Aunt S Is Here!
Daddy's sister came to stay for a long weekend, and we all had a great time. The fun started before she even got here--when we went to pick her up from the airport! The girls have never been in a big airport before, and we've already been talking about the flights we'll be making over the holidays. While we waited for Aunt S's plane to arrive, I gave them a quick tour of the whole process from the ticketing counters and kiosks to luggage check to security lines and metal detectors to baggage claim. They were pretty fascinated and are eagerly awaiting their chance to experience it all.

Of course, we had to do some fun touristy things with Aunt S! We finally caught the local history museum on an open day, and got to learn all about town's history from it's ancient native American roots to the Spanish mission era to the U.S. takeover. They really had great displays--especially for a tiny place with only a $3 entrance fee for adults! Admission also covered a visit to the historic customs house next door, set up as it would have been in the early U.S. years with a large room piled with merchandise from overseas and cattle hides to trade for it, the customs official's office, and his upstairs living quarters. Both locations had park rangers on hand to answer questions and let us know about the unexpected things to see out the back door: a series of beautiful little courtyards and gardens as well as the Casa de Oro--California's first general store (now a non-profit gift shop) that still contains the safe the original owner installed under the stairs.

(left) Peek-through playing cards based on historical playing cards from the Mexican-American War.
(right) The entourage watching the fish in the museum's courtyard fountain.

After all that we crossed the plaza to one of our favorite local tourist locations: the wharf. We got to see the sea lions and harbour seals, eat lunch at a seafood place with a few of the seals, and visit the girls' favorite sea shell hunting beach. We enjoyed some quiet time that afternoon, and topped off the day by enjoying a fire pit and s'mores with friends at church.

We really wanted to take Aunt S to the beach, and the weather cooperated! Saturday was sunny and just warm enough for us to be willing to don swimsuits and face the waves. The excitement at the beach this time was watching a couple groups of kayakers. The group was an obviously experienced bunch decked out with river kayaks and fully-geared up including helmets, who popped back and forth across the surf for awhile before heading up the coast en masse. The second group was made up of beginners and didn't even seem to have a guide showing them the ropes. I attempted to help a struggle newbie stay steady enough to get past the breakers until we realized her ocean kayak was filling with water and sinking. Aunt S helped us drag it farther ashore and try to empty it. The girls were fascinated, but we did our best to help them steer clear of the kayaks landing unpredictably.

(left) Goose's favorite treasure from the beach by the wharf
(center) Building sand castles with Aunt S!
(right) Bug decided to bury herself up to her waist.

On Sunday Aunt S got to take part in our usual events: Sunday morning church, lunch out with friends, and pizza and a movie in the evening (Turbo proved a highly popular choice); and then Monday we returned to the airport to send her back East.

Baptism
Sunday morning's church service was a new experience for Monkey and Bug as several members of the congregation were baptized by immersion in what our pastor jokingly referred to as "the holy hot tub" (a portable, heated pool set up in the middle of the sanctuary). We talked about what they were doing and why, and both girls seemed relieved that they had been baptized as infants and wouldn't have to face being dunked in front of everybody. Goose wasn't around for the baptism, but she did join us for the first half of the service for the first time! She was very excited and handled it beautifully (at least until it was time to leave, then she had to be convinced to return to the nursery instead of sticking around for the sermon).

Walking with Dinosaurs
I don't usually do unit studies (studying all subjects under the umbrella of one topic), but we decided to do a mini one this week about dinosaurs. We read through a big book about dinosaurs, wrote sentences about dinosaurs, completed dinosaur themed math worksheets, colored dinosaur flash cards, watched the Magic School Bug episode about meat-eating versus plant-eating dinosaurs, and watched a documentary about the process paleontologists complete from finding fossilized bones at a dig site to piecing together clues about their lives to creating CGI models. The real highlight of the week though: getting to go to a real movie theater to watch Walking with Dinosaurs! The girls had never been to a theater before, and they were really excited to watch a movie on the big screen! The movie itself was a bit intense for Monkey (the protagonist was a baby herbivore, so he did spend most of the movie escaping one form of mortal danger or another; I kept having to remind her that we should stay so she could see the happy ending), and our experience involved lots of questions and commentary (all relevant to the movie of course). Fortunately, it was a weekday morning matinee for a dollar per person, so the crowd consisted almost entirely of small children having equally dramatic and inquiring responses to the film.

