that we've always wanted to try and some were places that we go every year regardless. Having a fistful of Groupons led to an extremely tightly scheduled summer with no lazy days to take a spontaneous trip to the beach. In fact our only beach day planned got rained out by hurricane Irene. We finally made it to the beach over Labor Day weekend, AFTER school started.
So here's how the Groupon summer of 2011 went. As you may know, Groupons are only available for purchase for a few days, so these links are now expired. We managed to use them all before the Groupons themselves expired thanks to my OCD scheduling.
I purchased four $15 passes for Mel's Funway Park which gave us each a go-kart ride, batting-cage tokens, a round of mini-golf, a small bucket of balls for the driving range, a laser-tag game, and a laser-maze game. Whew! It was a fun-filled family outing for an incredible price.
Adam swings for golf like a baseball (nice shot taken by Doug).
How cute is Dova in the batting cage!
Mel's Funway Park (now without the Mel in the name, but all the local's still use it) is good, wholesome fun. We are definitely going back.
Again I purchased four $15 passes which we used for bumper boats, mini golf, driving range, batting cage, the arcade and ice cream. I took the kids with one of Adam's friends. We've been to Kimball Farm many times for gathering with friends and even a company outing.
Kimball's has one of the most beautiful mini golf courses I've ever seen (I would never tell my kids to walk the logs just for a photo op ).
But long before Kimball Farm had all those attractions, they were most famous for their ice cream. Those are the small size. Nom!!
Chunky's is a movie theater with tables flanked by individually reclining Lincoln Town Car seats. You can order anything from appetizers to a full meal, including beer and alcohol (my favorite is the Captain Morgan root beer float - an alcoholic meal in itself). This photo was taken at Dova's 7th birthday party last year (they do parties too), complete with 3D glasses.
How cool is it to see your name on the movie marquis!!
Since we go to Chunky's Cinema Pub all the time, it was a no brainer to spend $10 for a Groupon that covered movie admission, popcorn and a $10 worth of food. We ended up going with my mom over the summer to a movie I can't remember because of that Captain Morgan root beer float. Arrrrr!
Indoor skydiving is not something I would normally plunk $95 just to try. But with the Groupon at nearly half price, we decided to go for it. What a blast it was! The kids chickened out, so Doug ended up taking the second Groupon I purchased. I simply could not wipe that goofy grin off my face, partially due to the wind and partly due to the fact that I was giggling the whole time.
Doug was a total natural in the indoor skydiving wind tunnel. He is even considering real skydiving now!
Somehow I knew the kids weren't about to fly for the indoor skydiving, so I purchased Groupons for the newly opened Fishpipe at SkyVenture. They had 90 seconds of water spinning fun, although I wouldn't say that it was necessarily worth even the discounted price. I expected total craziness in there, but they were fairly calm and still had a ton of fun.
The Wayside Carriage House Inn is new ancillary inn for the original Wayside Inn, which only has 9 rooms and a year-long waiting list. Doug and I enjoyed dinner and a night away from the kids with another couple who also purchased a Groupon. Imagine spending an evening only with adults!
The day after staying at the Wayside Carriage House Inn, Doug and I participated in my first fiddle contest at the Bolton Fair. Fiddling entrants still have to pay to attend the fair, so we got in for half price using the Groupon. Yeehaw!
If you'd like to get in on the Groupon action, please use this referral link to sign up for an account (I get $10 for opening the world of Groupon to you). I also belong to several other savings sites, the locally-based Eversave (another referral link), and LivingSocial (not a referral, boo hoo), but Groupon has by far garnered the most deals that match my family's interest.
One word of caution for new savers, you will get emails every day from these companies. If you're like me and hate to be inundated with emails, but don't want to miss out on the deals, you can subscribe to the feed for your local city through a reader like Google Reader. The local RSS feeds are easy to find on Groupon, but not so much so for the other sites (I recommend using a Firefox's automatic feed detection or Chrome's RSS Subscription Extension). Happy Grouponing!
I'm definitely no word whiz as being an engineer doesn't lend itself to being a wordsmith (disregard the mommy blogging, BlogHer and Autoweek gigs for now). But when it comes to word finding puzzles, it's more about logic and pattern recognition than vocabulary knowledge. It all started innocently enough when Dova asked me to help her with the Webkinz game Eager Beaver Adventure Park.
"Manures"? Is that the best I could do?
She would get frustrated with the crushing blocks timed levels, so I started "helping" her out. I never made it past level 7 or so, but one day I finished the entire game. And then I did it again. And I found myself addicted to "helping" her get Webkinz cash with this game and others (Cash Cow, Goober's Lab, Bamboo Break, variations on my favorite games of matching hearts, bejeweled and tetris, all feeding my need for stochasticity).
I tried out Boggle iPhone on a free promotion last year. Granted, Quordy and Wurdle beat the official Hasbro game in the reviews, but they cost more than free. I was hooked again. And so was Adam. I even found a work-related word, "ideates", which sure beats "manures".
The best part of the game is seeing the all the possible words that can be created with the board afterward. You do feel kinda stupid getting only 30-50 of the sometimes 200+ words, but you do start thinking in the serpentine paths and patterns that you hadn't seen before and improve with practice. It's also a great way too kill 3 minutes while you're in line.
You can get Boggle for the regular price of $0.99 here:
These silicone heart rings are so sweet! Not only do my kids love having heart-shaped eggs and pancakes, they put a huge smile on my face when I cook with them.
I love the association between the French word for egg, l'oeuf, and it's subsequent use as the "love" score in tennis. As I learned from tennis lessons in high school, "love" was used for a score of zero because the number zero is shaped like an egg, or l'oeuf, in French. But according to Wikipedia, "the most accepted theory on the origins of the use of 'Love' comes from the acceptance that, at the start of any match, when scores are at zero, players still have 'Love for each other'." To me, when your score is love, you're definitely not feeling the love. The l'oeuf explanation is more likely.
Either way, we all feel the love when eating these heart pancakes.
Happy Love Thursday everyone! Visit Chookooloonks for the original Love Thursday.
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