Tag Archives ⇒ theo

Railroad & farm weekend in Lancaster

October 17, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Our only full-group shot, outside Strasburg RR
This week­end we took off for a fam­i­ly trip to Lan­cast­er Coun­ty, Penn­syl­va­nia – Julie and me, the kids and my moth­er Liz. I won’t have time to do a long blog post, but high­lights were the Ver­dant View farm B&B (link) where we stayed; the Stras­burg Rail­road (link) whose line runs through the far­m’s back­yard, the Choo Barn mod­el rail­way (link); and the amaz­ing Cher­ry Crest Farm (link) with its corn maze and its sim­ple games for kids of all ages (who knew you could have so much fun with a hill and a piece of burlap?!).

See the See the pho­to set on Flickr for more pic­tures and sto­ries. Every shot is mapped, with links.

Large pho­to: Fam­i­ly at Stras­burg RR: Mar­tin, Liz, Theo, Julie, Fran­cis. Below: Julie and the kids walk­ing through fields at farm, Fran­cis play­ing kung-fu with the farm dog, Theo run­ning in ter­ror from said dog, Engine 90 ready to pull out.
Verdant View's verdant views
Verdant View Farm dogs
Verdant View Farm dogs
Locomotion

The ascent of Apple Pie Hill

September 30, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Yes­ter­day the kids and I took a road trip to Apple Pie Hill, a sum­mit of loose grav­el that tow­ers over the South Jer­sey pinelands from a dizzy­ing height of 209 feet above sea lev­el. A fire watch tow­er on the sum­mit adds anoth­er few dozen feet, enough to get a vis­i­tor over the tree­tops. On a clear day it’s said you can see the sky­lines of Atlantic City and Philadel­phia. For­tu­nate­ly for me it was an quin­tes­sen­tial­ly beau­ti­ful­ly fall day – clear and crisp. It was easy to spot the cities, both thirty-two miles away (most­ly to the south and most­ly to the west respec­tive­ly) and here’s blowups of the two resul­tant photos:
Trip to Pine Barren's famous Apple Pie Hill
Sand road to Apple Pie Hill Trip to Pine Barren's famous Apple Pie Hill Trip to Pine Barren's famous Apple Pie Hill Trip to Pine Barren's famous Apple Pie Hill
More pic­tures, from left: Sand road to the hill, the fire tow­er, the view down through the steps of the tow­er (the kids were left in the car), two year old Fran­cis eager but thwart­ed attempt to repeat Papa’s climb up tow­er. Click indi­vid­ual pho­tos for enlarged and geo­t­agged ver­sions. More pho­tos of this and out stopover at Atsion lat­er in the day on yes­ter­day’s Flickr page.

For those inter­est­ed in repeat­ing our jour­ney, here’s a map show­ing our route up and back. I was most­ly wing­ing it, depend­ing on these direc­tions from NJPines​land​sand​Down​Jer​sey​.com start­ing from near­by Chatsworth NJ, self-styled “Cap­i­tal of the Pine Barrens.” 



Oth­er map views: View Larg­er Map | Satel­lite with Route Map

Scenes from a birthdays party: Theo (4) & Francis (2)

September 4, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Scenes from a birthdays party: Theo (4) & Francis (2)


Pho­tos clock­wise: Theo blows out the birth­day ice cream cake’s “4” can­dle; kids hud­dle around when box opens to reveal Thomas the Tank Engine relat­ed toy; inde­pen­dent Fran­cis sur­veys the scene; cousin M. plays pat­ty­cake with Pop­pop while her mom looks on.

Scenes from a birthdays party: Theo (4) & Francis (2)
Scenes from birthdays party

Pictures from Birthdays Party

Lead-painted toys? Aye-Yeash!

June 19, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Trains & MessesThe Times has a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle on the rise of recalls on Chinese-made toys over the last few years. Two of our kid’s “Thomas and Friends” wood­en trains are part of the lat­est recall because of lead paint. We’ve long pre­ferred the met­al Thomas trains since 21-month old Fran­cis chews on the wood­en ones and gnaws their paint off.

We learned about the lead paint­ed Thomas’s on the same day that our fam­i­ly doc­tor told us that it was offi­cial­ly time to become con­cerned with Fran­cis’s slow speech devel­op­ment. When Theo was just a lit­tle old­er than Fran­cis is now we put togeth­er a dic­tio­nary of his vocab­u­lary. Fran­cis makes cute sounds and seems bright and curi­ous but he’s not even got­ten out a con­sis­tent mama or papa and we haven’t been able to fig­ure out a mean­ing for his most com­mon word (Aye – YEASH). He’s got an appoint­ment six months from now with spe­cial­ists at Wilm­ing­ton’s Nemours (that’s how backed up they are!).

We’re not blam­ing the trains — the lead ones we had were rel­a­tive­ly unpop­u­lar and have few signs of wear. And we’re not pan­ick­ing. My moth­er brush­es off all con­cern with the assured dec­la­ra­tion that kids learn to talk at lots of dif­fer­ent ages. She could cer­tain­ly be right of course: our doc­tor sent us to Nemours for Theo with the wor­ry that he had a big head. If Fran­cis does turn out to be a lit­tle “slow,” well then we’ll just take that as anoth­er les­son plan God has for us.

Some gratuitious family pics

June 14, 2007
· Martin Kelley

In the What a Dif­fer­ence a Year Makes (or Does­n’t) Department:
Julie took the kids out to South Jer­sey’s fabled Sto­ry­book­land last week.The fun­ni­est dis­cov­ery were the pic­tures that matched those from Theo’s class trip last year.
|2006|2007|
|Theo's class trip to Storybookland|Theo returns to Storybook Land|
|Theo's class trip to Storybookland|Storybookland 2007|
|Theo's class trip to Storybookland|Storybookland Return 2007|
We all went togeth­er on a fam­i­ly trip this week­end to reac­quaint our­selves with one anoth­er: our sched­ules haven’t been sync­ing well late­ly. Julie picked a farm B&B out in Lan­cast­er Coun­ty full of chick­ens and goats and an easy com­mute to Stras­burg PA, a good place for those who like to look at trains, trains, and trains, then drool over trains, trains, trains, and trains (we haven’t seen trains or trains up close yet). Pic­tures from around the B&B are here; strange­ly we for­got the cam­eras on our steam-powered out­ings so you’ll have to look at old pics. Here’s a shot of the kids on top of the play­house barn’s slide:
Trip to Lancaster Co. B&B

For every parent…

January 5, 2007
· Martin Kelley

blank“Will It Blend?” has a solu­tion for “tod­dler messes”:http://www.willitblend.com/videos.aspx?type=unsafe&video=toycars. I used the sug­ges­tion box to rec­om­mend Thomas the Tank Engine para­pher­na­lia. I’m sure Theo would stop refus­ing to pick up his col­lec­tion at night if I showed him _that_ video.