See Ami! See Ami fly a plane!

Oh what a wonderful day.

When our local chapter of the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) honored Ami with the scholarship, they told us about the Young Eagles program, and the “Kids Fly Free Day” at our local privately owned air strip.

The goal of the Young Eagles program is to match kids aged 8-17 with local pilots who will volunteer their time, their plane, and their fuel to give these kids an opportunity to get up in the air. (Harrison Ford is the Chairman of the program. *swoon* Oh what I would give to be 17 again, and fly with Indie. *ahem* back on track!)

In 1992 this program was started with the goal to get a million kids into the air. Well, they’ve gotten over 1,400,000 kids into the air, and pilots are starting to see kids they took on their first flight take new kids up in the air!

We got to the airstrip this morning, filled out a short (liability) form, and met Ami’s pilot, Kevin. Kevin is perfect for this program. Calm, encouraging, kind, welcoming, supportive…I kinda wanted to hug him.

He took Ami (and 2 boys) to see his Piper Cherokee. He explained their roles in the plane, and told Ami she would be co-pilot for the trip. They were to take a 20 minute flight from the airstrip, over the state penitentiary grounds, over the county reservoir (lake), and over the border into the next state.

The door is open on the Cherokee clear up until take off because it’s hot in those little planes and you can’t roll down the window for a breeze. But for the parents who didn’t know that it was supposed to stay open, yikes!

I’ve spoken before about Ami and how she has a hard time breaking out of her shell. Not today!

Kevin told me that when he got up and got the plane level, he let her steer them all over. He taught her how to go up and down a bit, and asked if she had flown before (I know, classic grown up line, but it made her so proud).

To find your local chapter of the EAA, and a pilot participating in the Young Eagles Program, start by visiting the EAA website, and then also check out the Young Eagles official site. The Young Eagles site has games, information, biographies on notable pilots (and past Young Eagles!) and the “World’s Largest Log Book,” where they record the name of each child who flies in the program.

It’s important to take advantage of these types of opportunities as a parent, especially with a daughter. Taking the time to expose girls to something outside of their comfort zone opens up all sorts of fantastic doors. Occupations, hobbies, special interests that she never thought of can be born out of an experience like this. It helps them become women who never second guess themselves about trying new things, or jumping the imaginary gender divide.

This is an opportunity not to be missed! Let me know if you contact your chapter of the EAA or have a child that has done a Young Eagle flight! We would love to hear from you! Or if you know Harrison Ford’s phone number, huh?

Getting Ready

Getting instructions via the headset

Off she goes!

Important co-pilot business

Taxiing

Back on the ground! Look, no tears, no kissing the ground screaming “OH THANK GOODNESS WE MADE IT ALIVE!”

Humming the theme from Top Gun? Of course you are.

And THEN she was in the newspaper! What a day.

We took the kids up to the mountains to look for morels. We’ve never had super good luck mushrooming, because we either forget the season until it’s too hot for them, or we just don’t have a clue where to look. We are learning. Wildcrafting is a new thing to us, but we’re passionate and patient. And hungry. Very, very hungry.

Even if you don’t bring home your limit of morels (we’re allowed to collect up to five gallons per person without a permit!!), it’s worth it just for the family trip to the forest.

We REALLY did not reach our limit of mushrooms, but we still had an exciting time. My son was the first (and only) of our clan to find one this trip, and his delight and pride will be a memory I fondly look back on in my old age. We’re headed back this weekend to try again.

Mushrooming is tricky business. It can also be dangerous business. I am no expert, but I will outline what we did to prepare for our trip.

General Starting Points
1-Look up the regulations in your area. Do you need a permit? Can you harvest at all?
2-Learn what edible mushrooms are available in your area.
3-Learn where they are generally available (nobody is going to give you the GPS coords to their favorite harvesting spot, sadly)
4-Find out when is a good time to start looking. Our morels follow the snow. As it melts away and the ground warms up, out they come! But they don’t follow a schedule, so ask around, someone will have a good rule of thumb.

Next, the dangerous part. You do not EVER want to eat ANY plant that you “think” you know what it is. You NEED to prepare yourself before you dig in! A mistake can be costly, especially for the little ones. Learn and practice good wildcrafting habits as an example to your children.

IMPORTANT STEPS
1-Find out who can identify your mushrooms for you. Your county extension office, your local forest service or National Park office, people familiar to the hobby and area are all places to start.
2-Get a good book on the subject. I bought a book about mushroom identification, and ended up returning it. Photos are better than drawings, but professional field guides with drawings are better than ones with bad or fuzzy photos. Older black and white photos are potentially dangerous when mushrooming. I returned our book because it just had too MANY mushrooms in it. Find one that’s specific to your area.
3-Learn how you need to prepare your mushrooms. The majority of edible mushrooms need to be treated in some way (either by cooking or drying) before you can eat them.

The internet is an excellent resource, but it should not be an end all. Your local forest service department may have online resources for you, ours did.

As always, be safe in the woods. Talk about and plan for what your family needs to do if someone gets lost, or the weather changes quickly. Be aware that some people take mushrooming TOO seriously and may be aggressive (a rarity, but important to think about). Be safe, and mindful, and enjoy a beautiful day in the woods.

Be on the look out for some of the other fantastic treats that the forest has for you. We found fiddleheads (young ferns still coiled up) and miner’s lettuce. Lamb’s Ear is always a treat to find, but the star of the show me this trip was the very first wild orchid I’ve ever found.

Calypso bulbosa var. americana or the Eastern Fairy Slipper. A tiny little thing of only 3 inches high, and impossible to photograph with a cheap digital camera. Will be headed back for better photos!

