Homeschooling adventures

Nature Center kind of day

2010-08-20T15:10:00.001-07:00

We haven't been to the Hidden Oaks Nature Center in a while so we decided to head on out there today.....

When you first walk into the nature center you walk through a butterfly garden. Lots of swallowtails.

They were really pretty. Lots of milkweed in the garden, too, which I think is supposed to attract Monarchs? So we'll be back to see them, too. The nature center offers a program where you tag the Monarchs (I think) and let them go. We may sign up for it.

New addition since last time... A huge microscope! It was cool.

Oh, no! There's an alligator in here!

Oh, no! It ate Ariel!

Mom, I look dumb. I feel dumb. Do you have to take my picture?

Rachael dressed as a snake and went and hid in a log with a book of riddles about woodland animals.

We discovered that Rachael is as tall as an anklyosaurus.

And that, despite his love for his sisters, Trevor is all boy. He was nice enough to do spider with Rachael, though, because there were only two swings.

After Ariel got off the swing, her troubles began. Her brother and sister took over the swings and she pouted. "There's nothing to do, mommy. It's boring here."

So I offered to play some "soccer" with her in the tennis courts. But "It's not fair mommy, I can never kick the ball!"

"STOP takin' my picture when I'm whinin' mommy!"

Even though we were all good sports and kicked the ball to Ariel lots during our game, she was determined to be unhappy. We finally finished with a tied game. Whiny Dragons-3, Flaming Peppers-3. Can you guess who was on the Whiny Dragon's team?

This was probably why she was so grumpy. She needed a bit of a nappy nap. (With her sis, of course!) We had a great time and, really, poor Ariel, we just laugh at her when she gets all grumpy. Her grumpiness was really solved when Trev and Rach decided to change the name of their team from Flaming Peppers to Flaming Poopy Squirts. Then Ariel smiled through her thumb and Trevor exclaimed "Ariel..... I see you smiling!" and Ariel grumped "No, I'm not! Stop it!" then she started smiling more and her bad mood evaporated.

New baby! (but not me!)

2010-03-31T06:18:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, Ray met Juan and Maureen through his job. Juan and Maureen lived together with their cats that Juan always seemed to threaten to flush down the toilet. Then Juan and Mo moved to the DC area and Ray and I stayed in Jax and Ray moved onto other things besides AOL. But I guess we were all meant to meet back up at some point. Right after Ray and I got married, Juan gave Ray a call and, lo and behold, Ray was working for AOL and we moved to the DC area. Since then, sometimes our paths have parted ways for a while, sometimes they have merged back together. Once Ray and I left the DC area but we moved back. Throughout it all, we always stayed in touch just enough that we knew what was going on in each other's lives. We knew that Juan and Mo were happy being childfree and they didn't plan on having children. But once, while out at a restaurant, Maureen said she might like to have a child one day. I relayed this information to Ray later and he laughed and said "No way. They're never having children." I said I wasn't so convinced and I was pretty sure they would have a child someday.

So, of course (this is YEARS after she mentioned this to me), when they told us Maureen was pregnant... I wasn't too surprised. But Ray and I were both SO EXCITED! I just feel like I have known Juan and Mo for so long and it's such a thrill to witness them enter the wonderful world of parenting. They will be fabulous parents. So now I'll go ahead and post some teeny tiny baby pictures!

New mommy, Maureen, looking absolutely wonderful!

Oh, Ray... don't you want another baby?

Baby Zen Juaquin

Such a perfect little baby! He was so quiet, too. Living up to his name.

I'm a huge breastfeeding advocate. Maureen was showing off her nursing chart. heehee.

If there was a thought bubble coming out of my head, I would be thinking "OK, as soon as she turns around, I'm running off with Zen!" He is such a gorgeous, perfect baby. Congrats to the proud mommy and daddy!

St Patrick's Day and Ray's birthday

2010-03-26T04:58:00.000-07:00

I realize I haven't updated in a month. Oops. It's been busy- between class, volunteering, baseball, work, etc etc, I haven't had much in the way of a spare moment. I don't really have a spare moment now, but here are a few pics. I actually don't have much in the way of really good pictures, either. *sigh*

The girlies were all excited about St Patrick's Day and dressing in green. They went all out. Gotta love the teeny tiny sportin the winter boots and the scarf from India.

Trevor, who is a teenager early, said dressing in green was "super lame and he wasn't doing it". I told him he would get pinched. But he didn't care. He was however, really disappointed that the leprechaun didn't visit his classroom. He knows it's really the teacher, but all the same, he was bummed. So then being in third grade was lame because nothing cool like a desk fairy (for clean desks in Rachael's room) or anything like that came. I told him it was because he didn't wear green.. then we went out and got mint chip ice cream to make up for the leprechaun being lame that day.

Then, to complete the "lame" theme here, I didn't take good pictures for Ray's little family bday party we had! Ray's birthday was Tuesday but Ariel had a doctor's appt, and I worked that afternoon and then had class that evening. So we celebrated Wednesday, even though Trevor had baseball practice until 7pm. phew. Busy. The kids made him this super cool mug that they could write on- they wrote Happy Birthday! and then signed their names with lots of xoxoxoxo and little pictures. Then I bake it and supposedly the ink sets and it's dishwasher safe. It's cool! We also got a Coffeehouse Crunch Ice cream cake from Coldstone Creamery and that was super decadent. Ray is officially 34 years old! Ray and I have the babysitter for Saturday and we're meeting friends in DC so hopefully I will get more pics then.

And I can't finish an entry without posting a pic of house pony Reznor. This is his favorite position when the kids are outside playing. He turned one year old on March 19th. He's huge now- 140 lbs of big ole drooly hairiness. So Happy birthday to Rezzie, too!

Trevor and Rez working, well, kind of together.

2010-03-04T04:58:00.000-08:00

Trevor training Rez. This video is so classic. Love the end of it where Rez goes on strike.

This is the other video. I told Trevor Rez was tired but Trevor didn't want to stop training. Before these videos, he worked with Rez for about 20 minutes on "wait" and "leave it".

Arielisms:

2010-02-27T06:04:00.000-08:00

Trevor plays with a few kids in the neighborhood ranging in age from 5-11years old. So Trevor spent about 2 hours outside yesterday throwing snowballs and being rowdy and didn't come in until dinner. This was our dinner conversation....

Trevor: "So mommy, lots of the kids were swearing when we were outside. But I wasn't saying any of those words."
Me: "Oh, swearing? Like what kind of words?"
Trevor: "Well, they were saying the S word......"
Rachael: "Stupid? They were saying stupid? oooooooo...."
Trevor: "No! It was that other one."
The whole table is quiet for like a whole minute and you can tell everyone is thinking about this. Then Ariel leans forward, her eyes huge and she whispers...

"Sexy??????"

I about died laughing.

***********************************************************************************

The kids usually help me set the table. This requires them to put napkins, silverware and drinks on the table without whining too much. The other day I asked Trevor to set the table and Ariel to put drinks on the table. She can't reach the cups so I got 5 down for her. Trevor finished setting the table and Ariel, who was filling up one glass of water noticed Trevor walking out of the kitchen.

Ariel: "Trevor, can you help me put drinks on the table?"
Trevor: "Sure, Ariel." He picks up one of the four glasses left and starts to fill it with water.
Ariel: "Thanks!" Then she hurriedly slams her glass down on the table and runs out of the room to go join her sister, leaving Trevor to fill the glasses himself.

(Don't worry, I called Ariel back into the room!). Rotten little girlie. ;)

When it is snowing yet AGAIN

2010-02-15T13:56:00.000-08:00

The thing with homeschooling was that snowy days didn't stop us. We went on with school lessons as planned. I had experiments or field trips, etc, lined up. Right now, because our school system goes day by day with the school closings, I just had nothing lined up for "school" or craft projects. We're all getting a little restless. I'm feeling the effects of SAD- I definitely need to start up the CLO again. So today Trevor came downstairs and said "Mommy. I don't know what to do." Normally I give him a billion ideas, to all of which he says "No, I don't feel like doing that." But today, I agreed with him. "Yea, Trev, I'm feeling a little unsure of what to do with myself, as well." Didn't feel like packing up and going grocery shopping, library has been done and done and done, it was steadily snowing a wet snow and we didn't feel like heading outside again. We had already played games, taught Trevor to cross stitch, and done my own crocheting. I was feeling lethargic and uninspired. Im'd Ray and he suggested painting. Didn't feel like dragging out the paints... but... I had this huge sheet of white paper leftover from a snow mural at the preschool. We were going to make a snow scene on it, but then decided to do summer pictures! What better way to beat the winter blahs with thoughts of green and beaches and summer!

Searching out magazine pictures of summery things.

They cut most of the pictures, I did the layout, they glued it down.

Coloring in a sun.

The finished project!

I put it on the wall by the now fixed treadmill. I can pretend I am running in the summer. heh

I love our sun and flowers!

Happy Birthday Ariel!

2010-02-11T19:07:00.000-08:00

I can't believe that, 5 years ago today, Ariel was born! She was born 2.5 weeks late at the Maternity Center in MD. My little baby girlie was just in no hurry to come out! I remember sledding and doing many other things, hoping to put myself in labor but it was not to be. Thanks to some Castor Oil, I finally went into labor the night before they wanted to induce me at the hospital and I gave birth to 9 lb, quiet little Ariel Luna. She made barely a cry, and even got a point off her apgar score for her silence. You wouldn't know that now! Ariel talks all the time. heh.

I woke to the kids this morning talking about Ariel's birthday. They were so excited for their sister! They also woke up really early... like 6am.

We surprised Ariel this morning with flowers, a balloon and some new books (a sticker book and Mahalia Mouse Goes to College- John Lithgow).

Trevor reading Ariel her card.

Rachael pouring her some cereal. She was thrilled it was her little sis's bday and insisted on making her some breakfast. I actually made her breakfast casserole and apple cake, too. We had a big breakfast.

Technically, we were going to celebrate Ariel's birthday on Saturday. We had planned to take her to a puppet show at Glen Echo. But the massive snow was putting everything up in the air. Glen Echo said they didn't know if they would be open Saturday. Not wanting to take the risk, we figured, what the heck, we'll celebrate today! The kids and I dropped Ariel off at Ray's work and rushed out to pick up some gifts and a cake. I was so proud of them. They pooled their allowance together and bought Ariel her present with their own money. Ariel REALLY wanted these doll shoes for her bitty Baby. So they bought her the whole set of shoes. They were so thrilled and excited to give her a present. Ariel was thrilled, too.

Then we took Ariel to see a movie- The Princess and the Frog. A really great movie. We all loved it. Then out to eat at Red Robin. We did not tell Ariel we were celebrating her bday today. So it was a surprise for her. She loved her bday!

Skyping with Grandma and Grandpa.

A PILE of presents!

The cake. Ariel wanted Carrot Cake and I was going to make her one but we celebrated her bday ON her bday instead of Saturday like we planned. So I ran out of time. This is a Whole Foods chocolate raspberry buttercream cake. Yum.

Make a wish!

Hi grandmas and grandpas! So glad you could share part of Ariel's bday with us!

Snow pictures.

2010-02-07T06:32:00.000-08:00

Here's some snow photos of the snow this weekend. What a lot of snow!

So very beautiful.

Please, won't someone come outside and play?

OK! I will! This snow doesn't look so bad.

Ugh.. ok, maybe it's a little deep. Daddy! Don't shovel me into the drift!

Wait for me guys!

Where'd everybody go?

Ariel, what's the problem? Hurry up! The snow's not THAT deep.

Looking cold, trying to eat snowflakes.

The road. There's a tree down on both ends of our street, preventing the plows from getting through.

Rez as lots of puppy playdates that day. He's playing with the bulldog who lives across the street.

The shed in our backyard. I'm amazed it didn't get crushed.

Our backyard is so deep we had to dig a path for the huge dog to go to the bathroom. He can't walk where the snow is.

Ice cream for Breakfast day!

2010-02-07T06:27:00.000-08:00

As probably only a few of you know, the first Saturday in February is Ice Cream for Breakfast Day. So, as we have for the last three years, we celebrated it this morning with, well, ice cream for breakfast.

mmmMMMM... homemade waffles topped with ice cream (Ben and Jerry's Karamel Sutra or something like that) and whipped cream.

Happy Ice Cream for Breakfast Day 2010!!

Applying knowledge

2010-02-04T04:54:00.000-08:00

I never sync my iphone with my computer. I'm really horrible about techie stuff like that. When my facebook for iphone app actually expired and I couldn't load facebook on my phone, I knew it was time to update. When I updated my phone it put a couple new apps on there.. one of them being this Discovery Channel app. Ariel and I loaded it up and discovered it was full of clips from Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, etc. Cool! So we watched this clip from Mythbusters about grease fires and they made a big fireball by putting water on hot grease. The clip was about 5 minutes long and we watched it in the morning.
Fast forward to 8pm that night. I am reading Redwall to the kids right now. We're at this part where Cluny the Scourge is ramming the Abbey walls with a big battering ram. The mice have discovered this barrel and want to drop something down on the rats to stop their assault. Ariel pipes up "They should put hot grease in it! Then they could dump water on them and there would be a big fireball!" All violence towards these rats aside (they are really terrible in the book), I thought it was pretty cool that she remembered what she had seen on Mythbusters in that- "Oh, what's this app do?" 5 minute clip- and then applied that knowledge to the situation in the book.
My teeny tiny mouse is one smart cookie.

Yet another snow day!

2010-02-03T15:46:00.000-08:00

We're having quite a few snow days this school year! We got some snow last night and so the kids were off school today. And what a pleasant day it was. I did NOT get out in the snow like I wanted but oh well. We finished reading our chapter book (I am reading an American Girl book about Nikki and her service dog in training. The girlies listen and Trevor pretends he's not interested but is mysteriously quiet while I read and then pops in the room to ask questions about the book every once in a while. heh). This means I read a lot today since we were only a couple chapters into it. What else? The kids had computer time and we went grocery shopping- which always involves two stores and requires much patience on the kid's part. And what else? Hmmm...

Trevor went outside to play and the girlies and I made chocolate cake!

Ew. Then we turned this unappetizing mass of goo into something

What are we making guys and why does Rachael look so very serious?

Hm. Cooked a bit...

Then they kneaded it.....

And kneaded it....

And kneaded it into playdough! And since I am so very cool, I brought out the glitter from Christmas crafts 2008 that I recently rediscovered hiding in a bag in my closet. And we glitterfied that playdough. Then the kids played with playdough for quite a while.

Then we ended our day with cake. Hey, see the LA boxing hat? It's why we work out (well, I don't do LA Boxing). It's so we can eat cake.

mmMMMM... chocolate cake.

More snow!

2010-01-30T13:28:00.001-08:00

The forecast was 2-4 inches of snow. And snow it did! It's been very very cold today, topping out at 18 degrees. Unfortunately, we still have no sleds, so no sledding for us. But we did get bundled up and took Rez down to the streams for a run. He was full of energy!

Running with his kids. We let him off leash and keep an eye out for other dogs and people that Rez would love to bound over to and play with. His recall is very good and I treat him for checking in with me so he does it frequently. Never leave home without dehydrated liver, it's always in my pockets.

He stays with the kids. Reznor LOVES his kids.

What? You want to throw snow at me and in my face? OK. I'll love it because I love snow!

What? you'll throw a stick in the water and say "Go get it, Rez!" OK. I'll go get it because I love water!

Oh, you'll keep throwing sticks in the water? OK! YAY!

Icy dog with drool slung across his nose.

Since we're on a Rachaelism fest here...

2010-01-28T17:47:00.000-08:00

Rachael realized her song was a huge success. So she dabbled in poetry this afternoon. Her poem cracked me up.. it had such a macabre element to it. You'll notice a trend of repeating tunelike sounds, even though this is a poem and not a song. I'll type her own words and translate at the bottom if you cannot read 6 yr old spelling:

I had a far and I livd on theat farm.
lalalalala
her comes the butchr fat and rawd
he cus met for th engglish men
ohohoh
her he comes
ohohohhhhhhh.

"I had a farm and I lived on that farm.
Lalalalala
Here comes the butcher fat and round
he cuts meat for the english men
ohohoh
Here he comes.
Ohohohhhhhhh."

All I can think is that she was inspired by the nursey rhyme concerning the black hen who lays eggs for gentlemen? Otherwise, I have no clue. It sounds vaguely threatening for the farm animals, though.

Rachael's song

2010-01-27T17:16:00.000-08:00

Forgive the teeny tiny video. The settings on the camera must have been messed with and it resulted in this tiny thumb nail of a video. Rachael made up this cute little song about a dino egg. She sang it to me and then I recorded it. She's a cutie! And her dog lays and listens to the whole song. heehee.

I can crochet!

2010-01-19T05:28:00.000-08:00

I am not a crafty person. I can't sew or knit. But over vacation I decided to give crochet a try.

It all started with this. Rachael's present from her grandma. A crochet kit that taught you how to crochet bracelets. I decided that it would be helpful if *I* could crochet so I could better explain the instructions to her.

It quickly became an obsession.

Then I made this but, as you can see, I had trouble turning the chain and keeping the stitches even. This was just the basic starting stich over and over.

Then I got sick of working on little things and decided to make something big. It would give me the chance to repeat something enough that I would get it. This is single crochet. I can see where I made mistakes at the beginning (it starts wider than it ends up) but I figured out how to turn the chain.

I am quite proud of my uncrafty self! Next up, double crochet and then I want to figure out some of the patterns in the crochet book I borrowed from the library.

2010-01-16T17:48:00.000-08:00

Today we took a hike around Bear's Den with some good friends of ours. It was 52 degrees but it looks like it should have been colder, what with all that snow on the ground. I guess they got more snow up there than we got in Reston if there's still snow everywhere.

All my pictures are still backwards. Oh well. We did a short hike around Bear's Den. I think we took the Interpretive Trail. We didn't find anything to interpret. We were expecting to maybe see people speaking in a foreign language or maybe some random interpretive dance. heh.

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Kids hiking. Get moving guys! I was always behind everyone so I couldn't get too many face shots of people hiking.

Helping daddy climb the rocks because he was too scared to do it by himself. OK, not really. But it does look like they're helping, doesn't it?

Reznor @ 9 months. He spent his time freaking out. I think he had multiple anxiety attacks today. He wanted to badly to stay with the kids. But then the kids wouldn't stay together! So he would be freaking out and whining at the end of his leash for the girls. Then he would be able to check on them, but the boys were too far away. So he would sniff at the girls and start whining to see the boys. Then he would check on them and it would repeat. Poor Rez and his Nanny Newf tendencies. heh

Down in a dip in the rocks. We wouldn't let them climb up near the top of the rocks where the "give Devon a heart attack" drop is. Too much snow and wetness.

Hiking along. The weather was actually pretty nice. We weren't cold at all.

But Christiane's van got stuck in the snow! So I told Ray to put all that boxing to work and use his strength to get the car out. heehee. Bill and Ray sucessfully had it out in no time.

Arielisms:

2010-01-16T07:27:00.000-08:00

Ariel dressed in the clothes Ray brought back from India. She, Rachael and her friend dressed up and danced the other day.

A couple things Ariel said the other day that I think are cute.

We have a "Magic 8 Ball" that is really a big bouncy ball with the 8 ball thing in it. So she's bouncing it and catching it. Then she says "Mommy, the magic 8 ball wrong. It said "Yes definitely" when I asked if our room was clean. Are are room is definitely not clean!" I thought it was funny. She's always asking the magic 8 ball questions and then believing the answers. (Mommy! It said "Yes!" I was 10 years old! Mommy! It said "Yes definitely" that I can get a pony!" heh).

