Hello/Goodbye, Aunt E!
The highlight of the past couple of weeks was definitely a brief visit from Aunt E before she heads back to Tokyo for four years. Of course, we ditched our formal lessons for three days, and had a blast hanging out with Aunt E instead! For her first full day here, we headed to the beach. It was too chilly to get in the water, but E and I had a good long time to chat while the girls looked for treasures and ran up and down the sand dunes. They didn't find many critters this time, since they were staying out of the water, but there was a lot of really pretty driftwood lying around.

We also made marzipan while Aunt E was here. So pretty and delicious!

The next day's fun outing started at the wharf. It was low tide, so the girls were especially enthusiastic about exploring the little beach nearby. We found lots of pretty shells and sea glass, but we were most excited about the snails! The little tidal pools were littered with them. Bug found several that weren't clinging tightly to the rocks, so we got to have a peek at their feet wiggling out from their shells. Then we watched them do a bit of exploring when she put them back. We also spotted a number of harbor seals and spent some time watching a funny little western grebe (a shoreline bird) looking for lunch.

We had intended to spend a bit of time after our picnic lunch exploring the little maritime museum nearby, but sadly it was between exhibits. Instead we headed into downtown to visit the art museum, and I'm so glad we did. The current exhibits involved a lot of interactivity which the girls loved. The first exhibit displayed staff favorites from the museum's permanent collection and solicited written responses to the works from museum goers to be written on index cards and added to the exhibit. Each girl picked a favorite work and wrote (or dictated) a few sentences about it. Another exhibit of a local impressionist painter was displayed with poems accompanied several of the paintings, and paper and pens were available for viewers to write their own poetry about the scenes. Bug wrote a short poem, but the others were satisfied to just look at the the paintings. We zipped through a photography exhibit pretty quickly, but spent a fair amount of time in an exhibit about military insignia with works by local service members. One of the galleries featured a large table with paper and coloring supplies where the girls could create their own insignia and pin them to designated display wall. (Just in case you're keeping track this "non-lesson" day involved science [snails & beach combing], PE [rock scrambling], art [viewing & creating], history [in the insignia exhibit], and writing, not to mention the music and literature that happened at home just for fun.)

Aunt E happens to be a professional musician, and the girls had a great time showing off their skills throughout her visit. Bug seemed especially inspired by having a new audience to play for, and she practiced all the songs she knows on multiple occasions. From my perspective it was nice to have her around to help with Goose's piano playing. I can make her practice, but Aunt E can actually help her!

Daddy's Home!

Human totem pole! (Bug really is
standing on Daddy's shoulders here.)

Ok, so Daddy was actually gone for a weekend to go house hunting, but more than that he's been crazy busy at work for the last couple of months. Now that that's done (hooray!), he actually got to spend a Saturday at home instead of at work! The girls were thrilled! They spent lots of time wrestling (Poor Daddy ended up with some bruises, but a good time was had by all.) They also finished reading Redwall (and started the third Harry Potter book), and they pulled out the Snap Circuits kit. It's been awhile since we've remembered to get into that, and Daddy says they're getting pretty good at figuring out how things work and how to make them work. He does a lot more supervising than piecing things together now.

Actually unrelated to his new-found time at home, he recently taught the girls basic waltz and swing steps. I've seen them practicing with each other during their little Pandora DJed dance parties. Fun times!

Adventures with Goose: X-rays and 5Ks
Goose learned a very important lesson a few weeks ago: She may only put food and drink in her mouth. I probably had her repeat this statement dozens of times after she swallowed a penny! She swallowed it on accident (I never could get a reason out of her for why it was in her mouth in the first place), and she panicked. We called the nurse hotline and were assured that it should pass through just fine, but if we didn't see it in a week to call back. Well, after a week of having Goose poke through her poop with a stick (she actually thought this was kind of interesting/funny at first, but it got old fast), no penny had been spotted, and we called the pediatrician who had her come in for an x-ray. Goose cooperated beautifully and was pretty fascinated by the pictures of her insides. We were both pleased when the radiologist could confidently tell us that the penny had indeed passed unnoticed. Whew! Goose also rejoiced that Daddy would finally stop calling her Lincoln.

On a much more pleasant note: Goose and I ran a 5K together! No personal records were broken during this event, but we had a great time, and Goose had the gleeful of experience of putting some of the adult participants to shame. She was also the first female child runner to cross the finish line after completing the race on her own two feet, and she received a piggy bank full of candy for her efforts! It's the first actual prize she's won for a race, so she was pretty excited. I should note: This girl is getting faster! I actually chose to run this race with her, because I'm pretty sure she's going to outpace me soon, and I don't know how many opportunities I'll have left to run with her!

Commonplace Books
Monkey and Bug both recently decided to start commonplace books--notebooks where they can write down the random interesting things they learn that aren't actually part of our lessons. This was originally Bug's idea, though Monkey thought it was brilliant and asked if I could buy her a notebook too. (Bug found a blank one lying around.) So far, Bug's book has sections about silent films she's watched, observations she's made about the backyard gopher, and Japanese and Chinese kanji she's learned from picture books. She even numbered the pages and created a table of contents. Monkey has also pointed out that they should make sure the movers don't pack their commonplace books because they will be learning so many cool things during our cross-country road trip in a few weeks. (That was this week's "You know you're raising good home-schooled military kids when . . . " moment.)

Tidbits

• Bug is still sewing: she recently made a skirt and sunhat for one of her stuffed animals.
• We recently started a study of the U.S. Presidency. We'll be learning about each individual President as well as the election process, job description, and three branches of government.
• We recently had a lengthy discussion about relative density and buoyancy.
• Monkey and Bug finished their Awana books! Fortunately, I think at least some of those Bible verses made it to long-term memory.