The fort

T1 tore down the brooders awhile ago. They were made of a base of palettes we picked up for free. He took them apart and had them in a pile.

He asked a few days later if they could use the palettes to build a fort. I said, "sure". They were happy outside for chunks of time and would come in filthy dirty. They told me of their fort but I never went out there, until now.

Here is what they have accomplished completely on their own. I bet it was such fun.

I was told that this bench here closest to us was T3's kitchen. She was cooking for the soldiers by piling dirt from the fresh tilled gopher holes onto the makeshift bench. Also, notice the cannon on the far side of the fort.

Reminds me a little of this picture by Winslow Homer entitled "Home Sweet Home" 1863.

A boys work or play?

This cherry tree has been dead for a while now. Papa told the boys to take it down. They happily have been pounding away in their spare moments. You can see they are employing many different tactics to accomplish the task.

They are having a great time doing it.

And no, I didn't cancel the garbage.

Boredom with a purpose

I remember reading an article about Wynonna Judd quite some time ago. I remember her saying that she was bored alot as a child. I think they didn't have a tv, I could be wrong but it was something to that effect. I do specifically remember her saying she was bored and that is how she learned to play the guitar.

I think about that.

I think my kids need to be bored more often.

Bored without a tv.

We all know we could be bored all day long with the tv on and not have an original thought in our heads.



Bored the way kids must have been a hundred years ago. (They probably were never bored with all the work they had to do) Bored with simple, everday objects, not endless supplies of brightly colored plastic toys or pretend tools, but REAL tools.

Things like sticks, rocks, a bucket, a rope...I don't know what did they even have back then? Just simple everyday things that required IMAGINATION and ingenuity to use in a different way.



It's in the down time, when there isn't much going on that interesting things can happen.

I like to stay home and not entertain the kids.

I like to stay home and let our family be an island.

Let our boys depend upon each other for friendship and fun. I saw the boys outside hoisting a bucket full of water up in the air with their own ropes. They had their gloves on, they each have a pair of work gloves that they probably use daily.

I like that.

They are little men.

The boys and I listened to this CD the other day. I think it's appropriate for this post. My oldest son loves this cd. You might consider it for your little men.

Playmobil people II

Notice they are trying to be the nice Playmobil people, with pasty smiles on their faces.

Playmobil people

My boys play with Playmobils...lots of them.

Right now, as I am typing this there is a superabundance of tiny plastic rifles, knives, fences, animals, furniture, spare wagon wheels, boulders and many other spare parts spread throughout the floor of what we call our bonus room. If you try to walk to the bathroom in the dark through that room, it is akin to walking through a minefield.

So today, we got this idea. T1 set up the playmobils and took pictures of them.

Then they became life sized playmobils.

Stay tuned. More to come.

Games country boys play

The day began with big dreams and visions of hard work which would eventually pay in gold.

The entrepreneurial venture for the day was collecting cow manure, for the end purpose of drying it and selling it to gardeners as fertilizer. I would be their first and possibly only customer. But a willing customer to be sure.

Somehow they migrated over to the water trough. We keep goldfish in our trough, they eat the mosquito larvae. They may have started out trying to catch them. I'm not sure.

Lastly, they would fill the bucket up with water, go out into the field and spin around laughing and getting dizzy, watching the water stay in the bucket by centrifugal force.

And for the rest of the day, their business plans and shovels were forgotten in the field.

Beware!

Papa never knows what to expect when he comes home from work. The boys usually wait to ambush him with their Nerf guns. Papa has since gotten his own Nerf gun to use as defense when he walks in the door.

I thought this latest trap was clever. Papa will never know what hit him!

This is the dreaded jail the boys made for Papa when he misses dinner!

Take the Caesar Cipher Challenge

Over two thousand years ago, Julius Caesar invented an encryption device that bears his name—the Caesar Cipher. The standard algorithm Caesar employed was simple, yet it perplexed his enemies. In communication to his generals in the field, Caesar shifted each of the letters of his messages by a given number of places in the alphabet.

In cryptography, a Caesar cipher, also known as a Caesar Shift, is one of the simplest and most widely-known encryption techniques. It is a type of substitution cipher in which each letter in the plaintext is replaced by a letter some fixed number of positions further down the alphabet. For example, with a shift of 3, A would be replaced by D, B would become E, and so on.

Okay, now for the good stuff! If any of you are interested...which you definitely SHOULD be, you can check out this website, or (MAJOR hint here folks) just use the big wheel above. What can I say? I have 3 little kids. I don't have that much time to monkey around with my blog!


So I made up a nice little treasure hunt on my blog for my family. The boys are very into the Jamestown 400 Treasure Hunt and learning about codes.

T1 was very excited when he noticed some suspicious looking gibberish on today's post. As soon as Papa came home and would agree, they all sat down at the computer to figure it out.

The neighbors dropped in which was all the better. It became a fun little hunt for the family.

The suspense is building. As a side note, notice Cassidy's teeth? She had her braces removed today. She is beautiful isn't she?

Never a dull moment with T2 around!


They figured it out.
Now it's your turn.

I will say, you have to be somewhat familiar with my previous posts, or at least browse through the older ones, that will help you with the clues once you break the cipher code. I have shortened it from what my family did to the one you will do. It's shorter, more do-able.

Grab a pencil.

My 9 year old did it, you can too!

Have fun!!

Start by deciphering this gibberish below. It will be a clue to help you find the next clue.

HNWHHA EJGGMU CTG KTTGUKUVKDNG

Know your knots?

My son can often be seen carrying a rope around and practicing tying knots. That is, ever since he received the book, The Handbook of Knots by Des Pawson. Both my boys have had their own jump rope for years that they treasure. They have been trusty friends, using them to tie people up, drag things around with or loop over a tree limb to use as a hoist. A rope is a good non-plastic, non-battery, all boy toy.

The next time you need to buy a birthday gift for a boy between the ages of 6-10, try a rope and this knot book. A winning combination.

Trebuchet

Here is T2 and his trebuchet he built the other day. He was launching rocks with it. The bucket is full of large rocks to act as a counter weight. I took a video of it in action, but don't know how to put it on my blog. Too bad. It's cute. Maybe someday.

What is a trebuchet? A trebuchet is a medieval siege engine, a weapon used to batter or throw projectiles over walls. The trebuchet is thought to have been invented in China between the5th and 3rd centuries BC. It could fling three hundred pound projectiles at incredible speeds into an enemy fortification, quickly obliterating walls and defenses. Occasionally it was used to throw the bodies of people who had died from various diseases including the black plague over castle walls, in an attempt to infect the people under siege.

If you have an adventurous lad who is interested in making a trebuchet of his own, check out The Art of the Catapult by William Gurstelle. With some scrap wood, rope, hammer, and nails and this book, build simple yet sophisticated hurling machines that rely on the fundamentals of math and physics using levers, force, torsion, tension, and traction.

And in case any early Christmas shoppers were wondering, T2 doesn't have this book yet.