Grampa and the Grandkids! Pretty amazing picture when you think of getting seven dc to look at the camera all at once! I know someone is going to ask so I might as well just put it here... the bench they are sitting on is an instabench and you can find them here. Keep watch on the different colors for a cheaper price if you are not picky on the color selection. Right now it looks like they are reasonably priced. I have seen them as low as $49 at amazon. Ours is a six seater but you can also get a three seater.

Uncle Duncan and Aunt Diona with their little princess (our niece!).

Jared tries on Grampa's sun hat!

Saying goodbye to the cousins after a fun swim.

Taco time for lunch!

 Chloe's turn with Grampa's hat. I'm not sure how much Grampa actually got to wear his hat that day!

Grampa says goodbye by giving the kids a ride in the back of his truck down the dirt road. The kids were thrilled!!!   Thank you Grampa for such a fun day!! 

I think the boys did a marvelous job at their first photo shoot!

Getting in some family time while traveling for the ministry. The best of both worlds!

Here they are keeping watch over the woodpile. That tree they are under just wouldn't do for shelter though!
 

First, Papa got busy making Mama Gnome the most wonderful little Gnome home! Look, he even got Mama Gnome a beautiful lush carpet of moss.

Meanwhile, Mama Gnome was busy planting and tending their garden as they were getting quite hungry!

Together, Mama and Papa Gnome, then made a beautiful walking path leading to their garden with a serene sitting area inbetween. The Gnomes realized they were being watched at the moment and were too shy to be captured in this picture.

The Gnomes did such a great job that before long they had Gnomes from the other side of the forest over for a visit.

Jared cheers Papa on to put his hand in the bucket and guess what he is touching. No peeking! Each barrel had tons of one dried item found in the ocean to run your fingers through.

I was shocked that Chloe actually was willing to do this one activity as she hates touching so many things. She was a good trouper though and followed after her brothers as they each did it. Actually most of them wanted ME to put my hand in the barrel first. *lol*

Phoebe is not sure she wants to put her hand in that one. The entire back of this room from floor to ceiling was lined with those shelves you see in the back. Every shelf was covered with items found in the ocean that you could touch and explore. Each item had a tag on it with a number that you then could look it up on a list to see what it was after you explored and tried to discover what it was yourself. Lots of fun! I was so into it that I never took a pic of us doing the activity. There was just so much to learn!

Time for the Fishermen to dress up! They had this big treasure chest full of real fishermen's clothing for the kids to play with.

My little fishing girl ready to go! That is Chloe if you can't see her face.

Phoebe working the bilge pump.

Caleb is dressed and ready for a day of some good fishing!

Captain and First Mate!

Here the children are learning about scallops.

We were eagerly waiting for the scallop to open up!

When the scallop started to open up we could see that it was a female scallop because it had eggs. The orange you see there is the scallop eggs. The part we eat is on top of the eggs and looks like a marshmallow. The scallop wasn't fully open for you to see that part in my pic. If you look close you can see on the very edge both top and bottom black dots (some are green lit up by the flash) that are the eyes. Scallops have about 500 eyes with retinas and cornias but no brain. It's a mystery as to why they would have the need for eyes and how they work without a brain. We also got to see the scallop fly in the water when a predator was put in the tank.

The girls standing next to a whale rib.

Checking out the ugly Wolf Fish! The jaw and teeth on that thing can snap an oar in half!

The only time you will ever see me step on a scale in public! See my smile? I weigh less in salt water! I like that scale!

 Here Caleb is holding a Sea Cucumber while Jared is fishing for a sea urchin.

Phoebe liked the starfish!

Chloe wasn't too thrilled to touch anything but with a little coaxing from Mama she finally held the little starfish several times. You can see Jared holding a horse shoe crab as well. We learned that horse shoe crab has several eyes in places you wouldn't even know. The entire tail of the crab is covered in eyes that allow the horse shoe crab to see in the deepest part of the ocean waters like it was daylight. Awesome!

The boys learning about starfish. I think they are giggling because they were feeling the little legs on the bottom tickle them. They also learned that if you tipped them upside down and put them on your arm that they grab a hold of the hair on your arm. We also saw a starfish that was growing back a leg. If a predator comes it will actually shoot one of it's legs off at the predator for it to eat instead of eating the whole starfish.

Phoebe holds a sea cucumber. They are as slimy and squishy as they look! The neat thing is that these squirt water out to move through the water. When a predator comes they actually spit out their insides ( you read that right -intestines etc) for the predator to eat and then they grow it all back. What an amazing way God created each individual creature to survive!

