Cooking and life skills

Lily likes to cook all by herself these days. Yesterday she made toast, fruit, and yogurt for breakfast; then she made macaroni and cheese (from scratch) for lunch.

I believe children should be taught how to take care of a household starting from a young age. Yes, that means chores. And allowing them to help when they ask. Young children want to do what you are doing. Don't send them away to do work, but do it with them.

I had the good fortune to be homeschooled, and since I was I had plenty of time to learn how to cook, clean, and take care of a household. It seems that many people lack education in this area, especially financial management. But I say that once kinds are old enough even let them balance the family budget. Nothing but good can come of that.

Log Cabin Village

We went to the Log Cabin Village the other day, and loved it! They have log cabins from the olden days that they brought to the site from various places. In each cabin they have beds, cooking equipment, and other things from the era. They also have a schoolhouse, a wood carver's shop, a blacksmith shop, and a water powered mill (for grinding grain). The kids favorite part was watching the blacksmith heat up the metal, bend it, and then cool it down. They asked for her to do it probably ten times. Then they have a hands on cabin where the kids can play with various items from that era. Definitely a good place to go.

Dinosaur Valley State Park

We went to Dinosaur Valley State Park this last week, and I would recommend it to anyone. It was great! They even have camping, and I want to go camp there. First we went to look at the dinosaur foot prints by the swimming hole. That's this first picture. You can kind of see the footprints, but it's hard to see in the picture.

 

 



 You should have seen us. We had two moms with six kids. Two of the children were babies strapped on to each of us mothers. The path down to the swimming hole wasn't extremely well marked, and there were a few paths people had made coming away from the pool. Going down was a little difficult. We had to navigate past some big rocks and slippery areas. But going back up was even better. I just wish we had a video of the whole shebang. We ended up trying another path hoping it would be easier to ascend. Nope. We ended up climbing up the face of a cliff (almost). Can't you just see us? Oh, we also had a puppy with us. So here we are with our babies strapped on to us, four other small children, and a puppy. Climbing this rock face! By the time we realized what we got ourselves into it was too late to turn around. So we just continued on handing children and puppies to each other and trying to climb without squishing the babies. Oh, the memories. But we made it. I think we should be awarded a wilderness explorer merit badge just for making that climb.

Next we went to find more dinosaur tracks. These had to be excavated from underneath tons of dirt. How did they even know they would find anything? We hopped over the stream on some big rocks. It was kind of fun. The tracks were on the other side. We found some pools that were once connected to the river, but since there is very little water right now the water had receded so the pools weren't connected to anything anymore. In the pools were some little fish and tadpoles. One small pool had tadpoles galore.

On we hiked for a while and found the best area for wading and playing in the water. We took off our shoes and socks, and the water felt amazing! I don't know how long we stayed there. At least two hours, it seems. It was so beautiful. Just playing in the stream made the hour-and-a-half drive worth it. I love being in nature. It is one of the few places where I feel truly happy. It restores my soul.