Library Day
We made it just in time to catch the last half of storytime this week, and the girls bravely found seats among the kids on the floor while I grabbed a chair at the back of the room (this independence is a big deal!). The theme this week was foxes, wolves, and coyotes with the librarian sharing lots of classic stories with the kids. Much to the librarian's amusement, Bug coincidentally wore her "What does the fox say?" shirt that day. We came home with these books:
Faraway Home
Alphabeasties
Matthew's Dream
Swimmy
Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs
Who Took the Farmer's Hat?
Leo the Late Bloomer
Hula Lullaby
Open This Little Book
Poco Loco

Fun at the Mall
A trip to the mall falls under educational? Absolutely! At least it did this week. I recently discovered that Williams-Sonoma occasionally offers free cooking classes for kids, so I had Monkey and Bug signed up to learn how to make smoothies and milkshakes on Saturday morning. The girls were a bit disappointed that it wasn't more hands-on, but the poor chef did end up with more kids than he had on the roster. They did get to actually use several of the specialty gadgets he had on hand and sample three different concoctions--strawberry smoothie, mint chocolate milkshake, and a creamsicle shake. Bug made sure to grab a copy of the recipes, so we can try them at home sometime. (Meanwhile, Goose and I went next door for gourmet cupcakes. Yum!) While Goose and I were waiting for the big girls class to be done we discovered mall employees setting up a kids festival for the afternoon, and we decided to bring Daddy back for lunch and more fun. The girls got to ride ponies, eat free snow cones, scoop rubber ducks out of the fountain, play with tinker toys and magnetic building sets, and watch a gymnastics school demonstration. One of the biggest things though was getting their mall "passports" stamped (a card with three stores listed; the girls could receive a small prize at each store on their card). Of course, for the mall it was just a marketing ploy to get everybody to walk into their businesses, but for our girls it was a challenging exercise in confidence and social interaction. The girls had three different cards, and they each had to enter the stores on their list (with either Daddy or I), find a salesperson, and ask them to please stamp the passport loudly and clearly enough to be understood.

Fleas :-(
So, we had an unexpected science and health & safety lesson toward the end of this week: our cat--and therefore our house--have fleas. So gross. We talked about fleas and why they bite, we learned to spot them, we learned about veterinary medicine and how to apply said medicine to a very large cat, we learned about flea spray and bug bombs--how to use them and why little girls aren't allowed to be part of that process.  All told, it was a highly educational week!

Going Camping: Mt. Diablo State Park

Proof the girls had a good time: They were covered in dirt!
(This photo doesn't even come close to doing it justice.)

Despite being so close on the heels of our recent roadtrip, we decided to take advantage of Daddy's one truly free weekend this quarter to go camping. We packed up our gear, headed to Mt. Diablo, and had an awesome time!

The girls got to see real raccoons for the first time, and these little beasts were bold! Daddy did a good job of scaring them off from our campsite, and we quickly realized we needed to keep any food-related items locked up in the car. Some of our neighbors weren't so fortunate: That evening when we decided to take a stroll to a nearby overlook to watch the sunset, we caught one raccoon successfully breaking into someone's bear box (it was an ancient wooden one), then just one more campsite down we spotted two raccoons actually dragging someone's cooler into the woods! We almost couldn't believe it! In fact, when I ran into the owners of the cooler later, they didn't believe me either until I pointed in the direction the raccoons had gone, and they found the cooler (fortunately, still unopened) half a dozen yards into the woods. Over the course of the weekend, we also spotted a fox, a rabbit, a lizard, and a number of small birds.

(left) That's right: in California we have pine cones as big as your head! (center) Saturday was cloudy, but that hardly matters when you're camping above the clouds. (right) We made it to the summit of Mt. Diablo!

