With the kiddos away (sniff and yay!), it's an empty, quieter, nest here at the cabin so we're glad to have Luna around to help us guard the cabin from critters like wasps (a nest has come up on a tree, near the porch), a bat that likes to hang out (literally) on the porch (we're seeing occasional bat droppings in the morning), some carpenter bees that also like the porch (we hear the distinctive buzz), hummingbirds and squirrels that visit regularly, and a young woodpecker, who seems to want to get into Aneka's bedroom (haven't been able to get his photo yet!)! Thanks, Luna! Its a good thing you're not overly influenced by the neighbors' cats who are are definitely more relaxed cabin guards!
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Well, we actually celebrated this on the 3rd, as Burnsville had their fireworks display on this evening. We were told that the "towns" in the area spread their parades and firework displays over a few days, so as not to overlap. The kiddos are currently in San Diego, California, with Grammy and Poppop, so Jim and I went to town by ourselves! We joined the locals, who bring chairs to sit on by their cars in the Town Hall car park, for the best views of the fireworks that were set off somewhere over Ingles, the grocery store. Then, we joined the locals in a traffic jam to get back home- we had to wait at least 3 traffic lights to turn onto the main road, from the town square. We never knew there were so many cars in this area!
These past few days, we had a wonderful visit with our dear friends from Shanghai, who moved to Vienna, Austria, a couple of years ago. They came to see us in our neck of the woods. Michael said he HAD to see, for himself, where in the world we were, because it was too hard to imagine the difference between Shanghai and Green Mountain! We packed in quite a lot in the few days they were here, showing them our favorite things to do and see in the Burnsville area, including a great performance of "A Midsummer's Night's Dream" performed at Montford open air theater in Asheville, tubing, our local fav Mexican restaurant (the only one!), the local yarn shop, toasting marshmallows, visiting the baby deer, etc. It was so cool to see the four kids re-connect and carry on as if they were all still living in the same neighborhood we used to in Shanghai...a bond like this is quite special and we look forward to our next get-together, maybe even in another part of the world... So, since we discovered the Brown MountainLights Mystery (see: http://happerfamily.weebly.com/our-notes/brown-mountain-lights), we've discovered our very own, in-house lights mystery, which we're calling the Green Mountain Lights Mystery. Our kitchen lights sometimes act strangely. They will sometimes, quite randomly, go off on their own accord. And won't come on again. We've been looking for a fusebox and found one, but this doesn't seem to be connected to this side of the kitchen. We even found a special grounding type light switch on the other end of the kitchen and even one on the floor above, in Aneka and Rigel's bathroom. But again, these don't seem to be connected. In other words, we play around with the light switches, and fuse boxes when the kitchen lights suddenly go off but this does not make the kitchen lights come back on. Then, we discovered that if we plug in another kitchen appliance into the wall socket by the sink, the lights come back on! This is a real mystery to us...Any ideas as to what is going on?!!! Leave us a comment if you do!
Jim was asked to do a rocket workshop with the local 4-H group. He was quite happy to do so, as this is one unit he has always especially enjoyed doing in school with his students. Aneka and Rigel helped him prep for the workshop by making a rocket together and testing it before the workshop. There was also another kind of rocket- the water bottle rockets that Dave and Daniel did. Kids made their rockets the first morning and then had a blast setting them off the second morning! Today, after the rocket workshop was over, we went to the DigIn! potluck, hosted by Susie at her lovely place in the Celo area. Aneka and Rigel discovered "tubing", a fun way to spend time in the summer at the many creeks and rivers around here. We all enjoyed the company, the food, and exploring the area around Susie's house. And, we made yet another wonderful discovery- the Quiet Reflections Retreat! |
The Happer'sHi! This is Preeti, Jim, Rigel, Luna and I (Aneka). We have recently left our home in Shanghai, China to Somewhereinthemountains, North Carolina. Preeti and Jim are both international school teachers and Rigel, Luna and I are homeschooled. Categories
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July 2015
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