Ron Paul to Visit Rochester

Late this morning I made my almost-daily stop at http://www.ronpaul2008.com/. I was amazed to learn that this Friday, May 30, Ron Paul will be speaking at Mayo Memorial Park, right here in Rochester, next to the civic center. That exciting news was tempered by the fact that he will not be speaking as part of the state Republican convention being held inside the civic center this Friday. I am frustrated, amazed, and perplexed that he has been denied his rightful place as a speaker at the convention. He garnered over sixteen percent of the votes in Minnesota Republican primaries earlier this year.

Actually, I am outraged, and I don't get angry very often. Republican candidate for president John McCain received only 22 percent of the votes in the state Republican primary election , a mere six percent more than Ron Paul's total. John McCain edged ahead of Ron Paul by less than four thousand votes. Officials in charge of the state GOP have denied Ron Paul the opportunity to speak, stating that Dr. Paul is not a "qualified candidate" yet failing to define what "qualified" means. Is John McCain qualified because he received four thousand more votes than Ron Paul?

Some John McCain supporters of the Republican party must be rightfully concerned that Ron Paul is a viable candidate in this election. Otherwise, why would they deny him a position to speak at the convention?

Are you one of the Americans who doesn't know much information about Ron Paul? Have you heard of him? Have you actually learned about his campaign or his position on key issues? Ron Paul's recent book Revolution: A Manifesto has been on the bestseller lists for the New York Times and Amazon.com for weeks.

He has set multiple fundraising records, including amassing over six million dollars on the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, the day that helped spark the American Revolution. More than 50,000 people contributed to his campaign that day, half of whom were new donors. The effort was organized entirely by volunteers online. "This means Ron Paul's message is really resonating with people," stated Jim Forsythe, a former Air Force pilot and former Bush supporter. If you don't know much about Dr. Paul, take a few minutes to visit his website and learn more about him. There is a reason why people are supporting him in large numbers across the country.

If you are disillusioned with our government, if you view this election as an unfortunate choice among undesirable candidates, if you are already saying, I can't wait until the upcoming presidential term is over, if you don't know very much about Ron Paul, if you are curious why some people are working so hard against Dr. Paul, please come to Mayo Park this Friday at 7:30 a.m. If you are unable to attend, invite a friend or relative to come in your place. Tell people you meet that Ron Paul has caught your attention.

Memorial Day Weekend

On Friday, we played tennis at Goose Egg Park for the second time this spring. Max and Mitchell's forehands were amazing! We would love to play tennis every day this summer. When they needed a rest after almost an hour of hitting and chasing balls, I pounded out some serves.

On the way home, we stopped at the soccer park since Mitchell had been wanting to play there for days. Mitch looked like a little explorer in his Diego safari outfit.








On Saturday Jack came over to play. Their birthdays are less than three months apart and they get along perfectly. Jack and Mitch washed Max's rocks, played on the swingset, dug in the sandbox, and shared a snack.

On Sunday, Max went to his first baseball practice of the season. This is his third season playing baseball and his third season with coach Darin and his son Brady, who have become friends of our family. We love Coach Darin because he values fun over winning and he always has positive encouragement for the boys. The six boys who were able to attend practice during the holiday weekend had lots of time on the baseball diamond, batting and fielding the ball. They were excited to wear their bright blue t-shirts, and Max is busy trying to think of a catchy name for the"blue team." After practice, the grown-ups reminisced about how much the boys have learned during their short baseball careers, from the time they were kindergarteners and weren't always sure which way to run or what to do with the ball, to last year, when Max's favorite pastime was kicking sand in the infield, to now when they are soon-to-be third graders, learning specialized skills, yet still need to be reminded to keep their heads up and gloves ready when the batter steps up to the plate.

While Max practiced with his team, Mitchell and Troy explored the elementary school playground, playing Indiana Jones and hide and seek. Later, Mitch hit lots of home runs while we took turns pitching to him.



The boys asked for a trip to Dairy Queen on the way home from practice, but we reminded them that Dairy Queen treats are reserved for game nights during the season. Instead, they had snacks out on the deck after their baths. We enjoyed the colorful sunset and watched the stars and satellites decorate the sky, looking for constellations like the Big Dipper, the Seven Sisters, and Gemini.

Look at that string cheese smile!

My day started early on Monday morning when Muffy got into some mud. She needed a bath, and the temperatures weren't warm enough to put the garden hose on her filthy fur, so I carried out buckets of warm, soapy water. With a coat of almond-scented conditioner, her shiny coat smelled fresh and clean. I was the one who smelly like a wet puppy!

I spent the rest of the morning working in the garden. I finshed planting heirloom tomatoes: Mexico Midget, German Pink, red currant, and Beam's yellow pear varieties; as well as other organic heirloom vegetables, including leeks, red and green onions, kale, broccoli, eggplant, celery, and several kinds of sweet and hot peppers. I also planted some more annuals and I filled a pot with some of my favorite colorful flowers --aster, salvia, bright orange marigolds, pink begonias, and coleus -- for the cemetery.