Our Saturday morning, we decided to make the hike to the summit. It was only a little over a mile one way, but there's a 1,000 foot change in elevation, so it gets pretty steep! The girls were a bit whiny at first, but they found their stride and completed the hike beautifully. The big discussion on the way up was forest fires: the trail went through the site of one that happened less than a year ago, and while the smaller vegetation was back in force, there were a lot of blackened trees to be explained. We talked not only about how dangerous it is (and why there is currently a fire ban at the park) but also about how fires can actually benefit certain species. Once we reached the top we gratefully toured an air conditioned visitor's center and utilitized their real bathrooms and water fountain (thanks to the drought, it's currently the only potable water source in the park). The visitor's center itself is inside an old beacon tower that was used to guide aircraft before the invention of electronic navigation. It was shutdown after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the beacon is still functioning and is lit as a memorial on Pearl Harbor Day every year. The hike back down to the campsite was a much faster trip! The big discussion on the way down was gravity. It's a topic we've discussed before, and Bug was explaining to Daddy how it was harder to hike up because we were working against gravity, but now it was actually helping us. She also made the connection between using her walking stick to slow herself down on the steep sections and Daddy's using the gears in our car when we descended Pike's Peak a couple of weeks ago.

We returned to our campsite for a picnic lunch and a rest in the shade, then hit the trail again! This time we headed for a section of the park called Rock City that turned out to be even more fun than we anticipated. It featured a number of huge sandstone rock formations that people had worn hand and foot holds into for those adventurous enough to do some bouldering. There were also several small wind caves to be explored. Our little climbers were in heaven, and Goose was incredibly disappointed to discover she was too little to climb one of the tallest formations.

I think this rock was probably the height of a three-story building, and Daddy guided Monkey and Bug to the top!
They did manage to get Goose into the wind caves though!

Library Day
We actually did go to the library last week--swimming lessons conflicted with storytime, but we squeezed in our own visit on Wednesday afternoon. The girls picked out a LOT of books in very short order, and then had fun playing with the puzzles a bit. We came home with:
The Princess and the Three Knights
A Train Goes Clickety-Clack
Mouse in Love
When the Fireflies Come
Fish Is Fish
Whose Mouse Are You?
Olvina Flies
The Growing Story
Timothy Cox Will Not Change His Socks
Does Anybody Love Me?
Lunchroom Lizard
The Jungle Book (illustrated, abridged chapter book; the girls wanted to check this out for their bedtime reading with Daddy)

Swimming Lessons
The girls finished up their swimming lessons this week. Goose really came through this week! No tears, and lots of accomplishments! She was willing to dunk herself underwater, and her teachers could even let go of her when she was practicing her back float and front stroke without her freaking out. (She can't actually go anywhere using that front stroke, but attempting it solo is a big deal.) She was very excited that she'll  promote to the Angelfish level! Monkey is still struggling with a willingness to put her face underwater, and that's really holding her back. Her front and back stroke are improving, but she still needs some light support, and her teacher requested that she repeat the Otter level. Bug on the other hand really took off this week! She can now swim several yards independently using freestyle or the back stroke, and she succeeded in "diving" for rings (she wasn't in over her head, but she had to completely submerge to reach the ring). Like Goose, she was thrilled about getting promoted to the next level! The next round of swimming lessons (we're planning to sign up for two days a week in the fall) will be the first time Monkey and Bug will be in separate classes for anything. That may be a bigger challenge for them than the swimming!

Three Rs
Monkey--reading: Hop on Pop; math: addition, fractions, time, place value; writing: Exodus and Deuteronomy worksheets
Bug--reading: Whose Mouse Are You?; math: addition, subtraction, fractions, time, multiplication/skip counting; writing: Exodus and Deuteronomy worksheets

Happy Independence Day!

We started off our 4th of July celebrations first thing in the morning with patriotic parfaits (sliced strawberries, vanilla yogurt, and blueberries) and watermelon stars for breakfast! Bug woke up early and helped me make the parfaits, then Monkey and Goose took turns using a cookie cutter to make the stars. Later that morning, the girls got to watch their very first parade! Fancy floats, huge balloons , cool cars, dance troupes, soldiers, sailors, and airmen in dress uniforms, clowns, history re-enactors, etc.--they loved it! We followed the crowds to a lawn party and patriotic concert the city was hosting, but decided we weren't up for fighting the ridiculous crowds.

"Is the parade coming yet?"

