Woodstone Prairie

….you might as well make a cup of tea and plan on settling in for a while. This is likely to be a long one…

The big news at our house is the sudden influx of new pets. It started with this feisty little one…

Her name is Sweet Pea and she was a gift to R from Granny. Granny knew how much R was grieving the loss of her horse, Grant, and thought Sweet Pea might help fill the hole in her heart (R’s way of putting it). We picked Sweet Pea up yesterday…

…and R is already in love.

R has taken her for a walk, showing her around the place (scaring the goats into a panic when they visited the barn!), brushed her (several times)…

…and picked out just the perfect new collar for her.

Sweet Pea seems to be settling in just fine…

I think they’ll be great friends.

Our other new pets are Misty and May, M’s new pet rats. It just didn’t seem right that R had Sweet Pea and M had no pet of his own. He’s had pet rats before and they were wonderful pets for him, so we headed into town today and bought the two calmest rats we could find. Pictures of M and his rats will follow soon…

Just so they don’t feel left out, I should probably post pictures of Mutt and Jeff (otherwise known as Emma and Quin) too. I bought them rawhide chews the other day… they felt very special.

Poor Quin was having a hard time getting his mouth shut!

We started back to school last week, but only got a couple of days worth of schooling in… I’m honestly not sure where the week went. I felt busy every day, but can’t put my finger on anything major that got accomplished. I’m sure I must have done something…

 We did go on a great field trip with our homeschool group. We visited the Stiles Heritage Center, a small museum celebrating African American history. R wasn’t sure she was going to like it at first… The museum is in an urban section of Denver, just outside downtown. Since moving out of Denver, R was become anxious in urban areas and places where there are lots of people. So she was feeling a little stressed out at first. It didn’t take long for her to find the wonder of the museum though, which was basically a little house full to overflowing with memorabilia, posters, antiques, newspaper clippings, etc. all documenting African American history.

The kids wandered through the museum, looking at things and asking questions…

Then the director of the museum,  Ms Grace Stiles, “became” Madame C. J Walker and through the telling of C. J.’s story helped them to understand what life was like for an African American woman born just after the Civil War, and how one woman’s never-give-up-attitude led her to becoming the first African American woman millionaire. It was really a fascinating presentation.

Ms Stiles as a young C. J Walker…

R was enthralled…

Ms. Stile again as millionaire Madame C.J. Walker:

 Here’s the real C. J Walker…

It was a great field trip… I’m glad we went.

Well, it’s late… I’m tired… so I’ll have to catch up more later.