Burnt Island Trip! Part 1: Getting There

...So now that the weather's been warm I've been doing so much and not doing a great job at updating my blog... but don't worry, because I have a doozy for you! (Ellen, yes, I will put Kate's graduation pictures up, but I have some very anxious students who want to see the pictures I took!)

So this weekend I went with Mrs. B's 4th grade class to Burnt Island, a tiny 5 1/2 acre island in Boothbay Harbor. MiBee (as the kids call her) and her family spend much of their time here so we knew we were in for a great time.

Here is a little munchkin on the bus, being adorable:


After a 2 1/2 hour ride, our first stop was at the Department of Marine Resources Aquarium. I was very impressed by the blue lobster (a one in a million chance!) and behind him was a bi-colored lobster (a one in a gazillion chance!).



Some anenenenenenenomes:



Tons of seastars/sunstars/fishies:




More fishies:


Whale bones (though this one's a little small; perhaps a baby whale or a dolphin?):


The Big Daddy lobster was very impressive. I'm sure he has a name-- I should have asked. His left claw was the size of an oven mitt.




Moon Jellies are very fun to watch--they just blob around:



The touch tank was a huge hit. Mibee has brought in a small sample tank to her classroom so the kids had learned all about seastars, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, horsehoe crabs, etc. They knew right what to do when they got to the tank: dive in and start touching things!






Here comes the Novelty to take us to the Island. The backpacks and freight (kindly referred to as "The Stuff") all rode with the over-18's in the Resourceful, though I rode on the Novelty for crowd control.



(Insert Gilligan's Island theme here...)


"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale/ a tale of a fourth-grade trip/that started from this Boothbay port/aboard this tiny ship....")



In our 15-minute ride over the kids were very impressed by all the things in the harbor. They spied masts and rigging!

My favorite quote on the ride over: "Whoa... they build houses right on the shore? Don't the houses get wet?"




Our first glimpse of Burnt Island...


A bit of history here: No, the island isn't burnt now! It got its name before it had the lighthouse. In the 1700's, people had lots of sheep, and a perfect place to put them was on an island: the sheep couldn't wander off anywhere, and there was plenty of grass to eat. (Sometimes the sheep had to be separated from each other, and the males were put on a different island from the females, so you can guess how Ram Island got its name!) However, just like now, the raspberry prickles and other bushes would grow out of control, so once in a while they had to be burned so that the good grass would grow. Thus, it got its name as Burnt Island.


One of my favorite things about islands is ingenuity. This is a fabulous contraption for hauling the Stuff up the hill to the bunk house: a huge wooden box attached forklift-style to a tracker, which Elaine wielded with ease up the hill.



The bunkhouse is exactly the kind of building that I imagine on an island: tucked into the trees, huge, open but cozy, rather barn-like, with submarine-style bunks.








The kids were very impressed with the "outhouse" (though it has plumbing):


So now that we are settled in, next up is Island Bingo and Living History...

Addendum--THE DUTCH BABY

So I TOTALLY forgot to mention the Dutch Baby. I meant to, I swear! I even looked up recipes online to see if the Dutch Baby was real, or if it was something my crazy sister had invented. Nope--it is real. Here are some pictures, gratuitously stolen from the internet, of what a Dutch Baby is...




It's kind of like a popover, but instead of many small ones you end up with a big giant one. Ellen wouldn't tell me what she was making for dessert, but she did have me help with mixing up the batter and pulsing it with the blender. (The important verb there is pulse. You pulse it, for thirty seconds. Very important. Kate timed me.) Because you bake it in a frying pan in the oven, I thought it might have been creme brulee or something like that, so I asked Ellen if this was a dessert that was served in finer restaurants. She just looked at me and laughed. Nope.

So you eat the Dutch Baby sort of like a popover, or like fried dough-- you slice it like a pie, and you can put honey or jam or powdered sugar on it. When ours came out of the oven, it looked a little like a Dutch shoe before it deflated. It was good, but weird. I mean, who names a dessert a "Dutch Baby"? Would it be any more appetizing if it were called a "German Fetus"?

Magical Marvelous Movie Night

So on Monday my sister and me and Kate had a movie night. Originally it was going to be a Tim Burton night but Ellen couldn't find Sweeney Todd anywhere, and I hadn't seen Mamma Mia yet, so our night became a Movie Musical Night.

I arrived extremely early, even after killing time at Barnes and Noble and at the grocery store. Kate, in all of her mysteriousness, said she was cooking up an idea that she had been working on for some time. So what did we do to kick off this party? We colored Presidents' Day print-outs and decorated the front door. YAAAAYYYY!!!! To keep with the Presidents' Day theme, we even used the Crayola State Crayon box. Any day spent coloring with new crayons is a good day.


Kate even used the just-for-construction-paper crayons, of which many of them were blues and greens, so she made an ocean scene. The problem was, she forgot what a starfish was. She called it a "jellyfish." I drew her a picture of what a jellyfish really is:

And Fred helped her, because coloring (or at least correctly labeling sea creatures) seems just a bit above Kate's ability:


Ellen's reaction to all of this was priceless:


We feasted on bean burritos and Valentine's day cookies, which The Resident Cow approved of.


Weasley tried to help us by being underfoot the entire time. May I present: Crucifixion Cat!



Speaking of religion, we opened up some very belated Christmas presents. I just don't know what to say...

....except that the Holy family is trapped in this box not being able to see each other. I don't think the Bible mentions much about styrofoam barriers.


Then let the Movies commence! For our matinee, we started with Horton Hears a Who. It's not technically a Movie Musical, but it's close enough.

This is all that there is to say about that movie:




I think Katie is my new favorite hero.

Next, as Elphaba settled next to me giving me the evil eye...

...we popped in Mamma Mia and oh my god there are only two words to describe it:

SOOPAPA

TROOPAPA.

....except that we all came to the consensus that Pierce Brosnan should NEVER AGAIN attempt singing. NEVER. Just shut him up.



... if only ABBA could come over and very loosely (not to mention plotlessly) make a very long music video about our lives, then everything would be complete.

Hope this makes up for my prolonged absence...

....but I haven't been doing much writing here (elsewhere, yes. Lots. But not here). To keep you entertained, you need to click on this lovely, um, cake:

Just click on the picture. Seriously. It will send you to a world of culinary delights beyond your wildest dreams...