We decided to find our own all-American lunch (topped off with milkshakes) at a local burger joint. Yum! That afternoon I printed up Independence Day coloring sheets for the girls, and the whole day was filled with discussions about what exactly we were celebrating. The discussions culminated with a viewing of Liberty's Kids "The First Independence Day," so the girls got to see an animated historical fiction version about what actually happened. (Liberty's Kids is an acclaimed series about the Revolutionary War through the eyes of three colonial kids. We'll be watching it in its entirety this winter when we study colonial America.)

Bible Studies
We finished Mark's gospel before we left for our trip to Colorado and started a new study. For the forseeable future, we'll be studying major characters of the Old Testament. I started making bookmarks that list the Bible references for stories related to a particular character. We started with Jonah (because he had a short story we could easily get through before our trip), and now we're about halfway through the stories of Abraham. The benefit of having the bookmarks, rather than just picking up the Bible and reading, is that it means I've read through them ahead of time and can easily skip over any bits our girls aren't ready to deal with yet. The girls also like being able to help find the references listed, then check them off once we've finished. Of course, we're still reading the Bible storybook for Goose's benefit, but the big girls are ready for more details than the storybook gets into.

This month at church Monkey and Bug's class will be studying Exodus and Deuteronomy, and I'm sure Miss C has lots of fun things for them to learn and do on Sundays! She also prepared a folder for each kid to take home that includes activity sheets and coloring pages. Apparently, there's a prize available for each kid who turns in a completed folder by the end of the month, and our girls are just loving having a ready supply of things to color while getting previews of the stories they'll be learning at church. I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but our whole church is studying Jesus' parables this summer on Wednesday nights with age appropriate Bible studies/activities for everybody.

Swimming Lessons!
The girls were so excited (and a little nervous) about starting swimming lessons on Monday! We've had a lot of discussions about being brave (doing something good even when you're scared), and the girls have done beautifully. The classes are small--only 4 kids--so the girls get plenty of time with their teachers. Monkey and Bug are learning to glide and to do the freestyle and back strokes, along with doing other fun things like jumping in. Goose had a few teary, difficult moments at the beginning of the week (reasonable since she's only three and this is the first time anyone but Daddy or I has taught her a skill), but her teacher is great and she had definitely gained confidence by the end of the week. She's practicing holding her breath underwater, blowing bubbles, floating on her back, and doggie paddling.

The entourage waited so patiently for their classes to get started.

The Three Rs (Plus a Bit of History)
This week we were playing catch up from our two weeks away, preparing for our camping trip this weekend, and of course spending every morning at swimming lessons. As a result I decided to take it easy this week and just make sure we covered at least one formal lesson everyday.

• Monkey read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! and Bug read Rosie's Walk.
• Bug practiced addition, subtraction, and multiplication. Monkey practiced addition and fractions; at some point this week, she also started piecing together the concept multiplication ("Hey, Mom, I know that two 2s is 4 and three 2s is 6!")
• Both girls completed word games from their Exodus & Deuteronomy folders for their writing lesson.

By popular demand we also did several history lessons this week: they wanted to read more Norse mythology and (no surprise) they're pretty fascinated by the Valkyrie.

Science: Electronics
The girls have done more electricity lessons with Daddy using the SnapCircuits set. In fact, after building something with Daddy and reviewing how it all worked, Monkey and Bug decided to take on a pretty complex project of their own. With minimal assistance from Daddy, they built something called a Space War Alarm (it makes cool noises that definitely sound like they came out of a sci-fi movie).

Fairy Tale Reality Check
The girls and I had a great dinner table conversation about how not every fairy tale that ends in a wedding is actually a good model for a healthy marriage. It started because of a  princess book Goose picked at the library; we had read it that afternoon, and the girls realized with surprise and confusion that the princess in the book doesn't have a name! (Bug asked, "How can the knight be in love with her if he doesn't even know her name?!") We talked about how marriages are built on a special friendship, common beliefs and interests, an ability to work together, etc., not on wealth and beauty (the princess in the book) or strength and common sense (the knight). The girls decided that Fiona and Shrek made the cut as did Aziza and Ahmed, but not Cinderella and her (also unnamed) prince.

