What We've Been Learning

Thought I would share a little bit of the learning that's been going on around here over the holidays.



Right after Christmas Alli looked up online how to tune her new ukulele. She also changed her guitar strings all by herself for the first time ever. She had always gotten Jon to help her before, but now she can do it herself!



Ashley & Brendan went to see where Edgar Allan Poe was buried in Baltimore, MD.

This got us to talking about the EAP museum in Richmond...how he was born in VA & even went to the University of Virginia.

This led us off down the rabbit trail about Thomas Jefferson & how old UVA is. Learning like this can be SO much fun!

Because of Ashley & Jon's train travels from Charlottesville we researched the Amtrak trains that run by our house every day. There are two that go each day.....north in the morning & then the return trip south at night. It has really made me pay more attention to when the trains go by & if they're on schedule or running early/late. It was so cool....the night we picked Brendan up in C'ville.....didn't really give the south-bound train another thought.....until we got home. We had to stop as the Amtrak went by right in front of us. So basically we made the trip back from C'ville at the same time the train did. Pretty neat!

We learned that the two trains that travel our tracks out here...up & down the Eastern United States are The Northeast Regional (this is the one both the kids traveled on) & the Southern Crescent.

We also looked up information about the wreck of the Southern Crescent which derailed right up the road from us here in Shipman, VA....killing 6 people. Back in December of 1978. I found the aerial image shown above when I googled it.

 Alli is creating a memory book on Shutterfly.....with photos from the Taylor Swift concert back in Sept. I was going to surprise her with this for her birthday, but got to thinking it would be more fun & meaningful if she designed it herself. I set up the account & she did ALL the rest completely on her own. She asked me to 'Edit' it & check for spelling errors when she was done & the only thing I corrected was one comma error & a 'Too'.

Clay & Michael have been enjoying the nice sunny warmer weather these past couple of days. It's given them both golf fever.....BIG TIME. They were out in the field Sunday afternoon & measured off 100 yrds. They also have markers at 75 & 50 yrds. And their plan is to build a form, pour some concrete & make their very own tee box to hit from now.

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So, there ya have it. These are just some of the things we've been studying/doing/learning about since Christmas. Tell me something you've been learning about.