Later that afternoon, Mitch and I had "special time" while Troy and Max stayed home to put the finishing touches on the stairs for the deck. Mitchie and I visited Kiersten and new baby Nadia at the hospital. Nadia Jeanine was born on Sunday, May 25 in the afternoon. She weighed 7 pounds, 10 ounces, and had a head of silky black hair. She was absolutely beautiful, just like her big brother and sister!

After we left the hospital, we brought the flowers to the cemetery to remember the three babies we have lost. Watching Mitchell run and play among the graves was comforting and reassuring, that life does indeed go on, and that God blesses us richly in unexpected ways. He loved watching the colorful pinwheels spin in the evening breeze. It was the first time the visiting the cemetery was actually enjoyable.

On the way home, we stopped to play at Mayo Park, across the river from the civic center, another favorite stop of Mitchell's. We admired the baby ducks along the edge of the river, played store, and tried out all of the slides. Our short playtime there was probably the best twenty minutes of the day. Sometimes we have to make time for those things we think we don't have time for.

Homeschool Field Trip: Fish Hatchery

Today we traveled to Lanesboro, Minnesota. The boys enjoyed the scenic drive, as they searched the rolling hills and scenic landscape for cows, "horsies," as Mitchell still sweetly calls them, and Audis. Located in the southeastern part of the state, about an hour from our home, Lanesboro is situated in the beautiful Root River Valley, surrounded by blufflands and linked to the Root River Trail. Today, the hillsides were lush with vibrant green leaves and grasses, and the downtown streets, normally bustling with art lovers, bikers, and canoeing tourists, were quiet. We spent the morning at the the fish hatchery, one of five cold-water hatcheries managed by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. The DNR stocks over 1300 state lakes with fish raised in its hatcheries.

We were the first family to arrive, and the boys were delighted to spot an oriole and one of my favorites, an indigo bunting, while we waited for our friends. Click here to visit a fascinating website filled with lots of great information about birds. You can listen to their calls; browse birds by color, body shape, and region; compare two or more birds side-by-side; and utilize other features to identify a bird you have seen.

We learned about the history of the fish hatchery, which had been the site of a grist mill in the early part of the 1900's. When trains began bringing commercially ground flour to the area, bakeries no longer needed the stone ground flour from the local mill, so the location was transformed into a fish hatchery. During its first year in the 1930's, a disaster cut off the water supply to the hatchery, killing all 300,000 trout. A natural spring supplies cold water to to the hatchery at the amazing rate of 5000 gallons per minute. The temperature of the water is a chilly, constant 48 degrees.

Following a complex spawning process, trout are raised at the hatchery for up to four years and shipped via truck to lakes and streams throughout the state, within a twelve-hour traveling distance. Fishing in Minnesoata is a whopping 1.9 billion dollar industry each year, and according to the video we watched during our tour, less than two percent of the DNR hatchery costs are subsidized through state revenue; almost all of the expenses are paid through trout stamps and other user fees.

After we watched the video explaining the trout spawning process in great detail, we looked inside one of the buildings. The concrete raceways were filled with cold water and thousands of rainbow fingerlings.

The kids couldn't wait one more minute to feed the trout in the special pond where feeding by visitors is permitted, so we headed over to the dock where the naturalist had left behind a half-filled five-gallon bucket of special fish food for our learning enjoyment. All of the kids threw handful after gleeful handful into the water, jumping with excitement as some of the ten-thousand trout jumped out of the water to catch a snack.

The kids and moms enjoyed the beauty of the rushing water from the spring that feeds the raceways, as the concrete canals are called, at the hatcher. The small, rapid waterfall pictured behind their smiling faces is the "leftover" water from the 5000 gallon-per-minute spring. Some of us reached into the water to sample the feeling of 48 degree water that nourishes the 1.5 million trout exported to Minnesota lakes and streams from the hatchery each year.

Jadyn spotted this picture-perfect spiderweb as we observed the size difference between one, two, and three year-old trout swimming in separate raceways. The smaller, younger trout are given more food because their metabolism is faster. Fifty three year-old trout and fifty four-year old trout are saved from each "batch" of fish each year to prevent inbreeding in the next year's group of fish.

On our way to the last stop on our tour of the hatchery, we saw the building where large bags of fish food are stored.

The largest building has several long raceways, filled with fresh, cold water. Here the trout are placed in special tanks filled with cold water, salt, and special no-foam solution for transport to Minnesota water bodies suitable for trout. They are not fed for three days to prevent clouding of the water in the truck during transport. When they arrive at their destination, the temperature of the water in the lake, stream, or reservoir is measured, and the water in the truck's tank is adjusted accordingly, to prevent the fish from going into shock when they are placed in their new home. The fish can survive safely in the truck for twelve hours.

Members of a Sentence-to-Service crew clean an empty trout pond and prepare it for next season's stock of fish.

