Hi people! Yesterday I went to 2 (ha ha tutu) places that were either extremely odd or old and cool. One of them was the International Cryptozoology Museum. (the study of puzzle animals such as big foot) It was a little place in the back of a book shop but the first thing you saw as you walked in was a 8 foot tall “big foot “ I’m not sure I believe any of it. Our tour guide had written 32 books and was a “professional” in his field. He had also been on the discovery channel many times. Even with all of that, I still think he had some screws lose up in his head. My dad got a huge kick out of everything there, the only really funny things were the Fiji mermaids. He said (quoting his exact words), “ Here we have the Fiji mermaids. The only real Fiji mermaid burned in a fire what we have here is a real-fake. It’s half monkey half fish all the other places, they have fake-fakes”. WHAT? I’m still confused about almost everything else. But I did find two things I really liked, the giant panda used to be just a myth, and all the “possible” chupacabra’s (Spanish for goat sucker) found in Texas turned out (with DNA testing) as dead coyotes with mange. It was cool, though I think my dad liked it better than I did. After that my family Grandpa Wood, Nate, my cousins Abbey and Griffin as well as Nate’s girlfriend Lisa went to Fort Williams. We played on the beach. We checked out the light house and played on a rocky cliff.

Lupa Zoo

Hello blog readers. First off I would like to apologize for not posting in 2 weeks. I've been super busy with math homework, camp and a typing program my mom is making me do to learn the "proper" way to type. I should have blogged at least once about my summer camp. But today I'm blogging about a really cool zoo that I went to with my family today called Lupa Zoo. It was really fun. We all heard about it from my brother Aidan, who saw a commercial for it on T.V. It said you could feed a giraffe apples. That sounded cool so my mom checked it out on the computer and found out were it was so today we went there and saw all kinds of animals and learned all new stuff like...

Did You Know

Turtles can eat chicken

There is an animal called the zedonk (or zonky) that is the mix of a zebra and a donkey

Giraffes don't have teeth at the front of their mouths

My two favorite parts were feeding the giraffe ( it's tongue is sixteen inches and blueish grey plus it tickles) and seeing / feeding a pot belled pig corn. He held up his head and opened his mouth for me. I saw lots more animals than my dad got pictures of but here are some of my favorites.

This one is called king of the cattle hence the HUGE horns. He kinda creeped me out.

We got up close and personal with some elk fighting over grass. We watched one kick, bite and chase a smaller one.Here is what the big dominant elk looked like from our view, amazing right?
Ever heard of this animal the Patagonian Cavy, we hadn't until today, they're kinda like deer rabbits.
Look, dem' deer rabbits good eaten'!
What is Zedonk? - the crossbreed of a zebra and a donkey.
Here's the giraffe, Jeffery saying " feed me apples human".
Here you go Jeffery, have an apple.
Side view of apple eating.

Overall it was a great day today at the zoo even though it rained a little and I think we should go there when our cousins come this summer.

Connor

back to the blog

Hello and welcome back followers of my (connor O'loughlin) summer blog. the key word in that sentence being "summer". yes, it is finally hear. the school year is over! it's now a time for summer camps, red socks hats, and bathing suits. though, in the opinion of some people like my brother, summer does not began until friday of this week. as you can imagine he's not to thrilled with that, and frankly I'm not to thrilled with it either. spending all day at home in front of a television screen watching re-runs is not nearly as fun as running around with aidan. but I guess it's not all bad, I got a jump star on my summer reading. the first required book I read was the outsiders (stay gold ponyboy, stay gold) I finished it in 2 days. a great book, kinda sad ending, and great plot. now I'm reading the witch of black bird (blackbird?) pond. so far so good plus it's my moms favorite book. after that I plan to red these other required books,(the outsiders), lyddie, and before we were free. I'm also reading one school related free book, (the witch of black bird pond), the killer angles. I'm am also reading 2 completely unrelated books because I think there good, the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, and the rangers apprentice burning bridge. so my reading for the summer is JAM-PACKED. witch I personally think is a good thing. I'll try my best to keep you guys updated with my summer activities.

