Grant's Farm

Yesterday we visited, "Grant's Farm" a great family attraction that offers close-up experiences with over 100 different species of animals here in the St. Louis area.
Grant's Farm is named after the General & President Ulysses S. Grant who founded and farmed a portion of the farm's 281 acres. Today it is owned by Anheuser-Busch and is the headquarters for Budweiser's Clydesdales.
We were hoping that the place would be empty, so we went near closing time, but we were almost the only visitors there. We were the last ones they let into the parking lot, the last ones on the tram, the last ones on the tram back and the last ones to leave the parking lot. I didn't really have time to film too many animals, but the ones I did see are in the video below. Most of the time we would've gone to a wildlife show, but we arrived after the last show.
Grant's Farm was rated the #7 greatest family attraction by Zagat and over 24 million people have visited the farm since it's founding.
Also, across the street is the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site.
For more information go to: http://www.grantsfarm.com/

The Inyart Farm-March 6th

The Inyarts are good friends of ours from church and w drove down to their farm to celebrate David's birthday. My brothers and I had a great time as you'll see in the video below:

The Inyart Farm from J. Andrew Wong on Vimeo.

We got to drive some farm equipment for the first time and "helped" to make a dirt barrier to keep water from flooding the garden.

Highway Cleaning-Constitution Party of Jeff. Co

A couple of weeks ago Benjamin, Mom and I got up early Saturday morning to help the Jefferson County Constitution Party clean their Adopt-A-Highway project.
Mr. Blowers organized us into two teams, gaves us our bags and vests and dropped us off on both sides of the highway.
The stretch we were to cover was just under a mile and there wasn't nearly as much trash as I would've expected. Most of the stuff we picked was rubber from tires.
The temperature wasn't too hot for the first part of the road and we stayed pretty cool because of a light breeze that blew over the hill. However, it gradually got hotter as the day continued, so that by the time we reached the end we were pretty hot despite a couple of water breaks.
We had a good time and are looking forward to the cool weather of this late Fall when we'll need to pick up the highway again.

Coming Soon!

This past week we filmed another movie with the Lamotte brothers (Sheriff Whistler, Tunnel Through Time & Counterfeiting Crack-Up.) You can see a preview of it below:

Find more videos like this on The Homeschool Channel
PS: This really isn't how the movie ends :)

Shooting-9mm, .22 and a Rope!

Shooting-9mm .22's and a Rope from J. Andrew Wong on Vimeo.

Yesterday Benjamin and I did some target practice with a couple of our guns.
We fired the 9mm caliber carbine first. The pistol grip and fore grip made the gun really easy to swing side-to-side, so we lined a few glass bottles up and fired at them.
Then we tied a short rope over a branch and then tried hitting it using a .22 bolt action with a 5x scope. It was a little bit tricky to shoot when the rope would start moving, but after a few shots Benjamin finally shot it. Benjamin found that his scope wasn't completely zero-ed in and found that the gun was shooting to the right. After adjusting the scope, he hit the rope on the next shot. I took a turn next and hit the rope 3 times in a row before we ran out of ammunition.
We were trying to split the rope in two, but .22 bullets are so little that they would just pass right through the rope.
The video above isn't anything too fancy, but you can see a little bit of shooting that we did. I had forgotten to add this clip to the video:

We tried shooting a box a little bit, but that was too easy...

-J. Andrew Wong

Havin' Fun in the Sun

Grand...Father's Day

Andrew, Grandpa, Benjamin and Noah

Father's Day 2010

Driving!

About 3 weeks ago I got my driving permit finally and I have probably driven about 15 times since then. My Mom's just been taking it real slow with me, so at first she let me get used to the handling of the car. So far I've mainly been driving on some back-roads around our neighborhood that have little to no traffic, but I'm hoping to try out a highway sometime this week.

According to Missouri law you can't get your full liscense until you've had your permit for at least 6 months and have 30 hours of driving time plus 10 hours in the dark. I'll be able to get my liscense in early December, so I think that by then I will be quite confident on the road.