Here Caleb and Jared are holding a Moon Snail together with a starfish on top. The Moon Snail looks like any other snail shell but much larger. When a predator comes on top of it, like the starfish, it brings it's body out and covers his entire shell so that the predator will actually just slide right off.

Here you can some of the snail shell while at the same time it's coming out of it's shell to make it slippery for the predator on top.

Phoebe got to catch the star fish this time as it was slipping off.

Jared holds the Moon Snail with the worker to show how it covered itself up. When Amanda turned the Moon Snail over and rubbed it the snail pulled itself completely back in and closed itself right up tight. I didn't get a picture of that part, unfortunately. Just imagine a big snail shell with no slime.

The owner of the Oceanarium came to visit us while we were at the touch tank. We found out she went to one of the churches that supports our ministry!! She ended up asking the kids, after knowing we were Christians, what day did God create the sea creatures? Caleb was the first to burst out with the answer! It was a lovely, educational visit for the children. We even got a discount for being homeschoolers!

~BASS HARBOR LIGHTHOUSE~

Right side trail... as you can see it's doing it's job as the fog was thick as pea soup!

Left Side Trail down onto the rock cliff

Sitting on the rocks while only being able to see just a tiny bit out into the ocean. Phoebe was being a ham in both pics.

~RIDING BIKES!~

Jared took time to ride along side Caleb who learned to ride his bike on his own on this very trip!

Chloe really likes her red tricycle. That long dirt road was the very road big brother Caleb learned to ride his bike.

Phoebe likes riding on the pavement.

Might as well ride in the mud puddles when it's raining and you are going to get wet anyway! (look close at his backside)

~DINNER AND CAMPFIRE!~

I had to put this picture on here because my cousins who were right across from us saw me taking the pic and made jokes that I was blogging.

Here they are at the same moment as the above pic. After teasing ME I had to blog them too!

Trying to keep warm in the rain! After I took this pic I noticed it looked like they were praying.

The rain didn't damper the warmth and glow around our fire pit.

~DESSERT~

Mama coring apples

Mama's little helper, Phoebe, mixes the sugar and cinnamon together.

With Mama's help Phoebe fills the core of the apple with the cinnamon and sugar mix.

Apples rolled in aluminum foil thrown into the fire for baked apples. YUM!!

~DOWN POUR ACTIVITIES~

There was no one awake to take a pic of Mama playing cribbage with Papa and totally skunking him!!! But let it be on record that it happened.

Hello from the boonies!!! I can hardly believe it myself but I am blogging with the free wifi access at our campground. Funny thing is that I didn't even realize we had the wifi until our last night here when I went to download the pics off my camera and up popped the internet. My make shift computer desk you see there is our dog crate. Hey, what can I say? I'm really roughing it!

Here we are the happy campers! Some kind fellow camper took our picture this afternoon in front of our site. That's all for now..... I'll tell you more about our adventures when we get back.

Eric got me a water bubbler!!! Can you see how happy I am?! I have been wanting one of these for a long time. We don't drink our tap water because it tastes nasty full of chlorine. However, we have a natural spring right in our own little town where the water flows down fresh from the mountains. It is the most delicious, sweet water you have ever tasted!!!! It's also FREE! The problem is with such a large family (and growing) we go through a lot of water causing us to have to constantly make trips to refill our one gallon jugs. Not so fun in the middle of the winter! The numerous one gallon jugs we need to supply our family with water for a few days are quite often in our way too. It seems like by the time we put the gallon jugs down in the basement, out of the way, we are ready to lug them all back up to refill them at the Spring again. Most of the time the gallon jugs end up sitting in the mudroom where we all trip over them. Now we have two large 5 gallon bottles for our bubbler that we will fill up ourselves at the spring. We can use one on top of the bubbler while the extra one stays in the coat closet. The kids can get cold water whenever they want and my house has less jug clutter! Woohooo!!! Normally I would have put our bubbler in the kitchen where it is more accessible but my kitchen is too little. So, the bubbler is going to have it's home in the mudroom which will actually be more convenient for me when I have two new curious, little toddlers running around and I am able to shut the mudroom door to avoid any water messes.

As you can see our family went strawberry picking! We picked two huge flats! YUM!  While the kids were sleeping last night I cut them up to freeze for the winter. We love smoothies and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Do you see the two little hearts? Jared and Caleb found those strawberries.