~ Connor

important happenings

O.K. so I know it's not summer and the blog is titled Connor's SUMMER blog but I thought that it would be nice if I informed you all of what is going on in my school year (plus I have a snow day today and I'm really bored.). So my plan is basically to sum up four and a half moths in a few paragraphs. hope it go's well.

september/ october, a new start at a new school. the special class for this quarter (half of a semester) is writing tech. A course were you do all kind of computer stuff. it was okay towards the end but at the beginning of the course I found it kind of boring, re-learning the functions of Microsoft word. So I got to do a lot of typing activities when I finished my work. Now I don't know my real typing speed but I know that my blog is coming a lot faster than I remember. Thank you writing tech!

I liked the rest of the moth and it went really smoothly with all of my classes going good (especially latin) and sports block especially. the sport I chose for the 2 months of this quarter and a little bit after was cross county. the hardest and least done sport. At the beginning I broke into a huge sweat after I ran a mile but after a vigorous process I can know run three miles relatively easily. a humungous improvement. And then just like that it was over... and the next quarter began.

Quarter 2, cross county still was going on for a little bit longer but soon I was going to start swimming and art. art is really, really fun. I got to do a lot of projects with things like the press and ink, oil paint, charcoal, pastels, and even drawing with our eyes closed! art is really fun to bad it's over now.

the next new thing about this quarter is a new sport, lap swimming. I think it's pretty fun, and I got to learn how to do new stuff, like flip turns. I still haven't had one single meet so I can't tell you what there like.

extra cool stuff that I thought you should know, I am in the jazz band as well as the regular band and I have all-ready had a performance for both. I had a solo in one of the jazz band songs called girl from impanena.

my dad and I built a giant snow castle in the front yard with turrets and a tunnel entrance.

Okay so I know most (or all) of you won't be reading this post until it actually is summer so I fell that the blog has stayed true to it's name, a little bit. more to come in the summer

-Connor

End of Summer

As many of you may know, today is the last day of summer. Tomorrow I start school at a new school, Kingswood-Oxford. Today we had to make the last day of summer one of the best days of summer ever. In the morning, with my dad's help, we repaired and rebuilt the lean-to in an island of mulch in the front yard that we have made into an imaginary fort. We call it Dig Island (because it was the only spot in the yard that mom would allow us to dig in.) We made a lean-to there last fall, and over last winter a lot of the smaller sticks fell off, leaving us with a low ceiling and tattered framework. Today we rebuilt and expanded the lean-to in a "modern" newly refurbished style. It is now more circular in shape, and much wider than it was. The ceiling is higher so Aidan can stand up in most of it. We made "dig" a lot better.

We also went mini-golfing. But we all seemed to be evenly matched. It was very hot and we were all very excited whenever we got to one of the holes in the shade. Aidan scored one hole in one. Dad also scored a hole in one. We all had a very fun time mini golfing and at the end we were rewarded with very cold ice cream. I got peppermint, it's my new favorite flavor. Despite the ice cream we were still hot and sweaty so when we got back we were all very excited to take a dip in the pool.

Brandon and I (with the help of my dad) have been working on a human powered car. One person does the steering, one person gets a back rest and does the brakes. The human powered part comes from the person doing the pushing in the back. We found two steering defects on the testing today and it was kind of hard to control without brakes. Soon we should be able to ride it and send more pictures (once we get brakes).

Aidan also got a pair of pet frogs. He completed his summer homework book and the reward was the pet frogs he's been waiting for for the last month. He let me name one of them. I named it frederick, because he wouldn't stand for Hamilton, MacBeth, or Josephine (if it was a girl). In the end he chose Frederick and Cassie. Speaking of Aidan, next summer he is thinking about writing his own blog, or maybe keeping a journal. I much prefer the blog idea. I'm very glad I did mine, despite my dad's constant, "DID YOU DO YOUR BLOG YET!?" I hope I'll be able to continue it next summer. Until then, have a great year and study hard.

-Connor

cup cake truck, ice cream, and sand?