We all do this dumb thing where, usually Trevor, says "Hey mommy, guess what?" and I say "What?" and Trevor says "chicken butt!" We even had a whole routine that went with it, though I can only remember "Guess how? Farting cow!" Ariel came running up and stops in front of me, all breathless, and says "Mommy! Umm... um... CHICKEN BUTT!" I cracked up.

Today we're hoping to take the hairy beast and some friends and hike up to Bear's Den. So maybe I will have pictures to post later.

Daisies, Dogs and Bread...

2010-01-14T14:29:00.000-08:00

The days have been busy. I started the year with an afternoon job at Ariel's preschool. It's three afternoons a week (not in her class) and it's a ton of fun. It's also 11ish hours a week I don't have to myself anymore. I also started my one class this semester this past Tuesday. I was supposed to be taking 4 classes (Biology, math, french and psych) but, unfortunately, until I can get student loans I had to drop the others and just keep the one class I had already bought books for (Psychology 211. I think it's called research methodology). But I think the one class will keep me busy enough.

I ordered a bunch of Girl Scout Daisy tunics, petals and girl scout Daisy pins. And they came today! I was so thrilled they came so quickly. Rachael was, too. Emily and I are planning the Investiture Ceremony for our next meeting. This is where the girls are officially welcomed into Daisies, saying their promise and getting their pin. It's a very cute event.

I have also been trying to bake more bread. I used to bake almost all our bread and have gotten out of the habit. Lately I have been baking more so I made a couple loaves the other day and a couple more today. The smaller loaf is cinnamon sugar swirl and the other one is just a loaf of white bread for sandwiches. I love homemade bread.

You know your puppy is too big when this is how he can reach things on the counter... but not reaching. Ray and I had miscalculated Reznor's age. We both thought he was 11 months. But no. I found his AKC paperwork the other day and he is 9 months! Right now he's 125lbs and we have nicknamed him our house pony. He's like a bull in a china shop. He sniffs at the counters but isn't a counter surfer.

First day back at school.

2010-01-04T12:17:00.001-08:00

Today was Trevor and Rachael's first day back at school. Ariel doesn't have to go back until tomorrow. It was quite the bittersweet day- Rachael coming into the bedroom, crying that she didn't want to go to school, the usual rush to get out the door. But Ariel and I passed a pleasant morning.

Ariel loves board games and puzzles. We spent the morning doing puzzles. Here's the horse puzzle book she got from her Grandma Boatwright for Christmas.

The poor, tortured Newfie was actually really happy to see his kids. I think he got used to them being around during break.

He really did miss them today.

Rachael is reading chapter books now and has to read for 30 minutes everyday. She's getting ready to read the Rainbow Fairies series "Amber the Orange Fairy". She reads them aloud to me and I help with any words she doesn't know.

Christmas vacation

2009-12-31T05:48:00.001-08:00

I woke up this morning and it was dreary and sn-icey (as a fb friend put it) out. And no one has to go to school so we stayed in bed and cuddled until 8ish. Hey. That's late for me. Does vacation HAVE to end? It's so relaxing right now! I'm teaching myself to crochet, the kids and I have been playing games and reading. The kids have been getting along wonderfully and playing together and it's all been just SO RELAXING.

Right now it is almost 9 and I have my cup of coffee, the kids are at the laptop at the kitchen table and are still in their PJs watching "Martha Speaks".

We had a fabulous Christmas. I will share a few pics and hope my inlaws and parents have more as our camera died before the day was done.

My New Years Resolution this year is to continue to update this blog regularly. I love Kate's idea of making a book at the end of the year and so I need to make sure I update! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Oh so many things going on!

2009-11-15T13:08:00.000-08:00

I always think "Oh, I should update the blog!" Then I think "Why am I updating a blog? It's not like people besides me and family read it and, even then, they have already heard all this stuff on facebook." If you for real actually look at this blog, drop me line and that might keep me motivated to keep updating it.

Let's see... what has happened since I last updated...

We've had Halloween. Ariel was a pumpkin, Rachael was a witch, and Trevor was some hideous zombie. We also took a neighbor-friend who was Bumblebee from Transformers. At every house he would tell people that Trevor was a zombie... but not a REAL zombie. And he would make Trevor take off his mask and show them that he was really just Trevor under there. It was hilarious. Then Ariel collected so much candy her bag broke. So we had to knock on a door again and ask for a plastic shopping bag to hold all of Ariel's candy. It was a great night for the kids. They had a blast.

We also went to Ariel's preschool fun night where Trevor and Rachael had an indepth conversation about politics and health care reform. Not really. But it sure looks like they are having a serious discussion, doesn't it? I actually think they are really talking about zombies in the dark and farting.

Ariel got all dressed cute as a pumpkin. She looked adorable. That night, after she had gone to bed, Rez found the little hair thing and chewed it up. I'm glad she got to wear it for one night at least.

Ariel was so super excited to show daddy her preschool room!

We've been doing many other things. I don't have pictures for them, though. Today was Rachael's first Daisy field trip. I've been having fun with Emily starting the troop. This was our first excursion requiring a permission slip and it was quite exciting for all of us. We met at the school playground and did a scavenger hunt. We had the girls pair up and each girl had a clipboard with the things they needed to find. We found leaves, pine needles, a treasure (Rachael found moss!), etc etc. Then, when we got back to the playground, each girl interviewed her partner and found out things like if she had any pets, sisters/brothers, fav colors, etc. The girls had lots of fun. Then they spent the rest of the time playing on the playground. I was really nervous about our first field trip and I don't know why, it turned out fantastic and the girls had a blast!

I know more has been happening, among them, a trip to the Museum of American History, Cox Farms, our first Daisy meeting, I taught GRACE Art to Trevor's class and liked the project so much we did it at home, I studied for and passed my math placement test and signed up for spring 2010 semester (3 more semesters and I think I will have my AA!). We also have been walking and taking care of Rez and he's getting so big. In fact, I will go ahead and post that video I posted to fb of him playing. He is HUGE now and I can't believe he has more to grow!

This is Ariel putting on a show for me. Ariel mainly danced around. Rez was being very very very good in this video. He has a ball in his mouth, that's the squeaking noise. Normally he is really mouthy and, if he wasn't holding the ball, he would end up having to sit by me because he would chase Ariel and gnaw on her arm and be generally obnoxious. Puppies seem to be cursed with obnoxiousness. heh. But he is REALLY good in his video and you can see how big he is! For the record, Rez will be 9 months at the end of the month. I might have to double check that, though. I thought he was only 8 months. Time sure is flying!

Ariel's version of art

2009-09-18T08:40:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I realize that my facebook status updates will eventually meander their way down my facebook page and end up eaten by the vast internet abyss. So I should probably jot down those odd comments my children make sometimes.

Ariel hates sandwiches. OK, maybe she doesn't. Maybe she loves sandwiches. But she dissects them- eat the meat first, then the cheese, then a bread. So I hardly ever give her a sandwich- choosing instead to give her a plate of lunch meat, a cheese stick and some fruit or veggie or yogurt tube or whatever. Usually our lunch meat is balogna from the farm- it comes like regular balogna from the store- in round circles. But the similarity ends there- it's a VERY different product. But right now we have thin sliced turkey from the grocery store. Ariel loves it, but she eats it into these long strips as she hums and talks to herself. And with these long strips she pretends. She hangs them from her mouth as fangs, or slithers them across the table as snakes. I don't buy my children toys... I just give them a hunk of lunch meat and say "Here, go to town." OK, not really.

So today Ariel is playing with her lunch meat and I suggest in a most helpful way, "Ariel, I sure wish you would eat the lunchmeat..."

"Instead of making art with it...." she replies absentmindedly as she wraps a big strip of lunch meat around her bitty arm in some sort of ancient Egyptian arm band.

I never really thought of her lunch meat toy as art. But, in an odd way, I suppose it is. Maybe one day I'll see her in some modern art museum meat jewelery exhibit. Anyway, I thought it was a comment I would like to remember.

Ariel funny and Hidden Oaks.

2009-08-26T17:42:00.001-07:00

The kids always steal our mail. Rachael had a coupon pack and discovered a Red Robin ad detailing a contest where kids can design a burger that could go on the menu as a gourmet burger. So my pajama clad children and I were lounging on the bed, I had "Journey to the Center of the Earth" all open and we're ready to read our chapter. But, this ad is so glossy and thrilling that we simply MUST first discuss the fine art of burger making. So Rachael has the floor and she's designing her burger. We listen raptly as she tops her ground beef with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, ketchup, mayonaise (which she hates), mustard, cheese and meat. There is a moment of silence as we contemplate this masterpiece. Then Ariel adds a topping in her teeny tiny voice: "And pants." It was so out of the blue, such a serious comment- this adding of pants to the gourmet burger- that I thought I misunderstood her at first. "Pants, Ariel?" I queried. "Yes, pants!" No explanation why. And we all cracked up. And we couldn't read our book, which is way too full of silly words like "stupified" and "indignant" and "manometer" and men speaking very formally to each other about the formation of rocks and whether or not they are still 80 leagues under Iceland. So I sent their silly giggly selves to bed for Trevor to read them a story, which he is upstairs at this very moment doing. I think pants on a burger will be a joke for a while, though.

AND-- on a MUCH more serious note, we went to Hidden Oaks Nature Center today. We haven't been in a while so this was a fun excursion. All pics are from my iphone so they are not the best quality.

Smelling a huge pretty flower.

Sitting on the butterfly bench.

Inside the nature center is all kinds of cool stuff to do- this is a leg thing that shows (I typed shoes! lol!) all kinds of bugs and how many legs they have.

There are also lots of costumes to dress up with. The girlies dressed as snakes and then jumped on Trevor the bird. heh.

There was this shelter thing behind the nature center. It wasn't there last time we were there and there was nothing around it. It was cool. Trevor is holding a magnifying glass the kids got from their coupon book through the library's summer reading program.

After being inside the Nature Center for a while, we head out to the many trails outside. We once hiked back there and I got completely lost. Thankfully, this time we didn't get lost. But I wore completely impractical hiking shoes.

I guess they knew their favorite color. or the air speed velocity of a swallow. heh... AURGHHHH!

NOW which way should we go guys? We ended up trekking back up to the playground and played for a while. But the wasps kept bugging me. I was wearing a black shirt and all I could think of was that time we were geocaching and Ray disturbed the wasp nest and they chased him forever until he ripped his shirt off. Turns out wasps like black shirts. So I was all super paranoid and twitchy because the wasps kept freakin LANDING on me and crawling around on me. Normally wasps don't scare me. But landing all over me does kind of make me nervous. So after wasp filled minutes in the woods, and wasp filled minutes at the park, I was ready to head out. So we went to the ever exciting grocery store.

This is Cooneyisle's Chaos Magickian. He regularly sits like this on couch arms, chairs, the table. Chaos runs the house.

THere's Reznor under the table. Rez is the laziest puppy I have ever seen. He literally spends most of the day sleeping. He gets up to eat food off the floor as I cook. Honestly, I think I need another cat and perhaps another dog. ;) Shadow doesn't come downstairs until later.

Goofy Newfy

2009-08-24T12:19:00.000-07:00

I should blog about our Newfoundland puppy. We have had several bad experiences with dogs. Mostly dogs that aren't so wonderful with children. Especially non dog savvy children like mine are. We finally decided that buying from a breeder would be our best bet in getting a dog with a more stable temperament and a known lineage. So then it came down to researching breeds. I wanted a dog that was larger, would love kids, would be able to live with cats, wouldn't be super high energy and would basically be a good first dog. I don't mind hair. I don't mind drool. I can provide basic training and exercise. Everytime I researched breeds, Newfoundland dogs came up as a #1 choice. So we found a breeder near us and, after months of looking at the breeder website and speaking with the breeder, we brought Rez home! His full name is Reznor (yea, Nine Inch Nails fan here) and he is a big sweetheart. So far he has been a GREAT puppy. As of 5 months he is housebroken, knows "sit" "wait" "down" "settle" (most of the time), "give" "leave it" (at home) "rollover" and walks with a loose leash MOST of the time. He is ok with the kids distracting him, he is ok with commands on the trail where we usually walk but he is still learning in other places. But I think he's perfect for 5 months!

As for Rez with the kids, he is fantastic. He isn't bothered by their screechy "AWWW!" noises they make around him. He loves when they put their heads on him while he's laying down- he will roll over on his back for belly rubs. He does all the normal puppy things, too. He plays keep away with their toys, he eats shoes, whether you are walking by or if the shoes are in the hallway. He is supremely lazy- like ultra lazy. His routine usually involves him getting his food from a Buster Ball in the morning. Then he gets a mile walk. Then he sleeps and sleeps and sleeps or chews his chewie toys. He wakes up around mid afternoon and wanders around and makes mischief or plays fetch or hide and seek with the kids, or just watches us as we go about our day. He goes for an evening walk for a mile and then he zonks out for the evening around 8pm. I am trying to get him swimming more, too, as he is turning into a water dog. The first few times we showed him the water he wasn't thrilled with it. Now he *loves* it. We walk him by the streams and he often tries to drag me over to them so he can wade in the water, though he would rather swim than wade now.

Yesterday we took him to Riverbend Park in Great Falls to go swimming in the Potomac. Here are some pics and a video.

Here's a video of Rez swimming. We have him onleash because he is still a baby and we don't want the current taking him away and I don't want him wading up on one of the rock outcroppings and not coming back in!

Here's another one of him swimming:

The Air and Space Museum

2009-08-22T06:14:00.000-07:00

I have not updated this blog in a LONG time. I figure a post is well nigh due! Understandably, a lot has happened since Christmas: Ariel turned 4, Trevor turned 8 and Rachael turned 6. We visited parents, we went camping, we celebrated holidays. Our kitten, Stripey, had to be put to sleep- FIV. We went to a breeder and got a Newfoundland puppy who is now 5 months old and the best dog ever in a drooly, hairy, good natured sort of way. The kids start school soon and Ariel will be starting preschool this year. I am still in college and feel like I will be forever. But there is an end in sight.

BUT-- enough of all that. This post would be too lengthy if I talked about the year until now. So I will jump right in with our trip to the Air and Space Museum. I post most stuff to Facebook, so it has kept me from updating a blog. I mean, everyone who would WANT to see pictures of family, well, they are friends on Facebook, right? Anyway....

Yesterday we went to the Air and Space museum with my friend, Sharon. Sharon and I have been friends since like 8th grade, I think, when I moved to Florida. After I got married and moved to Virginia, we kept in touch, but ended up with very different lives. She is single, has her masters and travels to foreign countries teaching. I got married, had children and became a stay at home mom. This time around her job brought her to DC for a few days for orientation before jetting off to her newest assignment. So I got to see my best friend since high school! I haven't seen Sharon since she, Ray and I met up in Vegas, hmmm, 3 years ago? So she stayed with us for the weekend this time, and then Friday I met her in DC at the museum with the kids. We had a nice time. She had never been to the Air and Space museum. I've been a few times, but I love going to any of the DC museums and this is one that holds the kids' interest well. Here's some pics!

It really annoys me that blogger posts all my pictures in reverse order. This is one of the many fake people chilling at the museum. There were more fake people here than there are in department stores. This woman is showing us what people ate on the plane in the 50s (I think). Ariel was convinced the coffee on the tray was real.

I don't know what was up with Trevor's desire to punch all the fake people. Everytime I saw another one, I would call the kids excitedly and say "oh! Go stand with that fake person and I'll take your picture!". Ariel looks like she is thinking "please mom, stop making me pose already."

Then we saw this big plane front and I told the kids to go stand in front of it and instead, they tumbled under it and acted like they were being run over. Just don't take me places, I'll make my kids be kids AND I'll take their picture as proof they aren't model citizens smiling politely for a camera. In fact, they rarely humor me. I used to say "Just humor me guys" so often, it became a phrase they uttered to each other whenever they weren't getting their way. heh

When Sharon was with all the kids I told her I HAD to get her picture of her being "mom-like".

A fake person landing on us in a hang glider. I couldn't sling the kids up into the picture, so Ariel got to get out of taking a picture with him. I would love to go hang gliding.

The moment we got into the museum, Rachael started in about seeing "this balloon that goes up and down!" I had absolutely no clue what she was talking about as there is no balloon that goes up and down in the museum. Sharon wanted to see Early Flight, so we meandered that and, since we were on THAT side of the building, we wandered the exhibits on that side. The whole time Rachael was asking to go see this balloon on the other side of the museum. So, finally, mystified, we wandered in that direction to see what she was talking about. She ended up making a beeline for the hands on part of the museum and there was this balloon that went up and down based on how much weight you loaded into the basket. It was small and it sure made an impression on her because she must have remembered it from last year when we were here. And Rachael, after whining about seeing this balloon for an hour, spent like ten seconds playing with it before moving on. I told her she had been whining about this balloon for an hour and she better get back over there and play with it some more this instant. But she ignored me. I get no respect. Or maybe she knew I wasn't serious. But here they are wandering in the direction of the balloon. Both girlies looked impossibly cute today. Rachael got some new shoes from the LL Bean catalogue. They are a size too big but she insisted on wearing them because they were the same blue as the ice creams on her dress. I'm glad she could walk in them, they really were huge on her.

I don't really know what Trevor is doing with this fake boy. But it looks like he's dancing with him.

Checking out this exhibit about velocity and pressure. You turned a wheel and this box went up and down this pole. Really, not a thrillfest of an exhibit, but you would have thought the kids made fireworks by turning that wheel the way they argued over whose turn it was to turn the wheel! The guy in the background was "sleeping" but when the kids would argue, he would open his eyes a bit and peek at them arguing until they worked it out, then he would go back to "sleep". Weird. If you want an argue-free nap, mister, you have to go home, or at least not be in the kids area of the museum.

Sharon doing the gyroscope exhibit. The wheel would turn, and the chair would turn in the opposite direction as the wheel. Pretty cool.

All in all, we had a great day at the museum. We rode the metro in, which I actually really like doing. The kids are old enough to walk with me, sit nicely and be a pleasure to be in DC with. I really like taking them into DC. The trip home on the metro is always a little trying, though. The kids got super silly and Rachael, who is a decent reader now (she's reading on a Henry and Mudge level) saw the Foggy Bottom metro stop and sounded it out as Froggy bottom. All the kids thought this was hilarious and spent the rest of the trip home say froggy bottom to each other and giggling. That tried my patience a bit, but I made the mistake of laughing because they all thought it was so funny and so inadvertently encouraged them. Oh well! We all had a great day, though it was bitter sweet to say goodbye to Sharon for at least a year.

Picture dump!

2008-12-25T11:07:00.000-08:00

Here's some Christmas pictures. Our day has been absolutely wonderful so far. Relaxing, weather is perfect, company is wonderful, kids are happy. I love Christmastime. As I type this Trevor is laying on the couch reading "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" from his Grandma, Rachael is listening to High School Musical 3 (I think) on her new HK boom box and Ariel is going low tech with the bubble wrap. If it's not felt, or a spatula.. it's bubble wrap. We enjoyed homemade cinnamon rolls, breakfast casserole and mimosas (and later I drank the rest of the Champagne!) for breakfast. Currently we have the turkey smoking for dinner and will eat sausage/cranberry stuffing, glazed carrots, mashed potatoes and gravy for dinner. The stuffing is in the oven and smells soooo good. I'm hungry! More pictures of dinner will come later. As well as video of Trevor riding his skateboard and the kitty and random pics on Ray and Pam's camera. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The tree before the kids came downstairs. All set up for Christmas! Ariel is the far left, Rachael is the middle and Trevor is the right.

We called the photo "Get the heck outta the way Grandpa!" heehee. The kids coming downstairs to check out the tree. Trevor woke up at 4am. OMG. I heard him and Rachael heading downstairs and caught them and said "Um, no. It's too early! Open your stockings and wake us up at 6am to go downstairs!" Thankfully, they were reasonably happy to do that.

Trevor posing on his new skateboard!!!! He was THRILLED. It's a way cool board and he has been out on it a couple times.

