This Week

Braden is going to start and end the posting this week.

 He found this very small box and was trying all sorts of ways to try to put his body into it.  It never occurred to him the box was too small.  Hannah came along and helped.  Then Braden delighted in being carried around the house for the next little bit.

"Ship me to Daddy, please." says Braden.   

I have no idea why this series of pictures were taken, but there they were on the camera. Just in case you forgot what dinner at home is like...

Mom dishing out the meals.

Braden and Hannah saying they really don't like green beans.

"Look, I already put the Zesty Italian on your salad,"said Mom.

"Okay, I guess I'll try it," says Braden.

Braden has gone six full meals without screaming.  We are all much more relaxed now.  As you can see, he won the battle.  He sits in a booster seat at the table, instead of his high chair, and he feeds himself. When I hand him his plate he looks it over before he begins to eat.  If he sees anything uneatable he quickly scoops up the offending food and flings it to the floor.   The mess he makes is...really gross.  But I have soap and water.  Eventually more will get in his mouth than on the floor.  

Jessica's fall garden: strawberry plants, marigolds, peas, lettuce, and basil.  I ate a pea two days ago.  Very tasty.

If the temperature doesn't drop to freezing we will have lots of peas.

The girls wanted to do some volunteer work for personal progress, for their future college applications, and for fun.  They found a really great website called volunteermatch.org.  All you have to type in is an address and a keyword (or no keyword) and all the projects, opportunities, and activities requiring volunteers in your area pop up with descriptions, locations, e-mails, etc.  So they went online and found this organization: North Carolina Coastal Federation.  The Federation has projects all along our coast to protect and restore the natural wetlands.  We jumped in on 'Oyster Reef Construction.'

We arrived at Stump Sound, just south a little in Holly Ridge.  The huge piles of oyster shells that had to be moved were daunting.  The shells are all bought from restaurants.  It was funny to think that people had to eat each and every oyster.  Once they are eaten, land owners up and down the coast use oyster shells to help prevent erosion.

How do you carry 6,000 bags of oyster shells?  One bag at a time.  

About 100 volunteers made a path from the pile to the shore, shoulder to shoulder.

The bags of oyster shell were passed down person to person to the final man out in the water who placed the bags to build a reef 4 bags wide by 3 bags high by 75 bags long.  We built 3 of these reefs in five hours.

We couldn't see our progress as the reef is mostly submerged.  When the tide came in, it hid what little we could see.  The yellow boom, which keeps all the sediment from flowing out into the water, will be removed when the construction is done.

This is a sample of a finished reef.

Emily got a ride back to the truck.

Mom and Emily.  

Picture of the day:  Emily says she saw the whole thing from the next room.  Braden saw the camera sitting on the table.  He climbed up pushed a bunch of buttons, took this picture, then walked away.  

Great picture Braden!