On Thursday, I went to the cupcake truck with the Kneidels. For all of you who don't know a cupcake truck is like a ice cream truck but it gives out cupcakes. I was all excited about getting a delicious cupcake, but when I got there they only had DISGUSTING flavors! No plain or vanilla! the only flavors were chocolate, mocha and carrot. But next to the cupcake truck, they had a fruit truck that sold, you guessed it, fruit! So I asked my mom and she grudgingly let me have fruit over cupcakes. Aidan did not like his frosting, so I got to use it as dip for my strawberries.

That night I went to my Ice Cream Social at my new school, Kingswood-Oxford, where I met my school advisor, Mr. Harper Follensbee and my school advisee group, full of people soon to be my friends. Mr. Follensbee was really fun and sarcastic and said that he has been known to do somersaults and cartwheels in the classroom, not to mention that he roars some mornings when entering the classroom to see who might hide under their desks. I got a t-shirt made by my senior advisors (Mr. Follensbee's helpers) it says the FollensBee's and has a picture of a bee on it. I like my advisee group and my advisors and I can't wait for school to start. Mr. Follensbee is also my new English teacher, he reminds me of Mr. Gallagher, my fourth grade teacher who told me to start this blog. I'll have something to show on my first day now.

On Friday, I got to go to the beach at Winding Trails, where I built a sand sculpture. It was a penguin on a surf board. I thought it was pretty good, for my standards. But then we saw the ginormous 15 ft tall sculpture that was built by the World Record Holder for the largest sand castle. It turns out he is attempting to break his previous record and build a sand castle more than 31 feet tall. His 15ft one was really well detailed and sculpted with dragons, gargoyles, and a drawbridge moat that a cat could fit in, mine paled in comparison.

Today (Saturday) I got balsa wood to whittle into something. I shall post before and after pictures and tell you how it is going. I hope to be able to post pictures of my creation soon. For my birthday this year I got a Swiss army knife from Grandpa Wood, this inspired me to want to whittle. I also got to see Grammie and Papa today. We played the board game Clue, except for Papa who had to go back to work after lunch.

-Connor

Promotion Night

At my karate school, belt tests are called promotion nights. This month I was on the promotion night board, which means that I would be tested to rank up. I was all worried about promotion night. I was nervous that I wouldn't get my stripe(not belt, stripe. I have one more stripe before I get my adult brown belt.) I kept fretting and fretting and when I got there it wasn't that hard, in fact it was pretty easy. We just ran through everything. For example, we did Chinese Form Five, Nahatchen Two and some of my techniques. In the end they made us shut our eyes while they came around and put tape on my belt. In the end I passed and I got to adult blue belt.

Connor

Promotion Night pics

Connor is tired. He'll post his update tomorrow morning but here are his pictures from his promotion night.

DRAGON BOAT RACES!!!!!!!!

My dad entered the dragon boat contest at the Hartford Asian Festival with his team of Jefferson employees. We were excited to see my dad race in a long narrow boat with twenty rowers, one drummer at the front sitting on the tiniest chair, a steerer in the back and a foam dragon head and tail at the front and back! He had a background of canoeing skills but the paddling was different and it was all about synchronization. In the first round, he had a bad drummer who was drumming and counting at different times!! He had a lot of strength so he got under 3 minutes!!

The Muellers came to watch my Dad race. It was nice to see them after Virginia Beach and we hope to have a Mueller sleepover soon. We also ran into Grammie and Papa. It was very good to see them. We had missed them after all of our vacations.

In the next round he had switched drummers and did really well!! The only down side was his name was not very creative and the shirt was just their name, the Jefferson radiators. Though they did have cool white hats that made them stand out from everyone else. It helps you spot them in the pictures. I think they should have have put a dragon X-ray on the back and had a more clever name.

In the end, my dad ended up winning second place in one race, third place in one race, and fourth place in one race and having a fun time. I had a great day and enjoyed watching him.

At the Asian Festival, they also had booths. I enjoyed seeing some of them. I painted chopsticks at one booth. I made an origami cup at another. I tried to make a bird but it was too complicated. They had a karate demo going on, but it wasn't very good. I'm going to tell my Sifu (my karate teacher) that we should do a demo there next year.

