The last few weeks have been full of fun things….

Things I wish at times I could share with my friends in SC.  Some of these things I have gotten to share with them.  You see, I have this one friend, Lisa, who knows everything about every living thing.  I swear!  She grew up on a horse farm in NY and somehow that has taught her everything you’d every hope to have in a homeschool mom friend.

We recently traveled to one of my favorite places together….Hendersonville, NC.  The apple orchard is there and one of my favorite places, Hands On Childrens’ Gallery.  This trip presented us with a surprise though.  Right outside the entrance to Hands On is the most fascinating woman, Brenda Ramer of Team Ecco.  Team Ecco is apparently a group of divers for she seemed to have traveled everywhere I’ve only dreamed.  And the next few shots are from her shop.

Can you guess what this guy is called?

She even fed him for us.  We learned that starfish digest or ingest their food by pushing their stomachs out of their bodies, wrapping it around the food, digesting it and then pulling their stomach back into their bodies.  Bet you didn’t know that did you?

Yes, it’s a starfish but it’s a special type of starfish.  Any guesses?

We also saw this guy swimming around in a nearby tank.

And two different types of water turtles.  I remember part of the explanation but not all of it.  Look how different they are…

They have pointed little noses as to breath when they surface.  She even has names for them all.  They are very tame and love being handled.  You could just tell how much she loved them all.

Here is Brenda and my sweet friend, Lisa, and all the kiddos.

Next it was on to Hands On where the master artist Sethman drew two of my boys with startling likeness.  Is this amazing or what?

That’s my oldest on your left and my youngest son on your right with the artist behind them.  Let me see if I can find the picture of my youngest behind his image.  It’s spooky close to exactly the way he looks.

Here’s baby girl painting a rainbow.

Here are some of the girls playing grocery store.  I think of the four hours we were there they stayed there for three of them.  Something about girls and shopping!!!

The entire day was amazing.  I think it was about three field trips tied up into one.  We had just as much fun as the kids did and hope to get to see Brenda again soon.

These guys are definitely BFF!!!!

And because I know Lisa will read this at some point….look what we found yesterday!!!

We have never seen an anole shedding its skin before.  We were amazed.  To add to the difference between Fla and SC here are what acorns look like here.  At home they are huge but here they have friends….fuzzballs and they are tiny.

Oh, and for those of you who were unlucky enough to see our “critter” we found in SC I finally found out what it was…..check this blog out…http://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2008/07/giant-maneating-flatworms.html

I’m just glad I didn’t know what that thing was when I picked it up.  Cold chills!!!