Travel - Snapshot Chronicles

The First Grade Field Trip

06.05.2007 by Susan Getgood //

Yes, it’s true. I was a chaperone for the first grade field trip last week. And lived to tell the tale. So did the 5 boys in my group.

We went to the EcoTarium in Worcester, an excellent choice for kids of this age (6-7 years). There’s enough to do to keep them busy for a few hours, with enough variety that every kid will find something to interest him, but the place isn’t so big that you’ll lose track of your kids. Even if they are running in two or three different directions.

The teachers were also very smart. We had a list of animals to look for, which kept the kids moving along as they wanted to spot as many as they could.

Here are some of the highlights of the day. More pics on Flickr.

My field trip group. Douglas is the first one on the ~~right~~ left. I “whited out” the names of the two boys whose name tags were also visible using an open source graphics program called GIMP that my brother recommended. He said it has the functionality of PhotoShop without the cost. I’ll report more as we investigate it.

They had a whole exhibit about insects that eat blood — leeches, mosquitos, ticks and so on. As you can probably imagine, 7 year old boys thought that was cool. One of the best bits was the game of twITCHer. In the second picture above, Douglas had a case of red eye. I removed it with a simple photo viewer called IrfanView, also a discovery of my brother.

It was a cool day, so the polar bear was actually out of his den. This is a color, unedited photo, but I managed somehow to get just the bear and the rocks, without any of the colored balls (or whatever they were) floating in his pool. As a result, the picture is stark, monochromatic, almost severe. I really like it because I think it conveys what a polar bear really is. Not a happy fluffy cartoon that sells soft drinks. A serious, deliberate survivor.

Tags: EcoTarium, IrfanView, polar bear

Down on the Farm

05.29.2007 by Susan Getgood //

Well not exactly a farm. We own a house and some land in Barnard VT, just outside Woodstock. David has been remodeling the house for the past year, and we’ve started going up on weekends as a family. It’s great because we can bring the dogs. In fact, Dave spent a large part of this past weekend working on a brick patio which we are going to fence in as a dog yard. I on the other hand was tasked mostly with keeping Douglas out of his way. A 7-year old’s “help” is problematic shall we say when you are trying to get a big project done :-).

Saturday, Douglas and I ventured to Rutland to buy a (cheap) gas grill. On the way to Rutland, we had lunch in Pittsfield. On the way back, we popped into the Norman Rockwell Museum and got ice cream at the Mountain Creamery in Woodstock.

On Sunday, we spent most of the day at Billings Farm and Museum. It was sheep shearing weekend, and they had plenty of activities for the kids. Ice cream making, weaving, carding wool, crafts, plus meeting the baby chicks and the oxen, and watching them shear the sheep for the summer. The farm house is quite impressive, if not typical of Vermont life in 1890. Entire picture set.

We also wandered a bit in the village Sunday afternoon. Much as Chicago did cows and NYC did german shepherd dogs, Woodstock and vicinity are doing sheep. We saw quite a few over the weekend and took a few pics. More over the summer, I’m certain. We’re planning to stay at the house for most of August, assuming we can get the Internet access sorted. One of the only drawbacks of the house is that we are in a cell dead zone. No cell phone, no Blackberry email or web access. Right now, only dial-up (snooze). We can get satellite, just need to order it. On the to-do list.

Now for the $25K question: do you know what this animal is? We think it is a weasel that had set up a den under our porch. Needless to say, the dogs took a dim view of it. Dave sealed up all the little gaps in the foundation, and afterward we never saw it again. Although the dogs did remain hopeful!

Tags: Vermont, Woodstock, travel

About our masthead

05.18.2007 by Susan Getgood //

Snapshot Chronicles was designed by the talented Karen Rani of Swank Web Style. Karen also did the design for my business Web site and professional blog Marketing Roadmaps.

Karen, who blogs over at Troll Baby, suggested the photo of us swimming in Oahu for the masthead because we looked like we were having lots of fun. Which is of course what this blog is all about. Having fun.

My #1 reader and touchstone for all such things, my mother, concurred.

So you have them to thank for the fact that anyone who reads this site directly, versus in an RSS reader, will be faced with a photo of me in my swimsuit.

If you’d like to see more pictures from our Hawaii vacation, check out this Flickr set. Most of the pictures were taken by my husband David, with a few by me and Douglas.

And yes, in the masthead picture, we are both trying to execute the Shaka sign with varying degrees of success.