ROAD TRIP!
Daddy had an opportunity to take two weeks of leave, so we decided to hit the road and head to Colorado! We spent a week at Spring Canyon, an OCF camp in the Rockies, with several days of traveling on either side. Once again the entourage proved themselves stellar travelers.

Happy travelers showing off their Navajo  hair accessories!
(This didn't happen til the way home,
but it's the cutest picture of them in the car.)

En route they occupied themselves with the usual road trip forms of entertainment: playing with figures, drawing with Magnadoodles and the Etch-a-sketch, reading books (particularly fun now that Monkey and Bug can actually read books with confidence), watching Little Pim Spanish videos and a few movies (Lion King, The Incredibles, The Princess Bride, Star Wars), and coloring. Of course, a lot of entertainment can be found simply looking out the window: We went from a coastal area to the mountains around Tahoe, through flat desert and mountainous desert, to the Rockies of Colorado and back again. So many things to see! Solar farms, wind farms, regular farms, vineyards, orchards, ranches, oil derriks, trucks, trains, Army convoys, fun-shaped clouds, different kinds of buildings, rivers, lakes, and waterfalls. The list could go on and on! And obviously, with this crowd all these things had to be discussed in detail as we went. On the way home, I also pulled out a list of "100 questions to ask your spouse" that I printed off of a blog somewhere to occupy Daddy and I. It didn't take too long for the girls to realize what we were doing, and they wanted in on the action too. We managed to spend several hours discussing favorite this or that and "what if you could . . . " kinds of questions.

(L) You can see the salt flat past the parking lot.
(R) Up to their knees in the Great Salt Lake!

(L) Look! It's Balancing Rock!
(R) You can see Delicate Arch in the distance.

On the way to Spring Canyon, we first did an overnight in Reno, NV. We didn't actually do anything touristy there, but we did get to visit a college buddy and his wife and two kids. Next stop, the Bonneville Salt Flats (really unbelievably flat and white; this is where the land speed records are set) and Great Salt Lake (we toured the small visitor center to learn the history and current stats, then went wading into the lake itself). Our final stop was Arches National Park where we drove through some truly amazing rock formations and completed a short hike to see Delicate Arch.

We eventually reached Spring Canyon itself, and the girls had a blast with the kids' camp activities (a combination of VBS and nature camp) during the times the adult sessions were going on. They went on nature walks and collected items for crafts, learned Bible stories and did a few crafts related to those, went canoeing and fishing in the pond, had a bonfire and made s'mores, and played in Critter Gulch (an awesome western-themed pretend-play space) and at a couple of playgrounds (complete with a climbing wall--highly popular).

(Clockwise from top left) The girls navigated a canoe without a grown up paddling! (It's a tiny pond, and Daddy was out there in a kayak.) Monkey taking a quiet moment by the pond. Goose loves the climbing wall! The girls enjoyed HUGE slices of watermelon after a cookout. Monkey and Bug are intrigued by watching their teacher gut the fish they caught (The camp cook fried up the trout and served them to the girls for dinner--they were so excited!)

We had the afternoons to do with as we wished as a family: We headed to the nearest town to poke around the historic downtown area (and mostly to get laundry done). We visited the Mt. Princeton Hot Springs (the family-friendly section was really just a big swimming pool; the girls loved it, but we realized it was probably more of a novelty for locals since the only way to comfortably go swimming at that altitude is to get in a hot spring). We hiked a piece of the Continental Divide; we attempted to get all the way up on the ridge, but kept running into impassable snow banks (!!!) despite trying three different trails. We also spent an afternoon hanging around the camp practicing with the air rifle and archery and canoeing.

Hiking the Continental Divide! This was the one passable snowbank; we really couldn't get through the others. We finally found a small peak we could get to the top of, but poor Monkey was suffering from a cold that day, so Daddy offered to carry her up (she was miserable but wanted to keep going so badly, she never complained once!)

They've gotten a lot stronger since the last time they pulled out their bow! Monkey also got several arrows in the target, but wasn't up for having her picture taken.