Ariel with this insane cat she wanted. It meows and purrs and moves its head and blinks its eyes. It's creepy but cute.

Rachael's new robe. The girls loved their jams and HK robes. Ariel ran upstairs and put her jammies and robe on right away. heehee. Ray and Pam have pics of her in her jams.

Her grandma B gave Rachael is enormous Barbie bus that was also a hottub. It is truly insanely huge! And lots of fun. Inside is a pretty Mariposa (I think) Barbie that her Auntie Kristen sent (I think?!) and also "cooking show" Barbie from Santa.

Trevor building with his Erector set from Santa.

Trevor and Ray building- they are working on the helicopter.

Rachael zonked out on the couch for an hour or so after breakfast and then running around outside.

The rigged thing Ray put over the smoker so the turkey would hold a steady temperature. We smoke our turkey every year. Yum.

Sick Rachael, tired mom

2008-12-10T09:35:00.000-08:00

So I will give you some pictures. We put our tree up this weekend. We have a glorious, prelit fake tree. I was always againts having a fake tree until we bought one. It is *so* easy to put up. And prelit is like, omg, THE BEST. We bring out the three big tree segments, click them together, the branches fall open and I kind of spread out the pieces of pine "twigs" so it looks less smushed and more tree like. Then the kids come in and we ooh and ahh over the ornaments. It never fails.. EVERY year I think we have no ornaments and I wonder what we will put on our tree. And every year I realize we have TONS of ornaments, plenty for the tree. Over ten years you would have thought we had collected lots of xmas ornaments, but alas, in our move from CA back to the VA area, our box or ornaments got lost. So we had all these really pretty ornaments that we never saw again. Oh well, now we have more.. plus the wonderful addition of handmade ones from the kids.

I keep forgetting that blogger is posting my pictures backwards. Here's the finished tree. I think Ariel took this picture. I took off that vine thing hanging on it.

Trevor, Rachael and Ariel hanging a few ornaments on the other side of the tree.

The stockings were hung by the worm farm with care....

Trevor can make the weirdest faces for a picture. he's hanging an ornament. Notice Chaos in the background, chillin in his Santa hat.

The kids found their hats from last year. Notice Ariel's favorite pumpkin shirt to go along with her reindeer antlers. I think her expression is kind of priceless, too.

Rachael has been sick today. Some kind of stomach bug. She isn't running a fever, but has been throwing up all day and can't hold down anything. This was how she spent her morning, on our bed with Stripey making sure she was ok.

Strip Stripe has grown a lot since I think I last posted pictures. He still has his kitten teeth, but the kitten crazies are mostly over. He still plays with his tail and does somersaults on our bed in the morning. And he climbs up my leg when he wants attention; but he also spends lots of time sleeping. He plays with Chaos and Shadow, too and LOVES that cat tree.

Chaos looking quite festive and full of Christmas cheer. heh.

Humiliating my cats.

2008-12-06T05:12:00.000-08:00

These are bad iphone pics, but I have to post pictures of my poor cats.

Yes, I have three kids. But my cats are also my OTHER three kids. They really are spoiled and very much a part of our family.

Ariel putting a puzzle together. Ariel and I seem to find plenty to occupy us during the day, even with the colder weather.

My cats are HORRIFIED by the cold weather. During the summer they spend their days trying to escape the house and be FREE!!! But during the winter they are so disappointed to run outside and have it be so cold. They usually turn and run right back in. And proceed to spend the day following us from room to room like dogs. Shadow normally crawls into my lap at every opportunity. He's not in my lap in this pic because I have probably not let him crawl into it so I could help Ariel with her puzzle.

And then, we humiliated them. Ariel and I had to stop at Petsmart to get the kitties their food. I ended up buying them some hats because they were on sale. Poor Shadow got the reindeer hat. He hated it and quickly pawed it off.

Chaos, because he is so big and, well, round, got to be Santa. The hat barely fit him. And he totally didn't care it was on. He wandered around for a good 15 minutes with it before it just fell off. I think he looks rather endearing as Santa.

Other than that, nothing much has been happening!

Thanksgiving...

2008-11-27T16:52:00.001-08:00

We had a great Thanksgiving day, engaging in many fun activities such as the bean bag toss (including chucking them at eachother), football, geocaching and, of course, eating. OK. Here's pictures:

Brett keeping Trevor away from the football.

Dad and Trevor practicing their mad karate skillz.

Ray carrying Rachael AND Ariel and catching the football. Yes, he did all that.

Dad doing his touch down dance. heh.

Mom, Rachael and Ariel chilling after spinning in circles.

A cache! A cache! Geocaching in NC. We found a couple caches.

On our way home from geocaching. I like how Rachael and Claire have the same facial expression. Maybe Rachael was a dog in a former life. heh

My dad got this nifty belt that has a bottle opener on it. It looks a little, um, odd opening beers from your belt buckle. But hey, it works!

My mom gnawing on a turkey neck. The camera died right after this picture so I have no pictures of the actual dinner.

But the dinner was so good that it made Brett pass out afterwards.

Then Kristen and I cleaned the kitchen up, but dad came in and did a couple things. It really wore him out. ;)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

We found that cache!

2008-11-25T17:10:00.000-08:00

I posted this morning how we missed that cache yesterday and had to leave it. Well, after I picked the kids up from school this afternoon, we went straight out to find it. This time, we parked in the correct spot and found the cache pretty quickly.

Who's ready to look for that cache? Who? You?

I don't know what's up with the look on Trevor's face. But here's the cache!!!!! It was under a different tree than we were looking around the first time.

Trading out trinkets. It's most fun for the kids to find a cache that has stuff for trade in it. There are lots of microcaches in our area. A microcache is tiny and has room for just the log to record your name. But the bigger caches are tupperware container sized and have room to trade trinkets. The kids put in a little plastic dragon and two small horses and took a little giraffe and two army guys.

The cache is hidden under this tree. Do you see it? :)

Then I came home to this wonderful arrangement from Edible Arrangements!!! It was for my birthday from Pam and Ray. Thank you so much guys! It's super tasty!

Cookies!

2008-11-25T06:24:00.001-08:00

Yesterday we baked gingerbread men. Well, first Ariel and I made the cookie dough. Then we put it in the fridge to chill until we got home with Trevor and Rachael to decorate the little cookie guys. But first... before we decorated cookie men, we did a little geocaching.

For my birthday Ray got me a Garmin handheld GPS unit. I know, a little geeky but I was so excited! I have been wanting to geocache with the kids for a while now. So today I loaded my first geocache onto the unit and, after I picked up Trevor from school, we tried our first geocache without Ray or our geocaching friends- Bill and Christianne. Rachael had Creative Kids, an afterschool "acting" program so we had until 2pm (45 minutes) until we picked her up. The cache was .6 miles away, so I figured we'd drive because I figured Ariel wouldn't be able to walk that far. So we found a spot near the cache in a townhome complex parking lot. The cache, we quickly discovered, was on the OTHER side of the golf course, requiring that we trek back up and around the course. Then it was not only on the other side, but all the way at the other end from where we were parked. Argh. So, hot on the trail, we made it all the way to the cache and were right on top of it. "What time is it?" I inquired to Trevor, who had the watch. "It's, um, close to 2pm," he replied. ACK! We not only were somewhere in some other townhome neighbourhood that looked like every neighbourhood around here, we were at the other end of the golf course and we hadn't found the cache. We spent five minutes frantically searching the undergrowth and couldn't find our treasure. So reluctantly, we had to abandon the search and turn for the trek back to the car. But, hm.. where was the car? I KNEW there was a shorter way back that we had walked. We had ten minutes and it would take us about 15 just to walk back the way we had come. I started to carry Ariel and set off on what I hoped was a shortcut. But it was 50 degrees, we were wearing coats and Ariel was HEAVY and kept sliding down my coat. "Ari, you have to RUN!" and I set her down and we jetted for the car. I have to hand it to my little 3.5 year old- she ran all the way back to the car. And I have to hand it to me- I did find the shortcut and we were back to the car in half the time it took us to get out to the cache. And, thankfully, Trevor's watch was a tiny bit fast. So I ended up only being one minute late to pick up Rachael. Needless to say, all the kids and I are going back to the cache today to find it. We were RIGHT there and there is nothing more frustrating than abandoning a search that you have ALMOST found.

Anyways, after that little adventure, we were ready to go home and roll, decorate and bake cookies!

Ariel, Rachael and Trevor decorating. We had M&Ms, Raisinettes, dried cranberries and coconut chips.

One batch of the finished cookies. Man, the recipe made like 40 gingerbread men!

I got The Best of Fine Cooking "Cookies" magazine. I handed it to Trevor to circle some cookies he wanted to bake this season. He handed it back to me and had circled like all the cookies. heh. Then, when I turned to the gingerbread men page, I found the little message on the lower right page: "I love this book!! Momy!" It was really cute.

Here's the video. Just the kids making cookies. Nothing amazing, but I think they are darn cute!

Thanksgiving at school, Native Pride Dancers.

2008-11-22T06:25:00.000-08:00

A lot has been going on these last few weeks. I find it difficult to get the Rome pictures posted because they are all on Ray's laptop. I will get those up as I can. For now, though, life has been happening.

Wednesday I let the kids miss a day of school so we could go into DC to see the Native Pride Dancers. I am still a member of my local homeschool group and a mom on there had bought a block of group tickets. It was 5 dollars a person for us to go. Too good of a deal to pass up, so we got tickets. Never let school interfere with your education, eh? Unfortunately, I couldn't take pictures of the people actually dancing. They were amazing. They were a group of Native Americans who travelled around demonstrating native dances and costumes. They talked a little about their beliefs and culture, did some really fun dancing, drumming and chanting. We thoroughly enjoyed the show. I have a couple pictures of before the show:

Eating at the insanely expensive cafe in the Kennedy Center. If I have been to the KC, it's been years. There were no prices on anything in the cafe! The lunch was fabulous, though.

Some flags hanging in the hallway.

My kids being kids. You can take the kids to the theatre, but you can't make them act like mini adults. heh. I realize I should have dressed them up more.

Zonked out in the car on the way home. Man, they sure passed out!

Friday we had the Thanksgiving lunch at school. It's a really cute event. The lunc times get staggered out so there is room for parents to come for lunch. I joined Rachael and Ray joined Trevor for his lunch. All I have are a couple Iphone pics. It was quite good, though! We walk into the cafeteria to find the tables all set for us (with plasticware, but still!). We all sit down and then the teachers and staff wait on all of us, serving us drinks and our cafeteria trays of turkey dinner. We had turkey and stuffing with gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans and pumpkin ice cream for dessert. It was all actually kind of good! It's always fun joining the kids for lunch and it was nice to have other parents to talk to this time, too.

Of course they eat their ice cream first. heh

Both kids enjoyed their lunch. It was a nice change from pizza day, which is normally what they eat one Friday and the one day I let them buy lunch at school (unless I am really pressed for time in the morning).

I also taught Grace Art in Trevor's class this week. We learned about Romare Bearden and then made collages like he did. The kids really got into it, but I sure could have used more time! We had an hour- and 45 minutes of that was working on the collage. Most of them finished and I was really impressed by how well they did. We had talked about how, in a collage, you find different parts to make a whole. So they didn't have to find a person and cut it out- they could find different heads, eyes, legs, etc and glue them all together to make a person. One person did just that, another cut out a big head with an open mouth smile and made it eating a smaller plate of food. Trevor made an building with heads all looking out the window and then some sort of abstract head pile on the ground. lol. It was a fun project that we all enjoyed. Definitely a mess to clean up!

In other random news, I have signed up for classes starting in January. I will be going back fulltime- taking French, Bio, an elective which I suspect is gym (?) and American Lit 1. I'm looking forward to doing school work again. We're also working out the timeline for buying and moving into our house, hopefully before xmas. Other random things happen weekly and we are really looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with my parents in NC, seeing the lights in Tanglewood and generally just hanging out.

Rome! Part 1

2008-11-03T10:51:00.000-08:00

Hopefully I will get a chance to keep updating this. This is our Rome trip, part one. As most know, Ray and I went to Rome for our ten year anniversary. We invited my parents along because 1. We all get along well and 2. It's always more fun to vacation WITH people! Our vacation was WONDERFUL! We had such a relaxing, great time that we didn't want to come home. Since I don't want this post to be 10 pages long, I'll just start in on the pictures, adding comments as necessary.

I have no idea why blogger is uploading my photos in the reverse order. Argh. This is the Vatican at night. We were walking from our hotel to Trevi Fountain. Day one.

This was Ray most of our trip. He took some amazing pictures, many of which aren't going to get posted and blogger doesn't do the photos justice anyway. Maybe they will get posted to his flickr.

Some angels on the roof of a building on our walk to Trevi fountain.

Eating at our first place in Rome. It's the cafe outside our hotel. It was good, but we found much better places to eat later.

My parents hotel room at The Mecenate Palace in Rome. It was a great hotel. We had a smaller room but still really nice.

Enjoying a bottle of wine on the terrace upon our return from Trevi Fountain.

The view of the church from the terrace of our hotel.

mmmmMMMMM.. gelato at Trevi Fountain. Everywhere we went had espresso and gelato. heh.

Detail of Trevi Fountain.

Trevi Fountain. It was packed with tourists and people selling stuff. The people selling stuff (everything from roses to scarves) were really persistant and were all over Rome. We just got used to saying No! a lot.

That was the end of day one. Our flight was great, it was a straight through flight and we upgraded to Economy Plus so we were not so cramped. I didn't want to nap when we got there, but our flight was all night and I was sooo tired when we got to Rome. As soon as we got our room I crashed for a couple hours. Then we woke and met up and headed out to Trevi Fountain.

Highlights of our trip that I will post soon: The Coloseum, The Vatican (even though we never could get in), EATING! The Picaso exhibit at a local museum and various other things.

Halloween before Rome

2008-10-31T17:24:00.001-07:00

I need to post Rome pictures, but they are all on Ray's computer. I do, however, have some halloween pictures. Note to self: do not go on a vacation out of the country and come back the day before Halloween. Not only had we not gotten a pumpkin, I did not have a costume for Ariel. So yesterday we scrounged out the rest of Ariel's cat costume and today, after two grocery stores were completely devoid of pumpkins, we found one at Potomac Vegetable Farms' stand on 7. We also picked up some of the best cider I have ever had. yum! So here are some pictures!!!

OK. These pictures are backwards, oops. I don't feel like changing them. This is their loot. They made buckets for candy with grandma and Aunt Mary while we were in Rome. We hit our entire neighborhood and they filled the buckets to the brim.

Starting out down the street. They ran right up to the doors, even miss shy Ariel. I would stand on the sidewalk, they would knock and yell TRICK OR TREAT! It was very cute.

Getting some candy from our neighbours.

Ariel the kitty cat. We got the cat ears at Michaels and the dress was the last one at Target and was thankfully in her size.

Ariel the kitty, Rachael was Cinderella, and Trevor was a skeleton pirate from Pirates of the Carribean.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Cox Farms Adventure

2008-10-11T17:02:00.000-07:00

Ray and Trevor are off to a wedding in FL this weekend, leaving just me and a couple of cutie little girlies. Rachael has this undying bond with her brother and has been missing him terribly. Consequently, I am trying to keep our time busy and fun. Friday after school I took them to Chik Fil A for dinner and they played in the play area for over an hour. Then we spent most of today at Cox Farms in Centerville. Now, Cox Farms is kind of a tradition with us. We have been going every year we have been back. I'm actually not sure how much of the farm is an actual FARM, as we only ever visit the fall festival they have. And what a weird and trippy festival it is! There are TONS of slides, all done in different themes and of varying sizes. Ariel is really too small for the biggest ones, so we stick to the medium sized ones. They are all fast, lined with hay bales and require a trek up a hill to get to them. Some have dinosaur themes with big plaster dinos soaring around it, one is a dragon in a volcano- complete with sound effects. One is a giant and the entrance way is covered with plastic bugs and you hear a giant's voice saying "Fee Fie Fo fum, Cox Farms is a lot of fun!" (We missed the giant slide this year! I am so bummed!) It's all so corny.

They also have the infamous hayride. This is the weirdest hayride you will ever go on. It's complete with an Alien landing, many plaster animals lurking in the woods and corn fields. There is even wooden cut outs of such icons as spongebob, charlie brown and pikachu. It really is weird. Then, the wagon gets stuck in some mud. And we are asked to yell for help. We do... and this farmer comes out wearing this huge fake bobble looking head and pulls us out of the mud. See.. it's weird. I'll probably say that a lot this post. But the best part is the end of the ride. When we go into this huge dark barn. The wagon stops and, suddenly, the lights start flashing ala night club style, this peppy maniacal music starts playing and you look around and the barn is garish, covered in gnomes, trees with eyes, skeletons and other really crazy stuff. Think Jack Black when he is on shrooms in that movie about Tenacious D (what was that movie called?) It's like that. The girls were finally not scared of the barn this year! Go them.

This year they intro'd their cornundrum maze, and we had lots of fun exploring that- full of optical illusions and a vortex that made us dizzy and I had to practically shove the girls through because halfway through they decided they didn't like it and we couldn't turn around. I wish the fall festival wasn't so darn expensive to get in (15/person) because I would go every day! It's gotten more popular every year, though, and now we are lucky if we don't have to wait in line to go down the slides, etc. We used to be able to go on weekdays and it was not packed. Now it's packed whatever day we go- school groups during the week, everyone else on the weekend.

I posted most of these pics to facebook. They are iphone pics because Ray took the pocket cam to FL. I'll throw in a couple kitty pictures, too, because they're cute.

Sitting in front of the 1007lb pumpkin.

Ariel being, I dunno, a grown up? heh.

Rachael being a kernel on a multicoloured ear of corn.

There was, no joke, two guys dressed up as corn playing chess in the maze, behind a fence, no less. What's your job? I dress up as corn and play chess all day in a corn maze.

There was a gorilla carrying around a guy in a cage. He said the gorilla was his friend.

Some of the better done wooden cut outs. Charlie Brown et al. Some of them are really bad, but still recognizable. Some I don't know who they are. There are tons of them everywhere.

At one point we go through this witches hut and there are witches making brew everywhere (fake people, not real people). These are skeleton witches around a misty cauldron. We also go through a grave yard with funny gravestones.

The highlight of the hayride for the kids. They spend all year talking about Cox Farms. We really talk about it at least once a month. And the alien on the hayride always comes up. Ariel saw him and exclaimed excitedly "Look mommy! It's the alien dressed up as a man!"

We all get to pick out little pumpkins at the end of the trip. So the girls picked out their pumpkins and posed next to the kind of creepy sunflower. We had a blast today!

Stripey sleeping because he is darn cute. I usually sit at the top of the stairs while the kids fall asleep (or Ray does). Greystripe curled up on my lap and zonked out. This is what he usually does when I sit down. He's the lap happiest cat I have ever had. I love it.

He and Chaos really do like each other. Chaos wants to play soooo badly with Greystripe, but he's too nervous. Chaos is so huge and everytime they try to play, Stripey gets scared and runs away. They played for a while last night. Chaos even rolled over on his back and Stripey pounced on him, then arched his teeny back and bounded away. It was ridiculously cute.

What a weekend!

2008-10-05T16:57:00.000-07:00

We had quite a busy weekend. Saturday morning we had the kids' friends, Webb and Zea, over. This meant that not only did I have a couple kids dropped off at my house, but the neighbourhood kids eventually ended up over here, too. So at one point we had 3-4 boys wrecking havoc and 3 little girls trying to be girlie. Then Rachael came in at one point while I was on the phone and, in all her dramatics, gasps out "MOMMY! There was this huge wasp and he was just hiding in the grass and when I ran by he jumped up and BIT ME!" She wasn't crying, she showed me a spot on her leg where there was just, well, nothing. But she insisted that this humoungous wasp was just laying in wait for some little girl to pass by so he could lunge from his hiding spot and bite her. Needless to say, I sent her back out to play. This is the girl who also got drenched and sopped and cried because she couldn't wear a knitted bag on her head and once cried for an entire walk because I wouldn't let her take her tootbrush. She is prone to, well, being melodramatic. heh.

