How's it going?

Today was a good day.
You know why?
I started it off by going to mass.

AND I got to celebrate my baby brother's b'day (who is adorable)!

Another cool thing that I got to do today was go on a field trip - homeschooler style.  My family and I went to the Mt. Vernon Gristmill and Distillery.  The distillery is George Washington's "liquid gold" aka whiskey producer.  Now I know how to make rye whiskey!  First, you take some rye, barley, boiling water, and something else.  Second, you mix your ingredients, add yeast to the top, let it ferment, and than you put in through this cool process of turning liquid to gas to distilled liquid.  That process is done by heating the liquid and turning it into gas that goes through a copper tube.  This tube gets cooled by running cold water, which turns the gas back into a liquid.  In order to make the best whiskey, this distilling process gets repeated multiple times.  Pretty nifty stuff.  The Gristmill is used for grinding corn, wheat, and tobacco.  It was cool to see in action - man, the engineering behind all those levers and pulleys makes my head spin.  That picture of corn is how it looks right before it's about to get smashed by the rock below it.  My mom even bought some fresh cornmeal for dinner tomorrow night...

Thanks for reading, now it is time for me to go to bed!