Each of the four families from our Peace Kids Homeschool Group packed a picnic lunch, so we drove a couple of miles to Sylvan Park along Lanesboro's main street. We were disappointed in the cold temperatures and hurriedly ate our food so we could try to warm up. Mitchell and Max were both dressed in shorts since the online weather forecast had predicted a pleasant 74 degrees.

Our friend Isaac and mom Therese generously offered to share their fishing tackle they keep in the back of their vehicle, so I took some of the kids to the woodsy area along the back side of the pond, which is stocked with fish, to choose long sticks to fashion homemade fishing poles. Going fishing was the highlight of our afternoon, and we hadn't planned that part of our field trip! Eight year-old Nic got a boost from his mom Becky as they tried to reach a dead branch that would have been perfect for a sturdy fishing pole.

Four year-old Mags caught the first tiny, shimmery fish of the afternoon. Therese helped unhook the fish and she showed it to Mitchell and the other nearby kids, opening its mouth wide and pointing out its little tongue. Mitchell thought that part was pretty neat, but he didn't want to touch the fish.

Mags' mom Becky caught the next fish of the afternoon. Some of the kids wondered why we didn't keep it for a bite-sized dinner!

I snapped this photo of the ducks to honor my brothers and their incessant teasing of my love of taking pictures. Their favorite story to tell is about the time we -- my parents, five year-old Danny, Baby Brian, and ten year-old me -- walked around Lake Harriet in the Twin Cities and I snapped a whole roll of film of the ducks and their new babies with my Fisher Price 110 Camera. They don't like to talk about the part when Danny wanted to "turn around" and go back the long way to the car, after we had passed the stately bandshell and we were only a few hundred yards away from finishing our lap and returning to our Monte Carlo with the turbo-charged engine.
Mags shows off the flour-sack dress her mom sewed for her this past weekend, as well as the seaweed she didn't want to remove from her hook. I remembered my own days of fishing with my forever friend Angie and her family on our summer trips to Gull Lake in northern Minnesota, when both of us would ask her dad to remove the seaweed we had snagged. We also asked him to remove the fish from our hooks, until he taught us how to use his mighty pliers, and then we learned how to unhook the fish without even touching them! We also wore water shoes while kneeboarding and water skiing so we wouldn't have to step on the slimy plants, and once, Angie's parents rented wet suits for us because of the cold temperatures, and then we didn't have any kind of algae touching any part of our bodies!


Nic caught a fish, and as he proudly pulled it out of the water, the fish slipped off his hook and landed in the nearby grass. The kids laughed as Nic and Marco tried to catch it and toss it back into the pond.

The youngest fisher-kids were ready for some real playtime, so while the other moms stayed with Max and the other big kids, I took Mitchell, Mags, Miguel, and Sebastian across the grassy lawn to a playground that was designed just the right size for little bodies. When we arrived at the park earlier in the afternoon, Mitchell spotted a merry-go-round, and exclaimed, "Mom, look at that 'pinning thing!" since those old-fashioned, potentially dangerous types of equipment are now absent from most playgrounds. The merry-go-round was a hit with our two-to-four year-old crowd. I visited with an older gentleman dressed in striped denim overalls sitting nearby who was glad to hear the clamor of the kids playing together so happily.

After the kids had tried out everything at the playground at least twice, we headed back to the pond to check on big brothers and sisters. Baby Anna was sound asleep in her stroller, and a few big kids had caught some fish, including trout, sunfish, and one bass. Max didn't catch anything today (he decided that he didn't have that "beginner's luck" since he had gone fishing last summer) and I was glad he wasn't too disappointed. After we said our goodbyes to our friends around 2:30, Max, Mitchell, and I decided to take a short detour on the way home and explore downtown Lanesboro. We stopped at a shop stocked with treats for dogs and other pet-friendly products, where we purchased two gourmet cookies coated with frosting and sprinkles for Muffy and Minnie, and two bottles of geranium-scented Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day products, the best natural cleaning aids ever and worth every penny. (The products are very concentrated and a little goes a long way!) Next we headed to an ice cream shop where we bought a Peppermint Bon-Bon ice cream cone for Max, a Cotton Candy ice cream cone for Mitch, and an iced tea and double chocolate chip cookie for me.



We stopped at a gift shop on our way back to the car in search of the perfect souvenirs for the boys to remember our fun day, and we found just what they wanted: a magnetic beaded necklace for Max similar to the one a friend recently showed him, and a felt, animal-shaped jewelry box with a sparkly necklace inside for Mitch. After we were safely in the car, he told me the frog-shaped case was for his inch-high "little guys."

A few minutes after we arrived back home, tired but happy, the doorbell rang. Max and Mitch were so excited to see their neighborhood friends Syndey and Victoria, so my plans of bathtime and jammies were put on hold for some playtime on the swingset. Muffy entertained all four of them as she dug and dug, hot on the trail of the elusive, destructive pocket gopher that has moved into our backyard this year.