Saturday evening we went bowling with Ryan and kids and friends. Trevor beat out Ray and I narrowly beat the kids. We are not expert bowlers. The kids were adorable, though. Ever spelled everyone's names on the computer and it was "Trever" "Ariol" and "Rathl". And when it was "Ariol's" turn, everyone would help her drag the little thing you roll the bowling ball on out and then help her carry her ball to it. She would push it and the bowling ball would creep down the lane and hit a few pins and then she would get claps and cheers and big hugs. It was very cute.

But I don't have pictures of any of that stuff. I do have a few pictures of our adventures today. We went biking and geocaching. Geocaching is an obsession of a couple friends of ours, Bill and Christianne. Ray and I like geocaching, too, but don't really do it unless we are with said friends and their really nice GPS (though the new iphone makes a fine GPS as well). So we loaded up the bikes and head out to their house, where we enjoyed a wonderful brunch and a description of sugar shacking and maple syrup and all things wonderful like that. Then Ariel overflowed their toilet. Seriously. It was rather mortifying, requiring lots of towels and bleach and a bright orange plunger to fix. But THEN... we loaded up the bikes and head out to the W&OD trail where we found a total of SIX (!!!) caches! We also got in a nice 8 mile bike ride and a stop for ice cream. The weather was absolutely perfect, not too hot and not too cold. The boys did great on their bikes and I think a wonderful time was had by all. Here's some pictures: ETA- Rachael and her little friend Evelyn are not in any of the pictures. Why? They spent their day being pulled in another Chariot by Bill. As they reclined in luxury, they leafed through this princess book and day dreamed about going to the ball with the prince. They did not get out to geocache (they did however, suffer themselves to join us commonfolk for ice cream). My Rachael has gotten very girlie recently. heehee..

Finding one of the caches up in a tree. Hopefully everyone knows what geocaching is? Basically, people hide these caches (sometimes something as small as a film canister, some as big as a tackle box) and leave coordinates to find them on a website. You load the coordinates into your GPS and then hunt down the caches. Some have little treasures you can take (and leave a replacement of your own), some require multiple steps to complete like a scavenger hunt or puzzle. Some are super hard to find, some are really easy. It's pretty addictive and pretty frustrating when you DON'T find the cache.

One of the caches was a plastic squirrel! It was cute. Ariel helped find it and as beyond thrilled. She wanted to keep the squirrel. I kept thinking of the little animals in the woods. heh. (my mom should get that).

Ariel was beat by the end of the ride. She had it tough, riding in the back of the chariot.

Trevor and Jonathon at the end of 8 miles on bikes. I dunno... Jonathon looks a little beat!

New Kitten!

2008-10-04T07:32:00.000-07:00

After our bad luck with our puppy, we were all feeling a little down and out. We visited our local shelter and lo and behold, they had kittens! But not just kittens.. my favourite kind- one little male nondescript tabby cat. We adopted him. I haven't had a kitten since Chaos was a baby.. and that was almost 10 years ago. We named our new little addition Greystripe, after Firestar's best friend and deputy in the Warriors series (yes, I'll admit it, I am devouring this YA series for my own enjoyment because I have a huge love of felines). We kept him in our bedroom for all of two days while the other two cats got used to him. Shadow wasn't thrilled but Chaos, who seems to be top cat in the house, didn't really mind. In fact, he won't admit it, but I have caught him flicking his tail for Greystripe to chase, so I know he likes the little guy. Shadow has come around and will even play a bit with Stripey now and then. The only time they seem to have little tolerance for him is at night after the human kids are in bed. Then Chaos and Shadow want peace and quiet and to lounge in the room with us. Greystripe is always bounding around like a maniac and trying to play with them and they usually hiss at him. I told Ray it's like when the kids stay up too late and he and I just want some peace and quiet! Here's some pictures. He was smaller when we got him.. we've had him for about 3 weeks now and is about 12 weeks old or so. He's a sweetie and sleeps on my head at night and has a love of people food. I have never seen a cat go so crazy as when Ray and I break out the ice cream, hot chocolate or pumpkin cake. He also loves pea soup, milk, rice and chicken. He's spoiled rotten.

Greystripe never stops moving, except when I sit down. Then he climbs in my lap and falls asleep.

He also has many many little kitty toys (all the cats do, but he is the one who plays with them)

Ironically, Greystripe is actually kind of spotted, not striped. He was stripier a month ago. heh

Chaos is the big furry Maine Coon. Shadow is a black cat with the huge owl eyes. The hermit crabs live in the aquarium they are sitting near.

School!!!

2008-09-21T17:04:00.000-07:00

Is this my first official post about school? I have been so pleasantly surprised by our experience so far. It has been much different than Trevor's K experience, which just goes to show that much of an experience is based on how we choose perceive and remember the events. The kids had a great first day of school, though Ariel and I were a little sad. In fact, the first week was wonderful for both kids. I dropped them off with no tears and, when I picked them up, the first thing Rachael did was fling her arms around my neck and say "Mommy, I LOVE school! I LOVE my teacher! I want to go back tomorrow!" It was quite cute. She has loved every minute of her experience there, so far. Her teacher and assistant are wonderful- kind, warm, funny. Everything you think a K teacher should be. No wonder Rachael likes her.

Trevor had a great first week, but then realized he would be expected to go for a whole year. Our second week of drop offs was ROUGH, to say the least. Trevor can make himself really anxious about a situation and he has trouble calming down. While he always ended his school day with smiles and enjoyed his actual day at school, transitioning away from me and into the building was another thing entirely. It was almost a repeat of his experience in K. Lots of crying, lots of agonizing over going to school as he was getting dressed in the morning, etc. It helped to speak with the counselor and have her help him transition. It also helped to get his school schedule and let him know what to expect out of his days. He has friends in school and really enjoys his time there, it's just the drop off. This evening, for the first time, he was excited about going to school tomorrow. So that's a definite positive! He also walked into the school without anxiousness all last week, too. So I hope we are over that hurdle.

We had their Back to School Night and got to meet the teachers and Trevor's second grade teacher is wonderful, as well. It sounds like their year will be neat, too. Every Tuesday I get a paperwork packet with the school newsletter and class happenings and worksheets the kids have done. I get one for each child. In the last one Trevor was thrilled to see his much anticipated sign up for Lego Club. So I have signed them up for some extracurriculars. Lego Club only accepts 50 people, so I sure hope he is one of those 50 kids! He has been talking about it since the beginning of last year! I also signed him up for a science class that has hands on experiments and I signed Rachael up for a little acting class where they read a book and act it out. They all look like neat things to be in.

Ariel and I have been getting along. Our days are so quiet. I was going to sign her up for preschool, but our local preschool had a waiting list. She keeps asking when she gets to go to school like her brother and sister. She frequently begins things with "When *I* go to *my* school...." so I am not sure if I am going to expand my search out of our immediate area yet. So far we run errands, or hang out playing games. We go to local parks in our neighbourhood or make little field trips to nature centers, bigger playgrounds, etc. I started scrapbooking again with a friend. So we just started a standing date at her house. She has two kids in school, so Ariel has a place to herself and lots of toys. Last week she chose to stamp out die cuts and glue and color. She will also be coming with me for any volunteering I do at the school. I have made it really clear I am eager to help and think they will be using me. They needed a volunteer for some art program for Trevor's class. I need more details before I commit, though, as it sounded daunting at first. heh.

That's about all that is happening here. Actually, lots more happens, but we either haven't taken pictures or I haven't had a chance to blog it. And all I have are iphone pictures. Here are a couple (though my parents have already seen them!)

Outside the library. They have a huge metal book decorated with hearts. It's cool. We still do a weekly library trip. We all read too much to visit less often.

Ariel enjoying some hot chocolate at the Target Starbucks. This was the first day I dropped the others off at school. We went to Target for "first day treats" Rachael got a little set of horses and some hot chocolate. Her brother got a Bionicle and Rachael got Littlest Pet Shop.

After school. Rachael ADORES her brother. She is his number one fan. The K kids come out first and so Rachael, Ariel and I are always waiting for Trevor to come out. When he does, Rachael LEAPS at him screaming "TREVOR!" and throws her arms around him in his huge hug. Everyone around us always laughs. Trevor always looks a little less than enthused. He usually says "Hey, Rachael. OK. Get off me now. You're hugging me too tight!" as he pushes her off him. Every day. Yes.

Ariel riding the tractor on a trip to Frying Pan Park.

Rachael and Trevor doing an after school project. I found little models for a dollar each at Michaels. You paint them and glue them together. Rachael has a minibird house and Trevor has a fighter plane.

We had to give our puppy back.. :(

2008-09-07T08:11:00.000-07:00

We are all so disappointed. Willie was awesome in so many ways, but he had one big problem that we should have noticed, and did, right away. He was just an alpha dog. He was not accepting that the kids were higher in the pecking order than him and, as the days went on, he was demonstrating increasing tendencies to challenge his pack order with the kids. Here's a run down of what made us make the decision to take him back:

Willie snapped at Trevor twice. The first time I noticed he was sleeping in the kitchen by the pantry where his food was kept a lot. I didn't think too much of it, as we have an AC vent near there. I thought he found it cooler there. Then, when I was cooking dinner in the kitchen, the dog was sitting in that spot and Trevor walked into the kitchen to talk to me. As he was talking, he walked over to Willie to pet him. Willie growled and snapped at him. It was completely out of the blue to me. I rolled him and got angry and kicked him out of the kitchen (not kicked literally, people). Then, when I saw him sitting there again later, I realized he was guarding his food in the pantry. He never slept near other AC vents in the house, only this one. Once I realized he was food guarding, I no longer allowed him in that spot, and chased him out of the kitchen whenever he settled there as he also started trying to settle in other spots around the kitchen.

The second time he snapped at Trevor when Trevor, Ray and Willie were out in the backyard while I was in the kitchen. The doorbell rang and Ray went in to answer it because my hands were covered in food. I thought I could watch puppy and child in the backyard through our glass storm door. Willie climbed onto the stairs leading into the house and put his paws on the grill to lick a spatula Ray had been cooking with. I rinsed and dried my hands and turned to take the spatula away from the dog right as Trevor was walking inside, too. On his way in, he had to pass Willie licking the spatula. As he passed him, Willie turned growled and snapped at Trevor. Trevor hadn't even made a move to take the spatula away, he was simply walking by.

He also growled over rawhides, etc. We practiced taking them away. I would have the kids take away his bones and have him sit and wait before giving them back to him. We practiced it quite a bit. He still growled at them whenever I turned my back, even if it was just to walk into the kitchen to get a glass of water. So we put rawhides and bones in his crate where he was allowed to be and the kids wouldn't bother him. He did learn to retreat to his crate, esp in the afternoons and when the kids were getting ready for bed. He did the same with his food, despite me having the kids feed him and taking his food away and giving it back to him. He would still growl when they walked near him while he was eating in the kitchen. Given that he snapped twice at Trevor when Trevor wasn't even taking food, we were both scared he would eventually snap at the kids. Yes, almost every time we fed him, we practiced taking his food and giving it back. We even pet him while he was eating. As long as Ray or I was directly.. and I mean, DIRECTLY over him, he was fine. If we stepped away, even in the same room, he growled at the kids.

We allowed him on the couch at first and he was fine at first. Then I started noticing that whenever the kids would get on the couch and he would jump up, he would get all playful nippy and they would retreat from the couch. I would encourage them to pull him off the couch and not to let him have it. But they didn't want to get nipped, so they reinforced his behaviour. I was afraid it would turn into a dominance issue over the couch, so he was no longer allowed on the couch or any bed. He learned pretty quickly and only jumped up when he was sopping wet. heh.

We should have noticed his dominance at the dog park. Whenever we took him to the dog park, he would find all the smaller dogs and play with them and dominate them. The only time he got the doggie beat down was if there was a bigger dog in the park who wouldn't take his puppy liberties. Then the dog would roll him and when he got back up he would avoid that dog. I don't know if there is anything in that, it's just an observation.

He listened to Ray really well. All Ray had to do was come stand over him and he rolled and acted submissive. I had my work cut out for me. He definitely wasn't aggressive to me, but I had to chase him down and roll him myself if he was stealing toys, or really doing anything.

Things he was awesome at.. he was a quick learner. In the few weeks we had him he learned sit and would heel on a leash, whether prong or flat collar, with minimal correction. We introduced him to farm animals twice at the farm. He learned to sit politely when people were petting him while on leash and he was doing reasonably well passing dogs on the trail and staying walking at heel. He sat politely while I put on his collar and leash. When he wasn't a basket case of energy (ie: after we walked him and let him play) he would settle with a chew toy or sleep and was not a problem at all. He never pooped in the house and only had accidents when I didn't notice his pacing. So he was pretty much house trained. He slept fine in his crate all night, though he barked in it for a few minutes during the day. His puppyness, while exhausting, was doable. In fact, much of it I knew was normal behavior he would outgrow.

I talked to a number of people about his behavior and as we came to the realization that we couldn't even safely leave the room to go to the bathroom or clear a table without the kids or dog being with us, we had to make the decision to return him. I have to reiterate that the kids were not harassing Willie, they loved to pet him and play with him but they weren't invading his space or poking him or treating him roughly. We loved Willie, he was a great dog in so many ways and our last day and this morning has been so quiet. We all loved taking him for his walks and letting him run through the creek by our house. But we knew we made the right decision when we took him back to the rescue and he rolled a dog twice his size. Even the rescue people said he looked like he was a definite dominant male dog and we were making the right decision.

New Puppy!

2008-08-25T16:45:00.000-07:00

I am loooong overdue for a post! It has been a busy couple weeks. Last weekend Ray-dad (aka, Ray's father and my father in law) came into town. And we took like no good pictures. I have nothing to post. But we had lots of fun. Saturday we went out to the Montgomery County fair and played games, the girlies rode ponies, they won prizes. We ate too much funnel cake and fried oreos. Fun was had by all. Then Sunday we went geocaching and, though we only found 1 of 3 caches, we all had a blast. Especially Trevor, who thought geocaching was like a treasure hunt! It was wonderful to have grandpa visit us and the kids were really upset when it came time for him to go. Hopefully he'll have business in the area again soon!

Then, this past weekend we added a new addition to our family. We've been thinking about getting a dog for about a month now. The kids are more independent, they've been asking for a dog. Ray and I miss having a dog. So we checked out a few area shelters over the next few days. We had already decided on a puppy. I didn't mind if he was older than 8 weeks, but I wanted him/her to be younger than 6 months. I figured this would lessen any baggage a shelter dog might have (that is another story). But puppies go very quickly at our area shelters. In fact, neither are shelter had puppies. Frederick county did so we drove all the way out there, only to have them both adopted by the time we got there (1.5 hours later. Argh!). So we filled out an application with our local rescue group and, on a whim and with no definite plans to adopt that day, we went to their adoption fair the the Petco. We got there WAAAAY early, they were just arriving to set up. After looking at all the dogs, we really liked this little beagle mix girl who was 5 months old. We went to put an application in on her and when we got into the Petco, there was this pen set up with this ADORABLE hound puppy! He was four months old, big paws, floppy ears. He was sooo cute. We all loved him.

Well, getting a dog from a rescue is like adopting a child or something. We were there from 11ish when they were setting up.. all the way until 4pm that day. At the Petco. In a strip mall. The kids were WONDERFUL. Got a little tired near the end there, but hung out and drew on all the Petco applications (sorry Petco!) and pet all the dogs. We had to go through an interview with a volunteer. Yes, an interview. Then, if we pass that interview, we get a second interview with a board member. It felt like a job interview. heh. We passed both interviews! Then, they did something they apparently never do. They said if they could contact our vet today then we could take him home today, prior to the home visit (yes. Home visit) as a foster to adopt. Since they did reach our vet and I guess that was good. So we loaded up our puppy with lots of puppy things and took him home!!!! Sorry, minimal kid pics!

His name is Willie, not our name, he came with it and it stuck.

On a trip to Lake Fairfax yesterday.

Ray holding him on leash. He's not huge. I think he will be a houndy size when full grown. Not huge, not small. He's big a goofy and always trips over his feet right now.

This is not our dog. This is Brett's English Mastiff puppy who went to the park with us. Yes. Puppy. She makes Willie look like a chihuahua. She will like double her weight. She was terrified of Willie at first. I think Roxy is also adorable.

Am I cute or WHAT?

Willie LOVES the kids. He bounds after them all day, trying to see what they are up to. He also loves Rachael's shoes. And he loves their stuffed toys. And their lego pieces. Oh, and their bed covers. He's a teething beast. But he really adores the kids and they adore him. They have been so wonderful, making sure they get stuff out of his way, not getting mad at him when he grabs their toys. They play in the backyard so Willie can come out and splash in the wading pool with them. I wanted a dog that would kind of be one of the gang and he really is (I sure hope there are no hitches in the foster to adopt thing!)

On a good note. He was obviously crated before we had him. He has been crated both nights now. The first night he gave one houndy cute bay and that was it for the night. Last night he wanted out at midnight and I let him out to pee and put him in his crate. He whined a couple minutes then no more noise for the rest of the night. He has only had two accidents in the house and no poop in the house. He paces when he has to go out and we let him out. If we don't catch him pacing, well, he'll pee in the house. He's only 4 months old. But I was very surprised at how little pee I have been cleaning up (knock on wood). He's really been great so far. Very sweet and good natured. He rides well in the car with us. Our routine has been walking him in the morning then he takes a midmorning nap, then he goes somewhere with us in the afternoon, we're always going to a park or hiking or something. Then in the evening he gets one more walk. He was so pooped today that he almost didn't walk the rest of the way back from his walk. He's currently sleeping on my feet as I type. He's a wonderful little monster puppy!

Pirates and Treasure

2008-08-09T06:47:00.000-07:00

It's been a pretty relaxed week. Sorry I have no pictures to post. We have backpacks and school supplies and I registered Trevor and Rachael for school. I am kind of excited! We went to Lake Fairfax last night and cooked out for dinner and et the kids run around everywhere. Then we met Ryan at his campsite and the kids all ran around with eachother. Except Ariel, who for some reason, has decided Ryan is super scary and won't wander away when he is around. But the reason I posted and what I thought was cute was Trevor's obsession with finding treasure.

We were all eating our hot dogs and chips and strawberries at the picnic table when Trevor suddenly stops eating and exclaims "I know! I will need to go to the library tomorrow. Then I will check a book out with treasure maps in it and, well, I'll need a shovel and I will dig up some treasure!"

I pointed out "Well, Trev, don't you think if treasure maps were just at the library, someone would have just checked it out and found all the treasure by now? I think treasure maps are rare and hard to find."

Trevor thought about it for a moment and said "OK. Well, then I will get a book about people who have FOUND treasure and then I will go to where they found their treasure and get their map.... no, wait. They will have already FOUND the treasure. Hmmmm."

So he thought about it like all evening. This was something he was very intensely focused on, this tough issue of finding a treasure map. So I took the girlies over to the stream to catch water skippers and watch a spider weave his web and Trevor finally comes running over...

