Penn State Chics Dig Nerds

Follow these tips to make vegetable gardening with children work for you Planting a vegetable garden with children can be a fun and rewarding learning experience.  With a little patience, you can give your child the lifelong skill of vegetable gardening. While kids can’t be expected to be perfect, children can definitely help and learn gardening at the same time. Getting Prepared To make gardening with kids less stressful, be prepared in advance. Create a garden design and map it out in advance, using proper gardening rotations. Have the kids help you draw a map of the garden design and what you both would like to plant. Involving children in this stage of gardening will allow them to feel some ownership in the garden. In accordance with your garden plan, purchase your seeds either at an online catalog or in a local store. Make sure you have your tools ready. You may find that it is beneficial to have some tools that are kid sized. Additionally, you may want to mark yo...

Yesterday, thanks to Aunt Bev and Uncle Rick's football tickets, I got to spend the day with my brother, Todd. I sure will miss when they don't buy these tickets anymore! This may be the last time I get to enjoy the 40 yard line seats! It was perfect weather to attend a football game, too. Here comes The Pennsylvania State University Marching Blue Band: Joe, scrutinizing his offense: My Brother Todd (the giant) and me (the vertically challenged one)- he has a whole foot advantage on me: Here was my vantage point, 40 yard line, about 15 rows up = awesome: The Blue Band and crowd finally got to celebrate a PSU touchdown (after 6 field goal attempts) Outside the stadium, we tried to take a picture of ourselves, which proved quite challenging with the height differential. But, we got it accomplished! Even though Penn State did not play the best, I sure had a great day with my brother. We don't get very many quality time days with just the two of us anymore, so it was ...

This evening, the kids and I joined a few other ladies with their kids and went to JB Tree Farm. The past few days, the weather has turned back to being summer-like, so it was kind of too warm to be at a pumpkin patch. I guess I'd rather have this weather than to be freezing on a hayride! That's what I remember as a kid. I started not to really like hayrides because I associated them with being cold! While at the tree farm, I took plenty of pictures, especially of Brady. I figured since he is 18 months old now, he should have some pictures taken. Natalee climbed to the top of the haystack: She just wasn't sure how to get back down! They had a wooden train. Natalee discovered she could climb through and she asked me to take her picture there :) As the other kids were headed to the mini corn maze, Natalee grabbed her "buddy's" hand (awwww): Either it was too warm for the reindeer to come out, or he did not care to come out and see our wild bunch: Us, on t...

I have been debating whether to post these pictures or not. They are embarrassingly poor quality photos - I forgot to pack in my camera battery. I didn't realize it until we were half way to the game. So, when we parked the car, I spied the kids camera. As my only option other than my camera phone, I decided to give it a whirl. Well, they are not very good, but I decided I would put them on here after all because they do document a very fun day that I had with Jen. Aunt Bev and Uncle Rick gave the tickets to us cousins to use any way that we decided upon. I invited Jen, of course. Being back at our alma mater together -- for a mini girls retreat minus any kids -- was a much needed break. And, SO MUCH fun! The reminiscing, the chatting, and of course the game was a great day. The 75 degree temps and sunshine didn't hurt either! Case in point, if this picture was a good quality, you would be able to see the ball in the air going to the PSU receiver in the endzone. He c...

This evening, I took some of the photos off of Natalee's camera. I had not done that since she got it last Christmas. I had to delete like 1,000 photos -- mostly photos of nothing. Some of them made me laugh. This one, although blurry, looks kind of sweet: A picture of the dining room floor and Natalee's Woofi slippers: Natalee's eye? The kitchen floor, while trying to take a picture of me: Oops. She almost lined this one up right to get me in her photo: Dog, posing nicely: This kids camera has a tool that you can add glasses or things on a person's head (like frog eyes). I took this picture of Meg:

It is not quite autumn yet, but we picked up a lot of acorns and pine cones at our Labor Day campfire supper the other evening. We needed something to do with them, so we decided to make a "fall" tree - our version of an autumn Christmas tree. The prospect of decorating our fall tree excited Natalee for DAYS. She helped to glue the acorn "hats" back onto the acorns. (And then I hot glued them together when she went to bed so that they would actually adhere.) Well, this morning, the acorns were finally dried. Both kids were so excited about this mini project! I imagine the real Christmas decorating will be really fun. Tada!! The finished project: Yes, purple lights on our Fall Tree. I don't have any autumn like colors (except white). I got these LED lights at Bronner's Christmas Wonderland in Frankenmuth, Michigan (The largest Christmas store in the world) on our way to Burt Lake in July. I was so excited about them that I had to use them now! ...

Today, Jesse took the day off of work (his "birthday day" off.... a little belated) and we took a little family outing to Horseshoe Curve National Historic Landmark near Altoona. This was our back up since we could not go camping. ** This new museum and gift shop opened in 1992 thanks to John Murtha and Bud Shuster -- two of the biggest porkers in Central PA history. Thank you, gentlemen! It was hard to take a picture of the curve because we were in the middle of the horseshoe shape. Here, you can see the ridges on either side of the "horseshoe": When they built this portion of the Pennsylvania Railroad, it was considered the 8th wonder of the modern world. Looking toward one ridge: And, then to the other ridge: Unfortunately, only one really long train and one train engine passed us. We were up there for 1 1/2 hours. We had a picnic lunch on a picnic table under one of the trees. One of the workers said that normally trains pass every 15-20 minutes. Traf...