Spring days means time to be outside!

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.

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)

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..

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...

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!

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.

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.

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.

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...

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...

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

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

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!

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...

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?

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? ;)