Fossils and a Box of Bones

We've started slowly. There is no avoiding the math everyday; we subscribe to a program online and they both dig in quite nicely. There is the standard, "What did you do this summer?" essay they are both completing, but for fun they are to be humorous in the style of Eddie Izzard. My son is working on his computer graphics programs and daughter on writing a comic book with her long distance best friend. They both have picked back up on their music after vacation. We are trying to find our best location to compile a wildlife study on the property here, then they will set up a research design and file reports with the department head (me being the department). But there was one burning project that could not WAIT for my daughter, and that was to identify all the fossils that I was able to pick out of boxes that were at the very back corner of a Sequim Rock Shop. Of course, I have boxes of bones and books for comparison and she spent the better part of a day with her initial identification. We are just identifying the bone, I have no fossil to compare with for species. After the kids are certain of what bone everything is and with their investigation for possible animals in the fossil record to check, we will have a field trip to compare with a paleo collection. 

Catch Up!

I haven't added anything here for a spell. We didn't drop off the earth or anything; rather, we've been exploring our Earth. We've been traveling around, checking out geology and ecosystems from North Idaho to the Olympic Peninsula, through the North Cascades Highway and the Great Grand Coulee. From the desert to the ocean to the rainforest to treading small patches of snow in the subalpine zone of Hurricane Ridge and Cascades, the children were saturated with the workings of the planet. My son spent time with bioDad and they enjoyed the Avatar exhibit, which was really cool since my son wants to go into animation.

Desert Scrubland, near Ephrata, WA

Cascades, near Leavenworth, WA

Snoqualmie Falls, WA There are turbines that use the falls to give hydroelectric power in the area. An interesting example of cooperation between the tribes, who need the tumbling water in order to fulfill their spirituality and the people who run the power station, which pulls water from the falls.  

Neah Bay, WA This is at the very Northwestern tip of Washington on the Makah Indian Reservation. They have a spectacular museum there.

Giant Statues at the Makah museum.

Rialto Beach, WA

Some old growth cedar stumpage

Giant Sitka Spuce near the Hoh Rainforest

East side of the Cascades (standing on snow)

Part of the Cascades

Descending into the coulee near Pateros, WA. The evening air was thick with the smell of apples.

Inventive Soul

My daughter visited her grandparents for a few days and came back with this burning need to make fabulous cupcakes. We have no pastry bags for designing fancy cakes; I walk around the corner and there she is, decorating like a pro by simply altering a ziploc bag into a pastry bag. Now, there may be someone else that does this, but she invented it independently of their help. I told her how impressed I was and she insisted it wasn't her genius, just the idea out of the book. I said, "Oh, the ziploc? How clever!" and she said, really offhand, "Oh no, I just did that. I mean the pattern of the flower. That was in the book. The ziploc isn't really a big idea, it just came to my head."