"Mommy! OK. I've got it. Even if the treasure is in Europe, well, I'm just going there for it."
ME: "Um, ok. Are you going to save your allowance to fly there?"
Trevor: "NO! That's like 10,000 dollars!"
Me: "OK. How about daddy and I find the treasure for you when we got to Europe?"
Trevor: "Oh, it's in a cave with lots of spiders. You won't want to go in there."
Me: "OK. Well, I'll send daddy, then and I'll stand guard outside."
Trevor "OK, that would work. And then daddy could go down into the dark stairs and to a door...." suddenly Trevor just groans and rolls his eyes... "But what happens if the door is LOCKED and there is NO KEY? I hadn't thought of that."
Me (thinking this whole scenario is hypothetical) "Well, we could just learn how to pick locks. Maybe there is some lock picking kit we could buy."
Trevor: "Oh! Good! OK. So then daddy can get in the room with the treasure map." (Yes, map. No treasure is here! This is just the map!)
Trevor: "I wonder if there will be a knife or sword in the room."
Me: "Oh, it should be a sword! Maybe a ninja sword, like some big samurai sword. That would be so cool."
Trevor, exasperated: "Noooo, mom. This is a PIRATE. There are no samurai swords. This is dead pirate bones holding out a map."
Me, finally laughing because I realize he is deadly serious about all this, "Ohhhh, uh huh."
Trevor, getting irked, "Don't laugh at me, mommy! I will find a treasure map!"

It was just really funny. Trevor is just darn sure that he will not only find a treasure map, he seems to know just HOW he will come across it.

Hiking to Bear's Den

2008-08-04T04:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we took a couple hours to hike up to Bear's Den, off the Appalachian trail. This was the first time doing an actual hike with the kids, although, if you notice Trevor's Crocs (Crocs have to be the world's most hideously UGLY shoe) and Ariel's sandals, we didn't realize how much of a hike it would be. It was a ton of fun, though! And the kids did awesome- lots of uphill clambering over rocks.

We put the timer on for this picture. I think Ray got shy and hid behind Trevor. heh. We're in the parking lot before heading up.

TONS of blackberries along the parking lot. We picked lots.

A beetle we saw. We kept having to tell Rachael NOT to pick up the bugs. She picked up some sort of cricket/grasshopper bug at one point and it bit/stung her. She exclaimed "It BIT me!" and not 5 minutes later tried to pick up another one she saw. Yes, this is the child who, at 18 months was so scared of bugs we spent the summer inside because everytime we went outside she FREAKED at the gnats and flies and ants.

Butterfly that landed on my shoe at one point.

The moss was absolutely thrilling.

Finally at the top. Ray is helping Rachael leap across the rock. I am taking the picture and trying not to be a nervous wreck. The drop off the rocks is almost 90 degrees and straight down the mountain (trees might have stopped them about 30 feet down).

Daddy, Trevor and Rachael. Ariel is back with me having a fit because SHE wants the opportunity to scare me over on the rock with daddy.

Ray helping Miss Ariel, who always gets her way, across. It kind of looks like he is flinging her to her death. I am probably holding my breath as I take this picture.

A rare moment of not being silly. Trevor meditating upon the wonderful view.

Rachael climbing a tree.

Kids on the rocks.... no salt.

Trevor walking through a set of rocks. There were daddy long legs EVERYWHERE. Trevor was a little nervous one would crawl on him. I was glad I wore tennis shoes and when I wasn't freaking out the kids would fall down the mountain, I was keeping an eye out for montserous daddy long legs. OMG, I am just a wreck. But, thankfully, as my anxiety can't actually keep up for that long, by the time we got up to Bear's Den, I was much calmer. On the way down, I could actually walk without being twitchy! Go me. Maybe that's how to overcome arachniphobia.

All in all, it was a great hike. We're definitely going to look for more hikes like this one. The kids got tired about halfway down. Ariel needed to be carried and Rachael just cried and walked. But otherwise everyone had a blast!

2008-07-31T17:33:00.000-07:00

It was one of the not-too-hot summer days, with cloudy skies and a little drizzle. So we decided to go for a walk. The trails around our house are wonderful. So here's just a bit of a photo/video dump.

Trevor letting Rachael know she just walked through a cobweb.

Ariel showing off something or other she found. And looking like she has been cursed with cuteness. heh

Ariel found a piece of chalk on the trail and drew things everywhere with it.

Mushroom, Mushroom! But no snakes...

Scary poison ivy!!! It is everywhere on the trails. They chop it all down in the spring, but it's back by summer.

I am pretty sure this is Virginia Creeper. We are not nervous of this.

I am pretty sure that THIS is poison Ivy. The kids, for all their tromping through the woods, have never gotten poison ivy. Spider phobic me does not tramp through the woods, so I ahve never gotten is, either.

This was when Rachael's mood started deteriorating. She was mad we wouldn't take the short cut through the woods back to the house. Then she didn't want to carry her bag anymore and so tried to wear it on her head. But it wouldn't stay on her head while she walked. Rachael's life is full of tragedy.

Trevor gathered up all these sticks to make a house with and then was having trouble carrying them all home. He found a piece of rope laying around the trail and we tied up his sticks in a bundle. He was quite satisfied.

We were apparently not giving Rachael enough sympathy so she tried to take a shortcut home that was not close to us. But then she realized she would be walking through someone's yard and she couldn't get back up the hill. Her sis helped her up.

They were checking out a hole they saw a mouse run into. But now I think Ariel is checking out the taste of her yummy blue (hm) leaf and Rachael is checking to see if any snacks are left in her nose.

Ariel just being cute. We tend to call all sticks with legs on one side "stickbugs". We didn't find any actual, real stickbugs. That would be soo cool, though!

"I am sopped!" If Rachael is not drenched, she is getting sopped. It was spitting out- not raining, really. We didn't get rained on in the woods, but did a bit outside the woods. This was when we were about to head in.

Birthday!!!

2008-07-28T04:52:00.000-07:00

Rachael, my teeny little middle child, is FIVE YEARS OLD! I can't believe she is 5. It seems like yesterday we were bringing her home from the hospital, only to be rushing her back because of heart problems which she, thankfully, grew out of. We celebrated her 5th birthday with an impromptu trip to NC to visit the grandparents and celebrate with them. Rachael was ecstatic to go visit, as all the kids are constantly asking when we are going to go see grandma and grandpa (on both sides).

We went to the Wet n Wild waterpark for Rachael's actual birthday on Saturday and had a blast. Rachael, who loves the ocean, is slightly afraid of water parks and is a little slow to warm up in general. So, as long as we were patient and gave her some time, she was fine and by the end of the day she was having a blast in the kiddie area going down the little slides and playing "neigh" with her sister. Trevor, who deems himself too big for the kiddie area, hung mostly with the men and went down the bigger slides and into the deeper water. Since I didn't have the water proof camera with me, I didn't take many pictures of the actual park. The pictures we have are us in the cabana we rented. Yes. We rented a cabana.

The private cabana was worth it. We had a covered area with table and chairs and 4 lounge chairs all to ourselves. Rachael and Ariel are taking a break with their favorite food.. sugar. The cabana was especially useful when it rained in the middle of the day and we had our nice little place to retreat to. Rachael, who was being miss princess, kept saying "I am getting DRENCHED!" And we would say, "uh-huh, the rain will stop soon." Finally, Rachael, just peeved we weren't leaving stated "I am getting DRENCHED! I will stay here one more minute and then I am taking the keys and driving MYSELF home!" It was hilarious and we laughed at her.

Trevor, who can't have a photo taken of him without posing, eating cotton candy.

Ariel helping us set the birthday table back at home for the princess Rachael.

Our poor exhausted princess resting on the couch with her poison dart frog from the previous day's science museum trip.

Trevor, Rachael, daddy and Ariel. Rachael seemed to barely stay awake for dinner and was not really hungry. What she REALLY wanted to do was open presents!

So we did! She got Hungry Hungry Hippos from her big bro, who picked it out all by himself.

And from mommy and daddy she got an Our Generation doll she had been eyeing at the store. She was thrilled and named her doll, Rachael. heehee

But... what is in this box that makes Rachael smile so much? I love Rachael's smile in that picture.

A NEIGH! OK, A horse. She got the horse for her doll to ride. She was thrilled and played with the horse and doll for the rest of the evening.

I don't have a pic of her CD player. But grandma and grandpa gave her a CD player with Hello Kitty on it and the CDs of High School Musical 2 and Kid's Bop 80s. Rachael listened to both CDs all the way home from NC and has been quite possessive of the CD player, not allowing any one else to use it. I think it was a hit, too. heh. Her other grandpa and grandma gave her this really cute stuffed horse that you can color. So she, Ariel and Trevor decorated the whole horse. She loved that, too. Thank you grandmas and grandpas! xoxo

Rachael asked for an M&M ice cream cake. Ack! He's been attacked by crayon candles!

Blowing the candles out. Happy Birthday, Rachael!

The cake was really good, with M&M pieces in it and chocolate cakey stuff and vanilla ice cream. Yum!

Playing hungry hungry hippos.

Thanks grandma for a wonderful birthday!

Can't forget grandpa! xoxoxoxoxo

Just a busy summer

2008-07-15T18:48:00.000-07:00

I have been meaning to update this. We've been doing a lot this summer and lots has happened. Trevor turned 7!!! His bday was June 28th and we took a day trip to Ocean City to celebrate. We spent the day on the beach, splashing in the water and catching sand fleas. We rode go Karts, tried to eat birthday cake that dry ice had frozen into a rock. Had lots of laughs over that (even Trevor thought it was funny!).

We've gone swimming in the local area pools, and basically hung out. It's been a very relaxing summer for the kids and a busy one for me. I didn't quite prepare myself for the amount of writing my english 2 class would have so I have basically spent my summer trying to keep up with two classes which require a deal of writing and one class which, while not being writing intensive, seems interpersonal communication intensive. Argh.

ANYWAY.. this is not a blog about me. This is about the kids. Rachael celebrates her 5th birthday this weekend. I can't believe she is basically 5 already! Time sure has flown. We're making an impromptu trip which I am sure will prove to be very fun and Rachael will be so excited when she finds out.

Trevor has maintained his obsession with all things lego. He checks the mail everyday for his lego magazine, he spends countless hours building lego creations. Lately, he has become obsessed with Mindstorm. He got about 5 books about robots out of the library this afternoon and spent some time looking up lego mindstorm creation videos on Youtube with us. Then he designed his lego mindstorm to build with daddy when he saves up his money and can buy one. We have agreed to put forth 75% of the purchase price if he can save 25%. We're betting on a 200+ dollar price tag. I'm thinking it will end up coming around christmas time as a gift.

But here is a picture of his robot design. What I thought was cute was his spelling of 'remote control". He hears it as "Mokin trol". We talked about what remote control means, etc. I still call windshield wipers "wincher wipers" because that's how I heard it as a kid. heh.

"mejr mint" is measurement. :) His robot is apparently a bug, which can walk and hop and has an arm to pick up things and a camera that moves and takes pictures of things. He is not sure what the fan does, but wanted one on his drawing.

Lastly, we have a Roomba. We LOVE Roomba. The cats are totally, just completely disinterested in Roomba. I finally got video of just how disinterested Chaos is in Roomba. He can't even trouble himself with getting up. heh.

Big changes and new paths

2008-06-29T10:16:00.000-07:00

I have a lot to update and I just don't have a time my rambling, wordy self needs to update this blog!

But one thing I did want to post was a decision we have recently made.. and that is to give our local school system another try. I loved our year of homeschooling.. we all had a lot of fun, we learned tons, both academic and about eachother.

I have recently decided I want to try going back to school full time. I also have a rising K child, who is dying to learn to read. I was worried about finding time to study, teaching three children, and all the driving around and finding classes for everyone's respective hobbies (dance, karate, language learning, etc etc).

The worst part about the decision was MAKING it. Weighing the pros and cons, turning over possibilities and plans in my head. I'm the kind of person who needs a backup plan, and a plan c, and a plan D. So, yea, I have all those. heh. And I am looking forward to the coming year with optimism. I have talked to my children, because they are players in this decision as well. They are willing to give it a try.. Trevor- because he has age and perspective now that he is older, and Rachael- well, she will be in the same building with her big brother and she will be learning to read, which thrills her (and makes her a little nervous). My little miss Ariel will probably go to preschool (as she has asked me about a couple times now) after the school year starts and I can research my options better.

I'm excited to see them learning and growing and being involved in their education, though in a different way. I'm looking forward to little school plays, joining them for their (noisy) lunches and celebrations. I always did like those math nights, plays and things the school hosts and we'll get to participate in those, and meet new friends. I think it will be a good year. I hope it will be.

I for this blog, well, learning happens all the time, whether it's formal 'sit at a desk and open a book' type learning, or building a lego car out of legos or cooking (Trevor's latest hobby). So I will still have plenty to update this blog with. Trevor commented that the thing he loved about homeschooling was that he could learn whatever he wanted. I pointed out that, just because he went to school, didn't mean he wasn't allowed to learn about space, and it didn't mean we couldn't take out the chemistry book and do experiments or read up on the ancient egyptians. So we'll be fine. :)

Trevor's first short story.

2008-06-12T17:20:00.000-07:00

I had to write a short story for english 112. I wrote it while the girls were napping and then read it to Trevor. It inspired him to write his own short story. It was actually pretty good! It's a page long, it took him the entire afternoon to write and I'll retype it here. I did not edit his spelling (I might translate a word in brackets if I need to) but I did have to put in punctuation (ETA- NEVERMIND! He totally went back and punctuated it afterwards. I never said anything to him). Trevor knows how to punctuate, but only when I remind him to. heh. So here's his story in all caps, as it was printed...

ONE DAY NAYNAY WAS ETIG HIS HAY THEN A NUTHR NAY KAM UP. DOW YOU WONT TO PLAY! SED THE NAY. THE NAY WAS PLAYFL. HE PLAYD BOLL AND GAMS IT IS FUN. THE NAYNAY GOT UP HE WAS REDE TO PLAY. HE KUDINT WAYT TO PLAY. HE GOT A BOLL IT WAS A JIT (giant) RED BOLL. HE WAS A BLAK NAYNAY. HE GOT SUM SUN GLSZ. HE WAS GOWING TO THE BECH. IT IS FUN TO GO TO THE BECH. NAYNAY METID (met/meeted) THE NAY THER. THEY LAD A BLAGIT (blanket) DAWN IT WAS A SUNY DAY. IT WAS THE WEGID (weekend) AND HE WAS LAYIG ON THE BLAGIT. IT WAS SOFT AS SILK. HE WAS TOO SLEBE. HE GOT UP HE PLAYD IN THE WOTR. THEN HE WAS RETE TO GO HOM. WEN HE GOT HOM HIS CAT WAS AT HIS DORR WAY. HE WAS SOW TIRD HE FOR GOT TOO FED HIS CAT! THEN HE FEL TO SLEP THEN HIS CAT RAWD (ROWLED) OL NIT LONG. THE END. RITN BY: TREVOR RAY

Is that not so cute!?

Trevor, he finally got a haircut!!

2008-05-31T16:53:00.000-07:00

And a bit of an update. As you have been able to tell from the pictures previously, Trevor had a bit of a shaggy do goin' on. The boy just didn't want his hair cut. He preferred it "out of his eyes, please. But that's it!" So we did that for a little while. But after a while, I was getting kind of sick of his shagginess. Now, I don't mind him growing his hair long if he wanted, but I kind of would like him to have a style or something- short or long, whatever.. just DO something with it. So Ray and I showed him all these hairstyles and he liked a couple of them. Today Ray took him to get his hair cut!!! Yay! My little man came home a new man!

Before:

This is at the Robots exhibit at Port Discovery in Baltimore. That would be another post. I'm way behind.

AFTER!!!!

Forgive the washed out pic, I took it with our old camera because our new one and the Rebel were out of commission at the moment. But doesn't he look handsome?!

I really like his cut. It makes him look older.

And speaking of older, Trevor really has been growing up lately. OK, everything is still butts and farts (and, I think it is for other ADULTS I know, too. heh) but other things he has been doing are just different than he used to. He's walking to his friend's houses to knock on the doors (he does have to play by our house, though). Then today at the library he wanted to browse in a different section than the girls and I were in. Off he went to his section to browse. I'm just not used to him being independent like that. This is the child who cried practically his entire Kindergarten year every time I dropped him off for school.. not just crying, but absolute wails of protest that made me feel just awful. This is the kid who wouldn't go into any kind of child care or babysitting situation without being completely apprehensive about the whole thing. It's amazing what a little aging can do!

He's also been growing up in other ways. School wise, we are about done his Developmental Math book 4- adding and subtracting whole two digit numbers (like 10+50) with no carrying. Then I think we will take a break and let some of it rest for a while. He and I have been struggling with math lately and I think he is just sick of doing it. It's not the concept that is difficult, it's the word problems that end up being tricky for him. Since almost the entire book is word problems, he struggle daily. So we'll find other ways of doing math for now before picking up Book 5. He's whipping through the books, anyhow. I feel like we just started book 4. We're moving along with phonics but it's a tough call there. He is reading well, so much of the phonics curriculum is stuff he knows. And many words he knows, but he has learned it through a whole language approach, I think, rather than phonics. We've mainly been taking assessments in phonics with a lesson here and there. Caterpillars and various other things have been science, but we have been doing nothing in the way of formal lessons. We've done history here and there, too, through SOTW.

The reason Trevor went to another section of the library today was to pick up his first chapter book! Trevor has been DYING to read these Star Wars series of books. I figured it would give him a good incentive to read, so I refused to (suffer myself to) read them aloud to him and assured him that if he practiced reading, he would be able to check them out soon. He figured he was a good enough reader to get one today! Now.. wow.. all those crazy Star Wars names.. he is not whipping through the book by any means. But he is sticking with this and READING A CHAPTER BOOK! Go my little man!

Also, on another unrelated "Go little man" note.. he had been saving his money for MONTHS to buy a lego set. Specifically, he wanted an Indiana Jones one that was 30 dollars. He got his allowance saved and we went to get it from Target- he gets 3 dollars a week so it has taken him a few months to get enough money. I will say Trevor rocks at saving money when he is saving up for something he wants. But they were sold out. He opted to buy a Mars Mission set (this one) and then spent the next 4 hours putting it together. He stopped long enough to eat dinner and then went back to work on it. He has some amazing perseverance when he is interested. I wish I could get that from him on his math! He was so proud of himself when he was done and I was proud of him, too. He only needed help a couple times on a couple pieces, otherwise, he did the whole thing on his own.

Just an update on Trevor stuff!

The myths!

2008-05-31T16:07:00.000-07:00

The myths are out! Our caddies have slowly been coming out of their cocoons! Well, not exactly SLOWLY.. It started Thursday evening, I saw Shadow, our black cat, looking into the caterpillar keeper with great interest. I watched him for a moment, wondering what he could be looking at, since the keeper had nothing but sticks, dried leaves and many cocoons. I went and took a peek and, lo and behold, we had moths! OK. One moth. He was all dry and ready to fly and just chilling on the roof of his home. I left him for the night so the kids could see him in the morning. We let him go the next morning. That day, two more came out of their cocoons. But we kept missing the show! I'd find them all dry and ready to go. Determined to catch one in the act of coming out of his cocoon, I started checking their keeper every 10 minutes. I was like a crazed moth woman or something. But we were rewarded today! One we watched one as he came out of his cocoon and one right after he emerged, as he climbed his way up to dry.

I took some pictures:

Rachael displaying the moths that we found who had recently come out.

After neurotically watching the keeper for a couple hours, I was finally rewarded with a moth emerging! We found out it takes about 15 minutes for them to come out of the cocoon. They wiggle a bit, then rest, then repeat. As soon as this guy was free, he scrambled up the stick to dry.

Daniel (Trevor's friend) took this picture. I told the kids a moth was emerging, an everyone came in to check it out. It took the moth about 30 minutes to dry off. They vibrate their wings intermittently as they dry, and then again before they are ready to fly away.

Trevor took this picture of one as it was drying. When his wings are completely dry, they fold down and not up like that.

So our caterpillars are all grown up! And, regardless of the fact that they are pests that devour trees, they are darn cute and caddies and moths!