Spring Canyon's schedule gave us one free day, so we got in the car again and made the relatively short drive up to Colorado Springs, CO. First, we drove to the very top of Pike's Peak! Only one little girl freaked out a bit about the winding road up the mountain. Fortunately, Monkey was sitting in the middle, so she could pull her knees to her chest, cover her eyes, and pretend we were just on a regular road. Everybody enjoyed the views from the top though! Perhaps the highlight of that adventure was getting to see all the race cars on hand for the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. The race happened later in the week, but the cars had been practicing before the tourist arrived. We got to see the cool race cars going back down the mountain as we headed up. Next we headed for the

Garden of the Gods, where we got to see more amazing rock formations, watch a teenage girl climb the face of one of them (our three little girls are now looking forward to being big enough to do that!), and of course doing a bit of scrambling around on the rocks themselves. Before heading back to camp, we stopped in at the Air Force Academy, where we did a quick tour of the visitor's center, viewed a Boeing B-52 on display, and

did a walk through of the Chapel (a really amazing building--Bug in particular was very excited about getting to go into "the spiky building").

Yep, this happened.

When our week at Spring Canyon was done, we decided to spend a couple of days in Durango, CO, before heading home. On the way there, we discovered Treasure Falls, a beautiful waterfall you can see from the highway. We decided to stop and do the 1/2 mile hike to get to the best viewing spot. From Durango we spent one day exploring Silverton, an old mining town. We wandered around the historic downtown, then headed out of town on a gravel road to take a tour of an actual gold mine that was in operation until the 1970s. We arrived at the mine, unloaded the girls, and discovered a punctured tire so bad I could actually hear the air rapidly escaping the tire. Fortunately, we made it back down the mountain and across town to the gas station before it completely deflated. The girls then spent a good part of the morning picking dandelions and watching Daddy change a tire. We decided to eat lunch at a local saloon, then explore our options for not driving our car back up that gravel road. What we found was a local shuttle service: we piled into a beat up suburban driven by a 60-something weathered Coloradan (complete with cowboy hat, ponytail, and wiry goatee) who gave us the insiders tour of Silverton (including waving to the Sheriff while she grilled in her backyard and seeing the remnants of a number of abandoned mills). He got us safely to our tour of the Old Hundred Gold Mine, where we (properly suited up in jackets and miner's helmets) descended into the mountain in a tram, then did a walking tour to learn about the conditions, methods, and machinery involved in gold mining over the last hundred years.

(L to R) Our little miners are all suited up and ready to get into the tram and down the Old Hundred Mine. After the tour we panned for gold (that's our local guide on the right).

The next day we explored Mesa Verde--the 700-year-old cliff dwellings of the Pueblo peoples. We opted for the most adventurous guided tour and got to explore the Balcony House, including climbing a 32-foot wooden ladder (along with some shorter ones, all of which the girls loved), scrambling up hand and foot holds cut into the rock, and squeezing through narrow tunnels in and out of the complex (Daddy barely fit through the last one!). Next we watched a short film about Mesa Verde, viewed the detailed dioramas in the museum showing what life was like at different stages through the millenia, and went on a short hike to the Spruce Tree House, where we did a self-guided tour of a different cliff dwelling. At the Spruce Tree House we even got to climb down into a restored kiva (subterranean meeting room).

(Clockwise from left) This is the 3-story ladder that our little adventurers climbed with more confidence than some of the
teenagers on our tour! Goose and Daddy ascend the last few rungs of the ladder. The girls head into one of the tunnels (yes, Daddy managed to squeeze his broad shoulders through there). Daddy and Goose follow the big girls and I up the hand and toe holds.

Outside and inside the kiva

The following day, we piled into the car again to spend two days covering the remaining 15 hours of driving home. We had just one touristy stop on the way: Four Corners. Monkey and Bug were particularly amused by being able to stand in two or more states at the same time. A number of Native American crafters had set up shop around the monument, so we got to see people beading jewelry, decorating pottery, and carving arrow heads. We also decided to sample some Navajo fry bread (yum!) while waiting for the arrowsmith/fletcher to finish an arrow made with a blue goldstone arrowhead for us.

After such an incredibly busy and exciting two weeks, the girls actually seemed to enjoy the quiet hours spent in the car on those last two days, and we were all glad to tumble into our own beds when we finally made it home!

I think we wore them out a few times (and yes, the top left photo was taken when Goose fell asleep in the dining hall).