Spaghetti Dinner 2018

Wow! We did some math and figured out this was Maddie's 6th year being a server for the spaghetti dinner. She did a shift of serving then went into the take out area and helped with that. Brian, as usual, cooked spaghetti all day long! Momma went in and helped serve sauce and meatballs...for 3 hours! By the numbers this morning it was a big success! Scholarships for camp for everyone.

Maddie making apple cider pound cake the night before for the cupcake bar!

Momma's Chocolate Guinness Sweet & Salty Cake--chocolate cake with caramel and pretzles 

The finished apple cider pound cakes

Annual photo of the chef and the server!

cupcake bar

The cakes!

More cakes!!

A 4H Weekend

We had another 4H weekend here! Maddie and Bonnie started their first class for the Citizen Science project. Maddie was thrilled to be doing this project and they ended up with 8 kids! It was fun to watch her and see the kids so excited. They went for a nature walk and wrote "I wonder...." questions on post it notes to bring back to the classroom. Then they made nature journals to keep track of their observations and make notes. Maddie led them in a discussion about experiments with turkey vultures that were started by John James Audubon and were continued by other scientists into the 1960s! It was a lot of fun and a good group of kids. We have several more meetings to develop a project and complete it then Maddie will be presenting the project at the State Fair.

Today we started practicing for Forestry Camp. Maddie and Brian worked on topographic map reading. Maddie remembered a lot of the information so perhaps we are ahead of the game!

Next weekend if spaghetti dinner time!! March is a busy month!!

Presentations 2018

So today was the big day for County presentations at 4H. We had so many of our Mohawk Monarchs participate! It was GREAT! The kids did an awesome job and I am proud of them all. Maddie settled into her topic and did a wonderful job. I'm extra proud of her! As her Momma, I am allowed.

Maddie's topic was a walk in the woods and it lasted 13 minutes which was the exact time frame she needed to fill. She talked about trail rules, things to bring along, what you might see and citizen science.

new outfit! Ranger shirt!

Fixing the computer with Bonnie

Fun tools to bring! That is Micah in the photo on her slide

Talking about galls

Everyone waiting for the fun!

Here are the other kids! We missed Micah's presentation but saw everyone else. They all had great topics: Black Bears (Micah's....he is slightly worried about them on their bike trip this summer!), how to draw an owl, the pinewood derby, and how to make Tzatziki dip.

Who-who sat on the table by Maddie to make sure Julia did a good job! 

Doggie saw Who-who and of course needed to do the same thing! 

All the presenters! 

All the Mohawk Monarchs plus one future Mohawk Monarch!

Maddie's presentation can be seen on Youtube here: link

Enjoy!!

Albany Institute and Winter Camp Drop Off

Today we had to wait until about 3:00 to start up to Camp Fowler for the Winter Camp drop off so we headed to the Albany Institute of Art and History for the Victorian clothes exhibit. It was a lot of fun! And so pretty!

Wedding dress. All hand sewn

Wedding dress! They often chose colos so the dress could be worn again. If you wore white you were very well off.

Wedding dress

These were my favorites! 

Sleeve detail on one of the dresses

Civil War uniform

I'm not sure you can read this but it explains how the lace was made on the dress below. They used a chemical reaction to create the design!

Detail of the lace

As you can see Maddie was all smiles when we left! She was the first to arrive. Normally we get there right at drop off time and the place is teeming with kids making us feel like we are late. This year we were a bit early and she was first! Timing is everything! So we hung around for a bit talking with Aunt Josey and Uncle Connor who will be running things the next few days. Mainly we discussed how they should've changed the name to "Mud Camp"!

We will pick her up on Wednesday at lunch!! More about her time there later.