New Bern Vacation!

2008-05-25T16:42:00.001-07:00

For the past few years we have been meeting my parents at their timeshare in New Bern, NC. New Bern is this wonderful, relaxing, fun place to visit. The timeshare is in Fairfield Harbor and right on a lake with a view of the river and accompanying marina. There's a pool, game room, mini golf, playground, fishing, neighborhoods to bike through.. all right there. Not to mention the beach is less than an hour away, and the quaint, historical downtown New Bern is just minutes away. This vacation, as with any vacation with kids, completely exhausted us- in a fun way, of course! I think the kids just never stop going.. the go go go until they collapse and sleep, then they wake up again and go go go some more. So here's the pictures!

Last year in New Bern we caught TONS of fish. Just little fish that we released. This year we caught nothing. I almost caught something big- maybe a catfish? But it got off the line before I could get it all the way in. We still had fun, though.

We went to the beach Sunday. We wanted to get there early as there was rain in the forecast. However, the sunny warmth in New Bern turned overcast and very windy in Atlantic Beach! We still found lots to do. Miss Rachael ran right for the water and spent most of the time jumping in the waves. Then we looked for various shells and polished stones and Rachael was buried in the sand. We also built a small sandcastle.

Trevor, Ray and grandpa tried flying a kite, but even with the wind whipping, it wouldn't fly higher than shoulder height. They did throw around that cool flying disk, though. The wind finally turned way too strong. I swear my legs were exfoliated by the time we left by all the sand blowing. We ended up eating at this hole in the wall diner where I got a really good shrimp burger. Yum.

What else did we do? We rented a boat! We rented a pontoon boat for a couple hours and this will definitely become a yearly tradition. It was a gorgeous day for being out on the water; not too hot, not too cold, brilliantly sunshiny. The kids tried their luck at fishing but we were still unsuccessful. Instead, we enjoyed the many osprey nests (one dove at us when we got too close!) and the gorgeous, huge lake front houses.

Hello!!

The last day just couldn't be complete without a cookout and SMORES!

"Like, dude! It's totally a smore!" Totally something Trevor might say.

Ariel loved catching her smores on fire and Trevor would blow them out for her. I just held my breath and hoped no one caught on fire.

The rest of our weekend...

2008-05-06T16:14:00.000-07:00

I suppose this is not directly homeschooling.. but since "The world is our classroom", this definitely applies. Saturday we went to Burke Lake Park but I don't have pictures of that. We spent the day riding the 4.5 mile loop around the lake (Trevor rode the whole way!), fishing a little, picnicking, and just generally hanging out.

Ray was on call all weekend and Sunday he discovered he would have to go into DC to work briefly. So on a whim, we all decided to go. We spent some time at Ray's office, hanging out in the break room and drinking coffee/hot chocolate (they have a coffee machine that makes starbucks for free!). When Ray was finished we left the car in the lot and took the metro to the mall. It was a gorgeous day out, 75 degrees, sunny, not overcrowded. The kids ran for a while, then we went to the Natural History museum and discovered, to our delight, the butterfly exhibit!!! My Smithsonian membership came in handy (THANKS MOM!) and got us discounted tickets to get in. It was an amazing experience and we all loved it. We did take pictures- it's a lot easier to take pictures when both parents are there. :)

Enjoying some hot chocolate in the break room at daddy's work.

Running on the mall in DC.

Rachael holding a hissing cockroach in the insect zoo in the Natural history museum. Rachael is thrilled to realize there are people out there whose job it is to study and play with bugs! Rachael adores bugs (except spiders, thanks to me. argh). She spends much time seeking out pill bugs, worms, beetles, ant hills, and caterpillars.

Ariel holding the cockroach. She likes bugs, too, but not like her sister does. See how big it is! He was pretty cool.

The entrance to the butterfly exhibit.

A lovely butterfly. I can't remember what it was called. They gave us identification cards for finding out what we were looking at, but I can't remember all of them.

I think this one is called an Owl Butterfly. There were tons of these guys around.

A pretty green butterfly. There were not many of these and the people working there got all excited to see one.

Then a Morning Cloak (i think!) butterfly landed right on Rachael's head! The lady was right there and had to brush it off, but told Ray to get over quick so he could take a picture (he was at the other end looking at another butterfly)!

After she brushed it off Rachael, it flew right to Trevor's head! It was a very friendly butterfly.

All in all, a busy and fun weekend was had by all. Today we spent 3+ hours at Lake Fairfax where we also see fun things. No snakes today, but we did see a glimpse of a river otter- which was really exciting! We also saw a bright neon green caterpillar, TONS of tadpoles (the day I brought nothing to collect them in!) and a turtle. There were so many tadpoles the girls could pick them up in their hands. It's just amazing that a park so close to our house, literally 5 minutes away, always has new discoveries to be made.

Oh, what a busy life...

2008-05-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

It has been a busy busy weekend. I will probably chunk this into two posts. Friday, we went into the zoo for this homeschool class on squirrel behavior. It was interesting. The lady talked about squirrels and the different things they do and then she gave the kids worksheets-- the idea was to find a squirrel and track its behaviors on the chart. However, all the squirrels disappeared the minute we started looking for them! I mean, we had seen tons of them while she was talking.. we even saw a black one. But once we have to see one to study it, they all run away. Bad little squirrels. The class was fun and the kids enjoyed it, though. I did not take pictures of the class, but, since we had metro'd into DC, run the 1/2 mile to the zoo (we were late, as usual!), we were definitely spending the day there! We got to the zoo right at 10am and got home at 4pm. That's a long day in the sun for us, especially since Trevor and Rachael walked everywhere. Here's the pictures:

Since food is ever present in my childrens' minds, we ate lunch first. Trevor was thrilled to see they had Boca burgers on the menu.

A pygmy hippo. Most of the time we drive to the zoo and come in at the back parking lot instead of the front of the zoo. Coming in through the back lot gets us through the petting zoo, the big cats and the invertebrate house before everyone is tired. Coming in through the front, we saw Cheetahs, Red Ruffed lemurs/small mammal house (but no ring tails! *sigh*), the zebras, pandas, pygmy hippos, food cafe and gelato stop.

Trevor and Rachael getting their hair wet at the water fountain. It was 80 degrees that day. The DC zoo is mostly hills. It's quite a trek to make it through the whole thing. We stopped a lot.

A red ruffed LEMUR! I adore lemurs as much as I adore cats.

The zoo completely exhausted me. I love the metro, but with a stroller and three children, wow, it's an adventure. I will definitely be metroing in again, rather than driving. The kids LOVE riding the metro. In fact, Ariel cried all the way from the metro to the car (until she zonked out in the car) because she was not done riding yet!

Caterpillar update...

2008-05-06T07:51:00.001-07:00

Our caddies (as we have nicknamed them) are doing pretty well right now. In fact, we have our first cocoon!!! We are learning quite a bit.. namely, our caterpillars are feeding mostly at night. They are relatively quiet during the day, they chill on their branches and rarely eat. Around 8pm, they start getting active and before I go to bed around 11pm, they will all be chomping their leaves. We can tell how well they are doing by how "firm" they feel. Ones that tend to later die or act lethargic are mushy but ones that have little firm bodies are the active ones that thrive in their home. Here's the latest caddie pics:

Our first cocoon! I have it in a seperate jar now so we quit picking it up everytime we clean the habitat. I have seen a couple others start making their cocoons, but none completed ones. I don't know if this is a good sign or a bad sign.

Our fat caddies. We put them in here briefly every day so we can clean their home and give them new leaf branches.

Our caterpillars in their clean home. They used to eat all night and I would find the branch completely stripped of leaves in the morning. Last night, however, I found two caterpillars with threads under them (but no cocoons in the morning) and the leaves weren't touches very much. Maybe they stop eating right before they make cocoons? I'm not sure. I guess we will see! Let's hope they all survive.

Homeschooling and Socialization

2008-05-01T14:50:00.000-07:00

I got an A on this paper for Psychology 202 so I figured, since it is an important topic to homeschoolers, I would post it here as well. I touched on the stereotype that homeschoolers tend to be lacking in socialization. I liked my paper, I tried to keep it balanced. The topic is not personally up for debate by myself. It's just something I think about. Here you go: (it's 5 pages long).

Homeschooled Children and the Stereotype of Socialization

Homeschooling stereotypes often bring to mind children holed up in houses with their mothers for hours on end. The child is speculated never to see peers, get outside, or experience life beyond the confines of his parent’s values. These are among the most common stereotypes of homeschoolers but it is by no means an exhaustive list. There are perhaps as many stereotypes surrounding homeschooling as there are homeschoolers themselves. Parents may be accused to be overprotective, religious conservatives while their children are sheltered, social misfits unable to handle the competition of the real world. In fact, the most asked question concerning homeschooled children may be one of socialization, especially if judging by the 287,000 articles on the topic retrieved from a simple Google search on the subject.

This homeschooling misunderstanding raised by critics often comes from good intentions but an incorrect definition. Many wonder when children socialize with peers, which is a different topic altogether than socialization, the learning of cultural norms (Medlin, 2000). Others, however, do bring up the issue of socialization in a legitimate context and definition (Medlin, 2000). Both socializing and socialization are important topics, not to be disregarded as insignificant issues in the lives of the home educated. The issue at hand is whether the social lives of homeschoolers are any less rich and fulfilling than their traditionally schooled counterparts and does socialization as a whole outside the traditional school setting prepare children to be successful in adequately navigating their culture.

Homeschoolers do socialize, they do have friends, and they do take part in extracurricular activities. Chathem-Carpenter looked at the peer interactions of 12-18 year olds over a one month period. On average, the homeschoolers spoke with 49 individuals and the public schooled children with 56, a difference that is not statistically significant (as cited in Medlin, 2000). Both rated their interactions as meaningful but the public schooled children spoke with peers more often and had more personal conversations (Medlin, 2000). Though the public schooled children saw and interacted with more peers, they generally only had three to five close friends (Medlin, 2000). Furthermore, the homeschoolers did not feel their social lives were lacking and few listed “having few friends” as a disadvantage to homeschooling (Medlin, 2000).

As a homeschooling mother to three young children, I find our extracurricular and social outlets to be numerous in this area. As homeschooling becomes more accepted and mainstream there are more groups to join, activities to attend and friends to meet. It does take parental effort, perhaps more so than for the parents of public schooled children, who tend to use school resources for social outlets (Medlin, 2000). Yet, many surveys since the 1980s have found that almost all homeschoolers take part in extracurricular activities outside the home, with one study finding that homeschoolers participate in more activities than schooled children (Medlin, 2000). I find this could very well be true for my family. With the Internet as a valuable resource, access to activities becomes readily available. I am in my local secular homeschool group, one of many groups in my area, which offers a range of weekly activities to participate in. There are many homeschool specific extracurricular classes available outside a group setting, as well. Socializing with neighborhood kids who drop by after school or play dates I have arranged with friends who are driving distance happens multiple times a week. I feel there is much more organization and effort on my part to allow my children both structured and unstructured time to socialize versus when they were in school last year, but the effort is well worth it. Both my oldest children have personal friends they enjoy seeing and hobbies they have time for, but even with our active life, homeschooling allows us downtime as a family.

Given those studies between homeschooled children and public schooled children suggest that homeschoolers receive quality social time on par with traditionally schooled children, it brings up the question of socialization itself. It seems homeschooling families are successfully immersing their children in the values and expectation of the culture without the help of the public school system.

The American Heritage Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (n.d.) defines socialization as:
“Learning the customs, attitudes, and values of a social group, community or culture. Socialization is essential for the development of individuals who can participate and function within their societies, as well as for ensuring that a society’s cultural features will be carried on through new generations. Socialization is most strongly enforced by family, school, and peer groups, and continues throughout and individual’s lifetime.”

As the above definition implies, socialization is important in development and continues outside of a traditional school setting well after childhood. Even so, superintendents in schools have many misconceptions regarding homeschooling families and socialization (Medlin, 2000). Among them is the myth that parents wish to ensure their children’s’ ignorance and a belief that communities at large are evil (Medlin, 2000). Homeschooling parents, however, refute these claims, asserting that socialization best happens in a multiage setting under the guidance of parents and family (Medlin, 2000). In these young, formative, impressionable years, I feel it is important for children to be guided and influenced by parents and other strong adult role models, and this is easy to achieve in my decision to homeschool. In fact, studies have concluded that families’ imparting their own values onto children is not inferior to public school values (Medlin, 2000). To go one step further, albeit risk bias, would be to infer children are better socialized by parents rather than peers (Shaw, n.d.). Studies suggest that when children are with same age peers all day long (as when in a school setting) they compete with them, trying to act and dress like them (Shaw, n.d.). In other words, they become immersed in a lateral peer oriented culture separate from the adult oriented world. But in a parent oriented environment they may be freer to be themselves (Shaw, n.d.). Since they are loved unconditionally and needed in a family, the result may be an independent thinker who is less influenced by what peers think (Shaw, n.d.).

In fact, in one survey of homeschoolers, 2/3 grew up to be self-employed, suggesting that homeschooling fosters self reliance (Moitozo, 2003). In another study looking at sixty homeschoolers, sixty public schooled children and sixty private schooled children who all attended the same college, the homeschoolers came out on top in all leadership areas (Medlin, 2000). It seems homeschoolers are, if anything, receiving better socialization but reasons for this trend are mixed. One theory speculates that, because they are not peer grouped, homeschoolers learn to get along with everyone; another indicates that the individualized learning environment might foster a greater range of knowledge (Medlin, 2000). Finally, it could be that the secure, parent oriented relationships found in many homeschooling families fosters future resiliency (Medlin, 2000). Truth be told, most homeschooling studies suffer from a slew of problems including small sample size, subjective interpretations and no guiding theory (Medlin, 2000).

However, there is one study outlining the socialization of homeschoolers and public schooled children that is frequently cited as being one of the most complete and striking studies to date (as cited in Medlin, 2000). Shyers’ study compared seventy homeschoolers and seventy public schooled children, all eight to ten years old. They were put into groups based on schooling and observers were blind to which group they were watching. Observers on three trials found the public school children loud, competitive and aggressive, while the homeschoolers were polite and cooperative (as cited in Medlin, 2000). Observers also noticed that homeschoolers introduced themselves to each other and sought common interests (as cited in Medlin, 2000). They were gracious game losers and were more likely to exchange numbers for future contact (as cited in Medlin, 2000). The differences between the two groups were so pronounced that Shyers proposed that homeschooling better socializes children than traditional schooling (as cited in Medlin, 2000).

I find it virtually impossible not to provide my children with constant socialization. They accompany me in my daily activities, be it running an errand or meeting a friend. Because of this, I expect a certain level of maturity and behavior from them I would not anticipate had they been accompanied constantly by same age peers in lieu of myself. Because of my constant interaction with them as we go about our daily life, it becomes impossible not to impart cultural values to them, whether we are at the grocery store, a playgroup or chatting with a neighbor. Hence, the results of Shyers’ study seem unsurprising. I would not imply that these values cannot be achieved in a school setting, but they can certainly be achieved in a stable homeschooling family.

A far cry from the stereotype, homeschooled children are engaged in society. More and larger studies on topic of homeschooling and socialization need to be done, especially those touching on the growing number of minority homeschoolers. However, with homeschool students increasing in number every year and the choice becoming more mainstream, it is heartening to see many smaller studies show homeschooled children as both socializing with their peers and integrating into society as successful adults.

(references not included so no one feels a need to use as their own paper! :) )

Caterpillars and Hermit crabs

2008-04-29T16:44:00.001-07:00

We have new pets! I have been wanting to expand our hermit crab habitat for a couple weeks, mainly because the poor hermit crabs (we have 2) were in the bare minimum of an enclosure: no climbing things, nothing really to spark their interest and do. I had been doing some reading on them and realized we really needed a couple more and a more stimulating environment for them. I got the kick in the pants I needed when tent ceterpillar season came...

The kids and I are hopelessly in love with fuzzy adorable tent caterpillars. Yea, they eat trees. Whatever. They're cute. And there's TONS of them, so no one fights over who gets to hold the bug (something I frequently hear with roly poly bugs, lady bugs, etc). Since we're homeschooling.. THAT kind of gives me a kick in the pants to *do* something with said caterpillars. Like watching them turn into moths. We gathered a few for each child and put them in jars with leaves. But they didn't do so well. Almost all of them died and we felt horrible. So I thought about it and figured they died because the jars were too small, the leaves weren't on the branches and they were over handled. So today we expanded the hermit crabs cage to a ten gallon and used the old critter keeper (I think 5 or 3 gallon) to house caterpillars.

The girls checking out the many many caterpillars we collected. I had them each pick 2-3 they wanted to keep.

It's hard to tell how many we found. Ariel FREAKED because they were all crossing the street. She had us all picking caterpillars off the street so they wouldn't get run over. Then, she wouldn't ride her tricycle home until I walked in front of her and cleared the path of caterpillars. We had a pint mason jar and it was half full of caterpillars- we transferred them to the tupperware.

Our new caterpillar home!! We put in big sticks to climb on and I broke a branch off what I think is a cherry tree. Last I checked they had settled in and were devouring the leaves.

Close up of the caterpillars. They are cute! You can click the photo to enlarge it.

Our new hermit crab habitat! Everything in their habitat is new except the food dishes. We have 5 hermit crabs now. Wow, the ones we got were huge. They weren't even the biggest ones, ours were just smaller than we thought.

Hermit crab behavior is so neat to watch. The little guys have a surprising amount of personality. We washed all our hermit crabs and put them into the new home. Two stayed in their shells but Trevor's new one (on the bottom in the pic) started exploring, as did Rachael's (on the top in the pic) and Ariel's (the little one in the middle). Both Rachael and Ariel's we've had a while. They were not too keen on Trevor's crab. They came right up to him and did a little shell fight- maybe? To a lesser degree- no pulling crabs out of shells and minimal chirping. They both crawled on top of him. Trevor's sat in his shell until the others crawled off (they sit up there like 30 seconds, crawl down and crawl away like "Ha! So there!"). Then Trevor's would catch up to Rachael's (he ignored Ariel's after that) and crawl on top of Rachael's. This repeated for a solid hour. Yes, I watched them probably the whole time. Finally, I guess Trevor's got sick of this 30 second thing and crawled on top of Rachael's crab and sat there for our entire dinner. After that there were no more shell fights. I guess Trevor's hermit crab is maybe boss man in the tank now? I think they like their new home, they've been exploring it all afternoon.

Close up of Rachael and Ariel's hermit crabs gettin their shell fight on with Trevor's crab. ETA: Um, no they are not done fighting. I'm a little nervous this might turn into something more serious. They have been doing this since 4pm and it's 8pm now. Hmmm.. must do some research.

One more video- Ariel

2008-04-28T18:21:00.000-07:00

This was a video I tried to upload before but couldn't. It's Ariel had Lake Fairfax. *I* think it's cute because she tries to make a "ssss" sound like a snake in the beginning. Then she chows down on onion grass. Rachael and Ariel adore onion grass.

Trevor talking about his lego creation

2008-04-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

Trevor is obsessed with Indiana Jones and Legos. He built some structure with Indiana Jones in mind. I get to be clueless over a feature of the creation and Rachael totally knows what it is. heh.

Rachael is reading!!!

2008-04-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

Rachael is reading!!! We've been casually working on a couple sight words and blending sounds together to make words. She reads from Trevor's phonics readers and we loosely (very loosely) base her lessons on the k12 lessons Trevor does. She is too young to have the attention span for all the work he does. So we focus on reading and less on syllables, breaking words into parts and rhyming. This is the third story in the first phonics reader- She has never read this story before today. Goooo Rachael!!!

Spring days means time to be outside!