One last addition that I think even experienced mushroomers may like to know about. I found some fantastic bags to use for mushrooming at our local dollar store. When you go mushrooming, it is the responsible thing to do to carry your mushrooms in a mesh bag. This way, when you walk carrying your mushrooms, they can release their spores and you’re actually helping replenish them as you collect. By using a plastic or paper bag, all of the spores get carried out of the forest with you, and then into the trash.

These bags were $1 for the package of 4 and were originally intended as catch alls to keep “Mom’s car” tidy. But I think they’re fantastic for this new purpose. Hope you can get some use out of the tip!

I had the good fortune to review a book for ADULTS recently for the Family Review Network. *gasp* I know. Grown up reading material! Not only was it a book for grown-ups, it was a GOOD book for grown-ups!

The Side-Yard Superhero by Rick Niece is what the author calls a “automythography,” which he defines as: “A work of nonfiction that looks reflectively at what we think we remember and how we think we remember it; an iridescent memory based upon truth and fact.”

I was not familiar with this term, but I love it. I love that the author has written a autobiography of his youth, but is honest enough to say “Ya know, this may have been tainted by time, distance, emotion and sentimentality.” Hello, Donald Trump and both Clintons, take note!

Anyhow, I really enjoyed this book. A story about life in a small town and how a paper route changed a boy’s life forever and shaped the man he would become. I live in my own small town where my children can still play in the yard all day without fear, and the fond look back at honest community still made me a little heart sick.

Rick Niece is now the President of the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Arkansas, but once upon a time, he was the paper boy in DeGraff, Ohio, population 900 (Whoa! Big city!). He knew he was lucky at the time to be the paper boy because of the pocket money, but the friendships and look into people’s lives was worth even more.

Bernie Jones lived on his paper route, and was a special delivery every day. Bernie Jones was confined to a wheel-chair, before the time of special education in schools, so his world was confined to the small side-yard of his parents home. Bernie and Rick became friends over Dick Tracy and things only boys can understand. Together they dream and scheme a little adventure and camaraderie in each others’ lives.

There are parts of this book that will make you laugh out loud, and parts that will make your heart break. Watching the boys become close, and then watching life carry them away from each other. The taste of home, childhood, and loss will resound with anyone. It’s hard for me to think of the exact demographic for this book. I would say, oh, readers from 12-120. Men, women, boys, girls. Paperboys. People with disabilities, people without. Oh, and those that love a good story. Yeah, that’s the demographic.

This story is secular in nature, and would find a fast home in any house. It would be a perfect gift for granddads come Father’s Day.

This well-written and quick-reading ride is certainly worth taking. Almost as worth taking as the trip down a steep hill in a wheel chair. Almost.

Tags: books

The Family Review Network sent Tommy and I a beautiful children’s book recently, The Legend of Honey Hollow, a story about Grendel, a polar bear displaced from her home in the Arctic.

Thankfully, Grendel ends up at Honey Hollow, a safe haven for bears and animals from all over the world. Deforestation for energy and expansion for animals all over our planet: coal mining in the Appalachians, oil in Alaska, the loss of the bamboo and cloud forests in China and Peru leave bears with smaller and smaller natural habitats. In this story, they all are very lucky to have a home at Honey Hollow.

But what happens when the forests of Honey Hollow are threatened? What can a couple of children do to save them?

As this book plays out, so does an excellent moral. We ALL are vital to protecting the environment. Not only by what we use and how we interact with our environment, but how we are examples to others.

Since I believe that the only way to truly affect change is by educating the public, I think this book would play a wonderful part in any green curriculum. Jeanne McNaney’s story, and GORGEOUS illustrations by David Cochard (a French comic artist) make these characters so endearing.

I can’t wait to follow the rest of the series!

Secular Homeschooling Note: While this story/book is entirely secular in nature and could therefore find a comfortable place in any curriculum, there is a small note in the back from Joey Publishing that mentions that we are stewards of God’s kingdom. Since it’s my (self-endowed) job here to review materials for a secular homeschooling curriculum, and we strive to review only products that could be welcome 100% in any home, I felt it was only responsible to point it out as part of the review, and let you make your decisions with a full set of resources.

Ami had her first experience with writing a letter of intent recently. Our local chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association was offering to sponsor 2 kids to a space and aeronautics summer camp. The camps are a week long and run up to $400 a session.

Does anyone else remember how all the old (by old I mean the 90s) kids’ game shows used to give away a trip to NASA’s space camp as the big prize? The disappointment and intense jealousy I felt for the kids that won those trips still haunts me.

I am excited (and proud!) to say that Ami won one of the scholarships! I hope it makes a lifelong impression on her, showing her that it never hurts to try for something you want, and that sometimes you just might get it!

Here’s Ami’s award-winning letter, spelling errors that I just noticed corrected. Oh well, looks like they didn’t matter!

I would like to apply for your scholarship to the [space camp]. I am 11 years old and going into 6th grade next year. Science is my favorite subject.

I am interested in going to this camp because I want to know more about the recent discoveries that scientists have made in space. I also want to know more about the new technology that has been invented. I want to know how space exploration will change history in our lifetimes. I want to know more about the universe and how it works. I love watching the NASA channel. I have sometimes wondered what the edge of the universe looks like.

When I grow up, I want to be an astronomer who studies the movements of objects in space. I hope I can meet people who work in this field of science at the camp, especially women who were girls like me.

Thank you for making this scholarship available and giving me the chance to apply for it.

She’s going to a 5-day camp with a space theme.

Voyage of Discovery - What new exciting things are out in space? Meet with space exploration experts and find out about the latest discoveries. Learn about new ways that our universe is being explored and the amazing things that scientists have found.

I am so jealous!!! Congrats, pretty girl!