Connor

Rhode island

I went on vacation with my neighbors, the Fernandez's. I had a lot of fun playing on swings, going to the beach, and mini golfing. We also spent a lot of time just hanging out and playing games. We played chess (I won most of the time at this), poker with york mints, and who can catch the most crabs.

One day we went out into town and went to the beach, with bumper boats and mini golf all in one day. The bumper boats were awesome and we all got completely soaked by a big water gun ran by the parents. We decided to drip dry while we went mini golfing because it was hot. The golf was hard but I got a hole in one and in the end I came in second place. We also went tubing. That was awesome. I went and Aidan went slowly, but the best tuber was my Mom. She rode it like she owned it. I also tried the aqua-board. I did pretty well on it to. Rhode Island was a lot of fun.

Yummy Peach Pie

Coming home from Virginia Beach my Dad bought a basket of peaches. Yesterday, he made the yummiest peach pie ever! I don't really like peaches, but peach pie is really good! Many compliments to the chef, my Dad.

I am doing another week of tennis camp, this time with the Kneidels. It's just as fun and before class (while Grace and Aidan are in their class), I get to play tennis with Henry. He is a really good tennis player. Yesterday after tennis, I had a sleepover with Henry, that was really fun. We also went to see a Breakdancing Shakespeare play at Kingswood-Oxford School. The first thing I noticed when I got there was that two very familiar people were sitting in front of me. I leaned into their row and saw Erin and Patrick Connolly! They were not in the play, but one of Patrick's friends was. The play was really good. There was no major good character - all the characters were a little bit bad. The main character, MacBeth, being one of the worst. For those of you who haven't seen the play sorry for spoiling it.

At the very beginning of the play, MacBeth is battling to protect the King. He wins and then sees three witches, who tell MacBeth that he will be King. When MacBeth goes back to his hometown, the King elects him Prince. When the King comes over to MacBeth's house, MacBeth murders him because his wife, knowing about the witches, wanted him to be King. Then MacBeth runs into the witches again and they tell him that his friend Duncan's kids will be King. MacBeth sends out an elite squad to kill Duncan's kids and Duncan. When they get there, Duncan ends up dying, but the kid gets away. When MacBeth has a party, he sees the ghost of Duncan. He is the only one who can see it, and all of a sudden gets very scared. The party is cancelled because of MacBeth's' "hallucinations." MacBeth runs into the witches one more time, and they tell him that he is to be killed by his friend MacDuff. He finds out that MacDuff, has fled to his castle London, but has left all of his family and children behind. MacBeth sends out an elite squad to kill MacDuff's family. They hit and are very successful, everyone in the audience gasped when one of the mean soldiers took the baby out of the wife's hand and kicked it right off the stage. Meanwhile, Lady MacBeth is feeling very guilty and has been having nightmares. She cannot get blood splotches off her hands and when she does the smell is still there. Being frightened nervous and guilty she cuts both of her forearms with knives and dies. When the news reaches MacDuff that his family has been killed, he decides to go attack MacBeth. They go through a whole war scene with MacBeth killing random citizens of MacDuff's people. But when MacDuff comes to fight MacBeth, MacBeth knows he will lose. So he says, "Give me all you got MacDuff" in oldish english. They fight it out to the death, and MacDuff wins. MacDuff's friend becomes the new King of Scotland and it all ends relatively happily ever after, except for all the dead people.

I really enjoyed the play and the breakdancing was awesome. The breakdancing took place in-between scenes but did not actually effect the play, though the dancing was done by characters in the play.

I am having good time even though we are back from Virginia Beach. I have been loving summer, too bad there is only 21 days left.

-Connor

we got home

The final part-day of VA beach we played with our new fifes. I can now play little ditty's with out knowing any real notes. We went and had breakfast at IHOP and then started the real drive home. It was really, really long. We occupied ourselves with modern technology and a bit of the fife. I already miss the Mullers.

When we got home we were greeted by our great big hairy beastie we call Ginny. Once we got her calmed down Mimi had her fair share of petting as well. Someone missed us! It is good to be home.