2008-04-18T16:58:00.000-07:00

We've been spending a lot of time outside the last few days. It's been sunny and warm. Trevor has been learning to play baseball with Ray, Rachael has been playing her soccer and they all have just been running around and pretending, playing and enjoying their newfound freedom. Today we went to Lake Fairfax. The goal was to find tadpoles. However, we just didn't see any. I don't know if it wasn't the right time or what but last year when we went we found TONS.

It was 86 degree today and so gorgeous out that we didn't let the absence of tadpoles stop us. We spent two hours there before getting a phone call from Ray and we jetted over to another park to meet him for dinner and playing at the playground. All in all, a nice way to spend our afternoon! Here's Lake Fairfax in pictures:

Finding water skippers and trying to catch them.

There, Trevor! There's one!

Ariel joining in on the creek wading. She didn't want to get in the water at first. technically, I don't think we are supposed to be wading in the water, anyway.

A snake!!! A snake! Oh, it's a snake... We saw this black snake heading down to the water (making this the second black snake we have seen in as many trips to this park). It saw us and got scared and froze. It froze so long that Trevor and Ariel lost interest. Rachael and i sat and watched the snake slowly make his way back up the creek bank and into the dead leaves again.

Hey! Look at the snake!!

As the snake slowly crept out of sight under the leaves, we thought we had seen the last of him. Suddenly, he started writhing and thrashing and flipping out! Turns out he ran into this little guy under the leaves as he was making his getaway. The black snake went one way and this guy (a baby black snake?) went the other way, saw us, turned around and headed under a tree root.

My cutie patootie, Rachies!

OK, I have video, too. I'll try to get it up, but blogger has iffy service in the evening. I really need to put this blog on our own server.

Air and Space museum trip.

2008-04-06T14:57:00.000-07:00

We currently have Ray's parents spending a few days with us and what a whirlwind trip it has been! Friday we went into DC to try and meet Ray at his office. But the GPS in the car got confused by DC's crazy streets and couldn't get us there. We finally stopped in NW DC for lunch and Ray came out to meet us, instead. Afterwards, since we had paid 13 dollars to park in the garage, we just took the metro to the Air and Space Museum. We forgot the stroller so ended up carrying Ariel, who spent the entire day exhausted. Let's just say we all got an arm workout carrying her!

Grandma and Rachael walking to the museum.

Grandpa carrying Ariel. The museum was horribly crowded with school groups. Usually things are pretty empty during the week; I guess Fridays must be field trip days for schools.

Trevor and Rachael posing by a space rover thing. We also saw a couple other space exhibits and saw the IMAX feature "Cosmic Collisions". It was very good. The kids were scared the huge planets were going to run into them. heh.

Poor Ariel just zonked out. She was uncharacteristically exhausted all day. She walked briefly in the gift store. Then she walked long enough in the metro station to smack headfirst into a railing. She was so tired she fell asleep soon afterwards (no, not a concussion). We took a break on the way back to our car at the Starbucks. We needed a caffeine fix!

Rachael drinking her drink and partially eating, partially playing with her sour gummy space shuttles from the museum gift shop.

Legos and baking (but not baking legos. heh)

2008-04-06T14:36:00.000-07:00

Trevor is on a huge lego obsession right now. He builds with legos all the time and just discovered the creator program on the computer where you can design your own creation and then actually purchase it. He has built a great many things, but not to actually purchase, just to have fun. Building them on the computer is a completely different experience than building with them in person as there is every lego block available under the sun on the computer. He made a little garden with lego food and all gated in this morning. It was cute. He usually builds battle ships and robots with his real legos. Here's a few of his creations..

Two lego guys battling it out. I think they are Star Wars guys.

Those are Star Wars guys and Trevor made various Star wars ships. I think they have battled and defeated the guy laying down.

More lego ships. One actually is a Star Wars ship he purchased with his allowance.

Baking! I made pie crust for a quiche and the kids took over the scraps. The shaped them into various things with our Christmas and Halloween cookie cutters or just freeform. I ended up making them a fresh batch of pie dough so they could make "cookies".

Rachael making cookies and sporting her Hello Kitty ears.

Ariel concentrating hard on rolling out the dough.

I sprinkled the dough with cinnamon/sugar before putting them in the oven. They came out quite tasty! I forgot to take pictures before we ate them, though.

Photo backlog..

2008-04-06T14:08:00.001-07:00

Here's a couple picture posts since I'm behind. This was our wonderful Easter vacation in NC with my parents. It was also Ray's 32nd birthday so we celebrated that, too. The weather was supposed to be cold and rainy but we were pleasantly surprised with sunny days. It was a really good time for all of us and the weekend passed so quickly!!

Trevor looking at his Easter basket.

Ariel looking at her sheepie she got in her Easter basket.

Any easter eggs down here?

Heading to the park in NC with the grandparents. Easter day was a gorgeous day.

Ray's 32nd birthday ice cream cake. We had a fun bday for Ray. We went to see Horton Hears a Who, went out for a yummy lunch and spent some time at the park.

A typical day outside...

2008-03-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

The best thing about homeschooling is our ability to spend more time doing other things besides sitting at the kitchen table. Trevor's lessons take roughly 1.5 hours to complete, never more than that and sometimes less. Rachael spends about 10-15 minutes tops doing anything seated.

The rest of their time is spent either doing extra curricular activities like playgroup, gymnastics, etc. They also spend lots of time either galloping around the house, building blanket tents, playing with toys or games, reading books or being read to. They spend some time tidying their toys, putting their clothes away or doing other basic chores (or whining about doing the chores).

With the nicer weather we have been spending more time outside, which is wonderful! It lends to the house staying neater, and nothing wears out kids like fresh air. Today I grabbed the camera and took some pictures. For those who don't know, we live in a townhome with a small backyard and a big common area with woods and grass out back. We have trails leading all over the area and a small totlot in the woods. The kids like the totlot, but they REALLY like the huge sticks in the woods.

The kids' idea of a squirrel feeder. I don't know what the logs are at the one end. The box is from the new screen door Ray installed. They colored it with crayons and put oats on the far end of the box.

Trevor putting out a pile of various nuts and things I gave him for the squirrels. He has dried figs, raw almonds, peanuts and rolled oats.

Ariel with neighs, sticks and snot. Ariel has been sick with a runny nose and a brief but high fever. So excuse the runny nose. She has sticks for the squirrel feeder. Sticks have also made bridges, survivorman shelters and various pretend fires.

The girls hiding out under what I think is a holly bush.

Practicing up for next winter's sledding. I think I have the only kids who sled in the off season. Yes. They sled down the hill in the dirt. It works, too. Won't work for me, but they seem to go pretty decently.

WOOHOOOOOOO!!!!

We are done K phonics!

2008-03-12T10:22:00.001-07:00

And Rachael read her first phonics reader!!! I changed the layout of the blog. I'm not sure I like it. If it's hideous, let me know and I will change it again. I only have a couple minutes here and there during the day to get online so I end up spending that time doing things other than look for new premade blog layouts. heh.

ANYWAY....

Today we officially finished K12's K level phonics curriculum!!!! The last unit we essentially skipped because it reviewed things he already knew relatively well. We instead focused on a few other things, like his handwriting. Trevor has neat handwriting, however; he tends to use both capitals and lowercase in his words and they are all the same size. For ease of puncuation and sentence structure we've been working on proper handwriting. He's doing well. So today we worked a bit on handwriting and spelling and then he took his final assessment. He passed with flying colours (his only mistake was spelling "catch" as "katch") and so we now will take a break from K12 until I can get his Grade one unit ordered. We'll work on spelling, sight words and reading. He is reading really well and currently reads most level 2 phonics readers with some help. He has the Danny and the Dinosaur books and reads them with almost no help. We've been checking out readers from the library- classics like Syd Hoffman book and PD Eastman and, of course, some Dr Suess as well as others like Batman and Spiderman readers, which Trevor loves but are always more difficult.

In math he's moved onto word problems (that he can read!!) that have multiple steps- so someone might start with 5 dollars, mom gives them two dollars and they have 3 dollars left. Then the problem asks how much they had and how much they spent. He's catching on and we'll be finished the math book in about a month. I think. After that I will order him Level 4 in Developmental Math and we'll also start practicing tell time on an analogue clock and the calendar.

In history we learned about Hammurabi and his code of laws. We're still mummifying our chicken, it's on its final week. I changed the salt yesterday and he is very, um, not juicy. He doesn't smell and he's become inflexible. In chemistry we're going to do our experiment mixing acids and bases together after they have reacted to the cabbage juice indicator. I bought what I hope is mineral water this time.

On a Rachael note--- Rachael has been just dying to read. She tries to guess what Trevor is reading in his phonics readers. She asks me everyday if she can read a reader. She is too young for the k12 phonics (meaning, she lacks the attention span to do a full lesson) and she wants to learn soooooo bad that she lacks the patience to learn to read a 1/2 lesson at a time. So the past week we have been working on writing letters and the sounds they make. Everyday after her lesson Rachael would ask 'Can we get out the phonics readers now?" Today I said "Sure. We cantry, but you might need more practice." What d'ya know! She happily proved me wrong! She read the first story in Trevor's phonics reader which has one sight word "is" and only short "a" sound. It was called Sam and Pam and it's a basic story about them "at bat". She read the whole thing!!!!!!!! I was soo proud and amazed!!! I am probably going to give another curriculum a try because she wants to learn soooo badly and I want her to get the basics down. I like phonics and I know some kids can learn through a whole language approach, but I think having a good foundation in phonics rules is important to reading.

So sorry no pictures! But that's our big week in nutshell. :)

Trevor is growing up.

2008-03-10T16:54:00.000-07:00

It all started this morning. I mean, we had spent half the morning together already and he had not mentioned anything. I was looking up directions for playgroup, Trevor was playing on Webkinz, when he says suddenly "mommy, my tooth is wiggly. My bottom tooth is really really wiggly."

Oh? And it WAS! Really. REALLY wiggly. How come he didn't notice this before? So I got a little melancholy on him and wistfully told him how he was getting so big and those permanent teeth were just a sign he was growing up and wouldn't be my little teeny boy anymore. Trevor, who is ever practical, just shrugged his shoulders as he walked away and smiled. "mom, you always say how I'll always be your little boy, so I still will be your little boy." AW!

Fastforward to tonight. Trevor called me upstairs because his tooth was bothering him. He had been wiggling it and it had turned sideways at this weird angle. I turned it back and it came free!! Trevor was excited, Rachael was completely thrilled beyond all reason (she bounded around Trevor, demanding to hold the tooth). Here's pictures!!!

Trevor and Rachael showing off their gaps. heh

All three kids. Rachael was not really trying to choke her sister, though she may unconsciously have it out for her. heehee.

Spring Weather and Science Lessons.

2008-03-03T16:19:00.000-08:00

What a week last week was! Ray was sick with some sort of bug. Wednesday he hit his head, Thursday he felt awful- fever, stiff neck. Basically, all the signs of meningitis. We had a quick jaunt to the hospital after doctor prescribed migraine medicine didn't work. We had to rule out bacterial meningitis. Thankfully, it was not bacterial or viral. They gave Ray some sort of anti anxiety medication that was supposed to double as a muscle relaxer for his raging headache and inability to move his neck. What the meds did, however, was turn Ray into a zombie who basically spent until Sunday morning sleeping. He quit taking them and ended up with chills and uncontrollable shivering like he was coming down off a drug. It was awful. Needless to say, no one got much school or work done those days he was sick. Trevor has been mildly sick, I think, as he's been more tired than usual and complaining about a mild earache. So I haven't been pushing him too hard. Today was our first day actually getting something besides one subject done a day. I'm not trying to set a killer pace. We'll homeschool year round and get this.. we only have 2 more units (that's about 2 weeks) left of his phonics program! Then he will officially be finished K12's K phonics program and will move onto Grade 1, where he will learn long vowels and other, phonics stuff. His K curriculum taught him all the letter sounds (we whipped through those knowns), blends like "th", "sh", "ck" etc. He's learned when to add "s" or 'es" onto the end of the word. he's learned -all and a few other two letters endings (-zz, -ss, etc). He's learned a billion sight words and just finished up the unit on compound words. For K, that's pretty intensive, and the main reason I started with K12 K level phonics even though he was in kindgergarten last year.

So that excites me the most! My little man has learned to read! It's very cool that he not only learned that; he learned it at home! We're about half way through his math book, that's a lot tougher. He struggles with math concepts.

We're still mummifying our chicken. He should have 1-2 more weeks of curing before he is done.

So today we did Chemistry. We haven't done chemistry in a couple weeks. Mainly because of the lack of red cabbage at the grocery store. It seemed it was always out when I needed it. Our latest experiment had us using red cabbage juice as an indicator to test for acids and bases. I finally found the red cabbage and made the indicator by boiling the shredded cabbage in distilled water for 15 minutes. The result was this dark purple liquid. So we started our experiment. I'll warn you, the kids are EXHAUSTED in the pictures. It was close to 70 today and so we spent a great deal of playgroup and this morning outside. We came home and the kids watched a Scholastic video from the library and then came up for science. Trevor hasn't been sleeping well. So everyone was a little subdued for the lesson.

Smiling for a photo before we start. I'm as beat as the kids, so sorry some pictures are not the best focus.

Tasting White Grape Juice. Trevor does not care for many juices except OJ. He found the grape juice sour. Rachael disagreed and found it sweet. I love how she's rubbing her chin like "hmmmm...."

In the first step of the experiment, Trevor hypothesized whether or not he thought each liquid would be sour or not sour. He had: white grape juice, grapefruit juice, lemon juice (not lemonade), mineral water, milk, tap water, alkaselzer water and baking soda water. After he guessed, he tasted and marked his results. We compared those results with his hypothesis.

Ack! That lemon juice is too sour! heehee. Trevor had to run and spit in the sink. He's melodramatic like that. heh.

Pouring the cabbage indicator into the liquids to see what will happen. Unfortunately, not all our results matched what we were supposed to get. Our mineral water did not change with the indicator, nor did the grape juice.

It looks like we're going to dye easter eggs, doesn't it? All our liquids after the indicator had been added.

Trevor's results. The white grape juice, the antacid and the mineral water were all supposed to change. The juice was supposed to turn pink, the mineral water was supposed to turn light purple and the antacid was supposed to change blue. Go figure. I have no idea why they didn't change, maybe we used a different brand or something. I used regular bottled water for mineral water and I think I used the wrong thing- the book said the mineral water would taste "bad but not sour". Aquafina has minerals added but I find it sweet. So I think mineral water is something different than bottled water with minerals added to enhance the taste. Hm. Something for some other science lesson.

The Vegetarian Adventure.

2008-02-26T16:40:00.001-08:00

So we've been slowly converting over to being completely vegetarian. We are vegetarian 6 days a week and I use one day a week to use up some of the meat in my freezer. We have stew meat and a chicken and 2 gallon sized bags of smoked turkey stock left. I plan on using the stew meat tomorrow. Since Trevor originally was okay with eating locally family farmed meat, I had ordered meat from my milk source. However, as I brought the meat to the car, Trevor said he wasn't going to eat it and he didn't want to eat any meat at all. Fine. I did explain that I had bought this meat and I wasn't about to throw it away and so we would just go through it slowly. Otherwise, we have pretty much been vegetarian.

I don't actually remember if I blogged this, but I bought a vegetarian cookbook called "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" by Deborah Madison. It is a fabulous book and was everything I was looking for. I wanted a book that had REAL recipes (as opposed to recipes using way too many fake meat products or tons of bean stew recipes), used real ingredients I could find at a regular grocery store, and had everything in it I could ever want. This book is almost like a vegetarian version of the Nourishing Traditions book- without the quotes in the sidebars. It's got recipes for stocks, salad dressings, sauces and then everything else from salads, to main courses.. everything. And everything looks good while being relatively easy to make. I read a review on the book and someone said that this was a recipe book that just happened to be vegetarian. And it's exactly true. So we've been using the book a lot.

The first week we were veggie, we ate stuff like pizza, black bean burritoes, tofu hotdogs. This week we have had seasoned pinto beans on corn tortillas with cheese, lettuce and salsa (I fried, but did not make the tortillas). Baked eggs with potatoes and swiss chard stems (which were a hit with everyone and I wish I had made more!), black bean soup with avacado and smoked cheddar, tofu in peanut sauce and soba noodles with asparagus, scallions and some really tasty soy sauce/sesame marinade. Tonight we had coconut dal over rice with homemade flat bread. Oh, and ray did bring home pizza one night. So we've definitely been eating well and everything has been REALLY easy to make. Trevor was not a fan of the asian noodles with asparagus but he adored the tofu in peanut sauce. And that was all of like 15 minutes of cooking.

So we've been eating well. I've been making what I jokingly call "poor man's stock" where I save all my vegetable scraps and when I have enough, make stock. I did this for chicken stock as well, but I found I needed more veggies with straight up veggie stock and nothing gels like I am used to having with chicken stock. I've also been inspired to get back to baking bread- for a while I stopped, then I used a bread machine, then I stopped and bought bread again. But nothing tastes quite like a load of bread baked in an oven. I'm no expert artisan bread baker or anything, but I can make a passable daily loaf of bread.

So it's been good. I like being vegetarian again. I'm definitely a healthier vegetarian this time around, though! Trevor gave me that kind of kick I needed as I have been personally contemplating going veggie again for a while. Trevor's liking the food, the girls are liking the food and even Ray likes the food (but Ray will eat anything, he's certainly not a picky eater). Below is a bread picture. I took a picture of our dinner, but while it was good, it wasn't exactly appetizing looking, so I didn't post it. heh.

Bread I baked today. A basic loaf of white bread. Usually I make whole wheat or 75% whole wheat bread but I felt like a basic sandwich bread today.

Chicken mummy, cont...

2008-02-25T13:35:00.000-08:00

I guess this is week two of our chicken mummy. The book said to check the chicken and change the salt daily the first week. I checked on our chicken all week and, since the salt wasn't excessively wet, I didn't bother changing it. I just made sure the salt wasn't soaked- though it did get damp. Today we decided we should change the salt out. Honestly, I think the salt could have lasted another couple days.

Here is our chicken in the plastic bags before we changed him out. I guess this is like a 3 lb chicken.

Trevor mixing the salt/baking soda/baking powder mixture.

Trevor using his mad photopraphy skillz. :) This is the chicken after we have scraped the salt off him. We needed to scrape as much salt off as possible, refill the cavity and recoat the bird. We put him in a new set of bags. Yes, I am wearing no gloves. I washed my hands well afterwards. I would not allow the kids to touch the chicken- they put their fingers in their mouths more than I do.

A couple notes: what surprised me the most, although it really shouldn't have surprised me at all because I have fermented and cultured foods quite a few times- just never cured anything, was the lack of odor. I was scared I would open the bag and be knocked back by the scent of stinky, rotten chicken. But no. There was no odor really, at all. The chicken was not smooshy to the touch. The surface was moist because of the salt, but not really wet.

Also.. Trevor made this really cute video where he talked about the mummification process in general and pyramids, etc. He talked about robbers visiting the graves and stealing things. It was very good and totally off the top of his head. But, when I plug the camcorder into the computer, all the buttons face downward and I guess I accidentally deleted it! I was so bummed. It was really good! So you just get nasty salty raw chicken pictures. Sorry!

History this week...

2008-02-19T16:55:00.000-08:00

And I am so mad I forgot to take pictures! We are still on ancient Egypt in Story of the World. We're taking it slow and I find no need to hurry through it. Egypt is interesting to Trevor and I both. We've hit the section on mummies and so have checked out many books from the library on Egyptian beliefs of the afterlife, the mummification process and pyramids. And.. believe it or not, one of the "optional activities" in the SOTW book is actually making a mummy! No, not a paper mummy. No, we're not going to wrap a doll in linen. Yes, a real mummy.

So today we took our victim, a small chicken from the grocery store, throughly washed him in water and then in wine, patted him dry and doused him with a salt mixture of salt, baking soda and baking powder. He is currently sitting on my kitchen counter in a couple plastic bags (we read the Egyptians used as much as 500 lbs of salt to cover the body in during the drying process- we used on big box of table salt. heh). The whole process took 70 days for a human body and will take about a month for our chicken. The first week requires checking it every day, drying out moisture and repacking it. After a week, we're supposed to leave him alone for a week. Hopefully this will not turn out to be a stinky experiment. During the second process where we use oil on the chicken, we'll rub some spices in, too, like the Egyptians would have. However, we will not be building a pryamid, nor will we be burying him with toys for the afterlife. I think we might bury him. I haven't decided.. we have about a month to think about that.

So the kids had fun with that. Tomorrow we review Chemistry and will do our experiment on Friday. So lots of hands on stuff this week!

A couple more videos

2008-02-12T07:44:00.000-08:00

After our hour was up we went to the baby hill- made for 2-4 yr olds. We were the only ones there on the hill so we got to rough house a little. We entertained ourselves on the slower hills by playing bumper tubes. The girls would go down and then I would go down on my stomach and bump into them. Trevor is also standing on the tube like he's snowboarding down. he had some pretty good balance.

Videos of our tubing trip

2008-02-12T07:14:00.000-08:00

Here Ray and Ariel are going down the hill. This was when we first got there.

This video has some extra stuff in it I haven't edited out. But Ray gave the video to Trevor and he filmed Rachael and i going down the hill. If you watch closely, you will see us start ok and about halfway down the hill, we hit the side of the hill and then start spinning. What you can't really see is that we actually tilted and I thought we were going to flip. You also can't tell that we are going REALLY fast- we must be going 50mph at least down these hills. This was the last run the girls made with us because the hills were getting super icy. Technically, they weren't old enough to be on the hills- I think it's a weight thing. They were so light and we were going so fast Ray and I were both scared that the tube would catch air and flip. You'll hear the guy say "There's ice chunks on lane 1" We knocked them loose we hit the side so hard and the guy had to tramp down and kick the ice out of the way before Trevor could go down the hill. heh.

It's a birthday!

2008-02-12T06:23:00.000-08:00

Ariel's 3rd birthday was yesterday! We had a family party and took our celebration to the tubing hills of White Tail. I have video on that I'll put up as a seperate post as i haven't put the videos on my computer yet. So here's pictures from while we were home...

It's the birthday girl!!!

And here's the birthday girl's pretty cake! We got her a vanilla buttercream frosting cake from Whole Foods. It say's "Happy Birthday Ariel" on it.

Ariel looking thrilled at her cake. And she was! We ate it with strawberry ice cream.

The obligatory shot of Chaos in a birthday hat. He looks less downtrodden than he did last year when I put a bday hat on him.

Ariel's gift from her FL grandma. Neigh stamps! she was excited and we played with them before we left for the slopes.

Close your eyes, Ariel!

Open them! A trike sized just for her from mommy and daddy. Ariel is always trying to ride her sister's bike, or the bigger trike we have. This one fits her perfectly. She was quite excited but a bit bummed that right now it's like 15 degrees out and a bit too cold to take it outside. What happened to the 70 degree weather from last week? Ah well.

After opening presents we took a hour or so to play with all the new things. Then we went out to White Tail to go tubing. Given the choice of port Discovery or sledding, Ariel chose sledding. We had a blast and I have videos to put up. After we got back from sledding it was probably around 8:30pm. Ariel had fallen asleep in the car but woke up long enough to open her present from her other grandma. This one arrived while we were gone. Ariel knew it was coming and talked about her package from grandma like all day long! So she woke up long enough to open it!

She looks a little out of it in the picture.. and she is! She's very sleepy. She was thrilled though and took her new little Pucci maltese to bed with her, along with the food and bone he came with.

So we had a wonderful day!!!

OK. I'll come out of the closet...

2008-02-09T07:24:00.000-08:00

Or I'll bring Trevor out.. He's officially a vegetarian.

It all started with Story of the World. Our history curriculum. We began by talking about the Nomads. Then the Nomads settled around the fertile crescent and became farmers. The book said something to the effect that the nomads discovered they could tame and pen up the wild animals and they didn't have to hunt anymore.

"that's cruel to the animals, mommy!" Trevor exclaimed.
"Um, how do you think we get our food now? The animals live on farms. People don't hunt all the often anymore." I replied.

Well.. the conversation kept on getting more and more indepth. I didn't mean to go into things, but by the end of our conversation- which *was* a conversation and not me being preachy- Trevor was a vegetarian.

"But Trevor, we get our meat from small family farms that allow their animals pasture and help them grow up in as natural an enviroment as possible."
"I don't want to eat meat anymore."

OK. Trevor has known- all the kids have known- that a chicken on a plate is the chicken we see at Frying Pan park. And a steak or burger is a cow. I have made this abundantly clear because I wanted them to know that they were eating an animal. I don't hide the fact that a carrot comes out of the ground or a peach grows on a tree. It was just a fact of life, nothing to make a big deal about. Well, I think this was the first time Trevor actually THOUGHT about it. To him, it wasn't fair that we trapped the animal and raised it solely to kill it- he thought the cow wouldn't really agree with that. Honestly, having been vegetarian myself, I had to agree with him. Given a choice, I'm sure the cow would rather not be eaten.

I remember playing this story based video game way back when I was younger. It was no pictures.. one of those stories you read and then you type something like "Go west" , etc. Well, I'd come across animals and I would say "Eat the ----" and the computer game would say "I don't think the --- would like that." I think that's the way Trevor feels.

So he's completely justified in how he feels about it. At first I asked if he would eat meat from small farms like we get our meat from and he agreed. So we ate vegetarian for a week until I could get my order from my local milk/meat people. I went Wednesday to pick it up. As I loaded the heavy, frozen, expensive bag into the car Trevor said "That's meat, mom! I don't want to eat meat!" *sigh* So he changed his conviction. I told him that I would fully support him if he was vegetarian but I would (probably) continue to eat meat sometimes as long as it was sustainably farmed. I thought FOR SURE, he would cave in his conviction. I should have known better.. he's my child- he can be passionate about things and focus on them completely. He's smart, he knows what he's talking about, he's not old enough to be swayed by a "trend factor" (oh, it's so trendy to be animal rights! It's so trendy to buy local!) so I should know better than to think he would cave when I did something like make the Zook's chipped steak I bought last night into steak sandwiches with onions and peppers. He ate a bun with cheese and a fake hotdog. This morning while we ate his much loved Niman Ranch bacon with eggs and hashbrowns, Trevor skipped the bacon and just ate eggs, hashbrowns and sourdough (the eggs also come from the milk source).

So he's pretty strong in his resolve to be vegetarian if he will skip BACON. He loves bacon. And i'm proud of him for sticking to his views even while we are enjoying bacon with breakfast. I'll help him.. I do see his point of view, and quite often I feel that way. I just also feel pretty crappy if I eat a great many carbs and no meat- which often seems to be the case in a vegetarian diet. Besides sourdough bread- my weakness- I am not a carb fan and that includes beans, pasta and potatoes. I am currently looking for a good whole foods EASY vegetarian (or vegan) cookbook which uses minimal meat substitutes as i still believe tofu isn't all the healthy, esp if eaten in quantities. I wonder if Nourishing Traditions can be taken in a vegetarian context.

The implications? Mom, New Bern.. I don't mind packing a cooler with a few things for Trevor. I don't know if vegetarianism will stick with him or if he will compromise and eat the meat I buy. If he sticks with being vegetarian, I'll pack some Boca burgers, etc for him in New Bern. For Pam.. if he's vegetarian while we're in Rome- I'll totally have lots of easy stuff on hand. ;) Mac n Cheese is vegetarian! It's always a favourite. heh. As of right now he is a pesco-vegetarian in that he will eat fish and dairy and eggs.

Let's apply that knowledge, shall we?

2008-02-05T14:19:00.000-08:00

Trevor has been doing Chemistry. His curriculum is specifically by Keller and is called 'Pre Level I Chemistry". Trevor is definitely into science more than just about anything else (though he loves history, too- mainly Story of the World rather than general historical topics). So far we have learned about atoms and how atoms join to form molecules. He's learned that atoms can be neither created nor destroyed but they can change places to form new molecules. He knows this is called a chemical reaction. We've done a couple science experiments and our most exciting one so far was last week when he got to mix various household things to see if they would react or not. His favorite was mixing the baking soda-water solution with lemon juice or vinegar to get a bubbly concoction that mommy was NOT expecting would overflow the cup all over the table.

So anyway, while Rachael and Ariel don't participate in the chemistry lesson, they are always there to help with the experiments (hello.. making molecules from toothpicks and marshmallows? Who wouldn't be there?). So Rachael and Ariel are learning a little bit because Trevor is.

Yesterday we had to run out to the grocery store and we were finished, I was tired and thinking about dinner, kids were all hyper and running around like maniacs. As we walked into the parking lot I exclaimed "I'm a fridge and you're magnets! Stick to me!" so the all linked arms with either me or eachother. Rachael piped up "We're ATOMS!" Trevor said "hey! we're molecules because we are all joined together!" Then when we all got to the car I told them to climb in and Trevor, all excited, said "It's a chemical reaction! first we were with you, and now we're with the car!"

They are so smart! Who needs school when we have life? ;)

Trevor taking his phonics assessment

2008-01-30T11:25:00.000-08:00

Trevor takes phonics assessments about weekly. His k12 lessons are broken down into about 4-5 days of lessons. The lessons right now mainly go over what he has already covered. Recently, he started in on sentence structure- capital letters, periods and question marks. Here is is reading his sentences and punctuating them. He's always pretty fidgetty when we do school work and yes, it's usually even noisier in the background. Rachael was making the fart machine fart at the cat, Ariel had on the Hullabaloo game and she was chatting away with herself.

A much needed update!

2008-01-30T09:47:00.001-08:00

Here's pictures from a couple weeks ago. We are members of Baltimore's Port Discovery children's museum. We go about montly, at least. It's a cool place. They recently opened a Wonders of Water exhibit. The first hour was RSVP members only so we got to experience it while it was pretty empty. Here's pictures!

Spraying water at instruments. The cymbal made the most noise.

Making "container ships" with legos. They had to balance them just right or the boats tipped.

There was a big river thing in the middle that had different buttons to push that created spraying water, or activated water things. They also had ways you could dam up the river, or divert it elsewhere. The girls loved the rubber ducks and mainly floated them down the river.

This was an area where you could see whether or not various objects floated.

"Mommy, I love these boats!" Ariel claimed every small plastic boat in the place and carted them everywhere with her until another littler kid wanted one.

Making a huge bubble!

Our day was lots of fun. We played all over port discovery, however, my pictures all seem blurry or the lighting is off. I think I had the camera on the wrong setting. None of them are really worth posting. We finished the day with lunch at Panera Bread. All in all, quite a nice Saturday!

A lesson in archaeology

2008-01-16T10:15:00.000-08:00

So today we did the activity part of SOTW history. The activity was supposed to be an "archaelogical dig" however, it snowed yesterday and it's below freezing here today. The ground is a big hard rock to dig in. So, instead of burying objects outside to dig up, I put them in a bag and pretended I had dug them up and brought them back for further study.

The point of the activity was to dig up objects and look at them and hypothesize what humans did with the objects and what importance they held to people. We decided we were green aliens from the Planet Z and humans no longer existed on earth anymore. We were making explorations to earth to discover more about the people who used to live there. So I had a ceramic bowl, a metal spoon, a pencil and a toy car. We looked at each item and discussed why we thought it was used for the purpose the kids chose. We realized the spoon was really too small to be a shovel, and it made a bad mirror since our reflection was upside down (I guess that would be a science lesson. heh). We noticed writing on the bottom of the bowl and realized we could go back to earth to search for books because humans must have had a system of writing. The toy car not only showed us that cars were probably a form of transportation, they were an important part of our culture since they were decorated (this was a funked up hotwheel car) so we must take pride in our transportation and also it was valued enough to become a toy for children as well. I kind of asked leading, open ended questions for them to come to some of their conclusions. We actually found out all kind of stuff about humans based on what we found- from our use of metal to make the spoon, to the paint on the bowl and the perfection of its manufacture (it must have been made with some sort of machine rather than handcrafted?). All in all, we had lots of fun and learned a lot. I was planning on taking pictures, but there really wasn't anything to photograph, since we were just sitting in the middle of our carpet and holding rather mundane objects.

I'll take pictures of our science experiment tomorrow. We'll observe several things close up and make conclusions based on our observations. We're learning that everything is made up of atoms right now. We started the Chemistry curriculum yesterday and read the first chapter of our textbook and talked about how everything was made of atoms. Ariel spent the whole day walking around pointing to things and saying "That has atoms in it!" It was cute.

A day at the zoo!

2008-01-08T16:34:00.001-08:00

I am incredibly proud of myself today. I made it all the way into the DC zoo without once getting lost. The weather the last couple days has been amazing- 70 degrees, sunny. just perfect for a midweek zoo trip to beat the normal crowds. The zoo was not busy at all and we got first class looks at some of the animals. We got up close to the Komodo Dragon, and we got to talk to the volunteer about the Spiny Lobster. The man was passionate about the spiny lobster and really attached to the one at the zoo. The lobster was older than spiny lobsters usually got and he had hidden himself and wouldn't eat. The man told us he was afraid the lobster was dying, but hoped he was molting. It was nice to be one of only a couple people in the invertabrates building. We went into the think Tank, which talks about the way animals think and Rachael was intrigued by the casts of the animals brains. They had a whole row of them, from little to big and we talked about the differences in the brains. Then we went around the room and looked at other things. About 15 minutes later we passed the brains on our way out and Rachael ran over and listed which brain belonged to which animal. She remembered them! We finished the afternoon with an ice cream break while the girls ran around. Unfortunately, Trevor has a cold and was feeling pretty run down after 2 hours of meandering the zoo. So he lay down next to me while the girls ran around. All in all, it was a wonderful day! If this had been a weekend, the zoo would have been PACKED!

New homeschooling supplies! I got my Rainbow Resource order today. It is fantastic! I can't wait to start. Story of the World (top right) is a classical style history curriculum. The small book I read out of and the bigger book is the activity book which outlines different activities, supplemental reading, crafts, narration, etc I can do based on what we have read in the smaller book. It goes through history chronologically, which I like a bit more than his current curriculum. Top left is a Grade one math book which has geometry, fractions, etc in it. We'll work that but mostly in Developmental math (in the middle top). Bottom left is our main science curriculum which was I really impressed with. It's Chemistry and there's a hardcover textbook, with a teacher's guide and a student's lab book. Lot of experiments. The first chapter talks about atoms. It looks really neat and very kid friendly. I have two other Singapore science books- very supplemental. They are definitely not complete. Finally, we'll do Spanish once a week with our other curriculum, which I hope is good.

Trevor on the bears during our zoo trip.

Looking at the lions, which, oddly enough, i can't see in the picture now. Most of the enclosures were empty and guys were working on the "moats" around them. But there were two lionesses in this one.

All three of them fit in that T Rex skull!

The Komodo Dragon spent a long time studying us from the middle of his cage. We were the only ones by his cage. Suddenly, he lumbered right up to the front of the glass and sat there, head high, flicking his tongue in and out at us. He was soooo cool. I think he was our favourite part, just because he was so close.

My favourite animal EVER.. LEMURS!!!

Taking an ice cream break.

Girls playing ring around the rosy. Trevor didn't feel good, he has a cold, so he was laying beside me on the bench. Rachael picked her pretty outfit today. :)

Making a dinosaur....

2008-01-06T11:58:00.000-08:00

Trevor got an Eyewitness Dinosaur kit for Christmas. The kit included a plaster mix that we poured into moulds (hm) and allowed to dry. Then we popped them out and pieced our dino together while reading about how dino bones are found. Trevor drew a dino scene on paper to make our bones look cool. However, we didn't actually realize how big the finished product would be. We ran out of room piecing him together and left off the end of his tail.

Contemplating the puzzle that needs to be put together. All those bones did look pretty confusing.

Starting to piece it together. He needed a little help.

We glued the pieces to the paper and then he painted it.

Almost done! I have to admit, we haven't completely finished it yet. Trevor got distracted because the girls wanted me to read to them. So he moved back and forth between his dinosaur and being read to. Then he moved onto another activity with a promise to finsh this one. We'll finish it this week and find a place to display him. He's pretty neat! I liked this kit, we learned lots and it was fun to do. I would definitely get more eyewitness kits.

Our vacation is finished

2007-12-31T17:08:00.001-08:00

Today was our first day back at formal seat work. I think Trevor was kind of happy. We reviewed his sight words and he remembered everything. We talked about Betsy Ross and the American Flag, and did math. I am adding three subjects a day onto our lessons, so we'll do science tomorrow. I am about to take a look at the cool dinosaur kit from grandma and we'll see if we can do that tomorrow for science and talk about what we know about dinosaurs.

I ordered a bunch of stuff from Rainbow Resources- my splurge purchase being a cool Grade 1-3 focused Chemistry curriculum. It looks very neat and I am eagerly awaiting its arrival, probably not for at least another week. *sigh*. i also grabbed the Singapore science books because they are inexpensive, Developmental math because it's basically what we're doing now, it's inexpensive and it follows a format (unlike what I follow now). My main purchase was Story of the World, which will be our new history curriculum. I'd like to start with ancient history and move our way to the present and SOTW gets good reviews. I hope it lives up to it's reviews. It's story based, so it will appeal to my children who love listening to me read.

Rachael has decided she wants to take piano, soccer and ballet on top of her gymnastics. I just laughed and told her she could pick one more class. Ariel piped up she wanted to take soccer (this was a conversation at the park today as we kicked the soccer ball around in the 50 degree December temps). Rachael will take gymnastics and ballet- at her request. I just need to find a decent ballet class. Trevor was signed up for this really cool sounding homeschool science class that was once a week for an hour and a half at a regional park. Alas, like many homeschool events in my immediate area, despite being advertised, Trevor is the only person signed up. They called me and warned me his class would probably be cancelled. This happened to the last class I signed him up for. It's hugely frustrating to me. My biggest issue is the lack of classes for HOMESCHOOLERS in my area. Most classes at a reasonable price (through the parks and rec) are not homeschool classes and are offered at 'after school times". This wouldn't be such a problem if they weren't in places like Alexandria or Arlington or even near Tyson's corner. These areas have huge amounts of rushhour that I would hit coming home. I'm not willing to sit in over an hour of traffic just to get him home from an hour long class. So the search to find closeby classes for Trevor is still on. He's kind of at an in between age, too, and many classes are for 8 yr olds, or 3rd grade level. Or for preschoolers. So this won't last forever, just for now. At least we have a small network of people we see now, but I so wish I could get him in some classes in subjects/sports that interest him.

We did buy a season pass to Port Discovery this year. It's always worth it. And the kids have gotten old enough that I feel more comfortable driving out to Baltimore during the weekdays now, and hitting PD when it won't be so crowded. We went this Sunday and had a blast. They have an exhibit on Japanese life for kids and had a school room, houses, kids stuff set up everywhere. It was realy interesting. Of course they have the huge climbing area the older two love, the Oasis full of books, etc for all of us. All in all, lots of fun.

We finally got Rachael's Webkinz working this morning and spent a while playing on that and answering science questions. Rachael earned herself 200 webkinz dollars. Go Rachie! We've started The BFG by Dahl and, as with the other books we've read by him, it's a big hit so far. We'll start the Spiderwick Chronicals (maybe) next since I saw the trailer and it makes me want to read the books! Trevor continues with his obsession over Mario Galaxy and we played it tonight. Including a nap, time at the park, running errands at Target, school stuff this morning, we had a pretty busy day! I think I will go join Ray downstairs now.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!