Getting Ready for the 4th the Lazy Way.

I wanted to spend a week studying, with the kids, a little about the 4th of July and what the day is all about. Last year we spent the whole month of June studying the Revolutionary war, or at least what started it. This year I decided we should take a week to review a little of what we learned last year and revisit some of the lives of our founding fathers. I admit I took the lazy route and got a bunch of audio books for the kids to listen to.
Jean Fritz books are excellent and my kids enjoyed them. Full of information but often with a little humor to keep the kids interested. Our library has many of them accompanied with an audio CD which was so nice because when I sit down to read to the the kids, before too long I am dozing off mid sentence. So each day we listened to one of these great biography type books and learned a little more about the revolution and some of the men that helped make it happen. I have a few more, John Hancock, George Washington and Patrick Henry, that I had placed on hold but they hadn't come in yet, (maybe someone else is being lazy too and has these ones out right now!) so we are probably going to continue listening to books about the revolution into next week as well when these books come to sit on the hold shelf.


I also found another book (with a CD of course) which was also very interesting, The Journey of the One and Only Declaration of Independence. I think we will relisten to this one again today (the 4th).

But we also learned more about George Washington this week. I actually had to read the biographies I found of Washington. I didn't get to be as lazy and let the CD's do all the reading. But we read a few different biographies of our first president and now Ian at least recognizes his picture when we see it and knows who Washington was. He was very excited that Washington was on the 1 dollar bill and also on the quarter and got very excited when we saw a poster of a painting of George Washington on the walls of the Library when we went this week. So a little is sinking in to my 5 year old.

I wish I could say we did some fun crafts or projects to go along with our reading but like I said this was all done the lazy way. I just can't seem to get motivated to do much more than this lately. Taking naps and lounging around sound so much better to me at the moment.

I hope you all have a great, relaxing, safe, and enjoyable 4th of July.

The Sign Comes Down

My Mom sent me these photos she took as the sign was taken down outside my Dad's, now my brother's, car dealership.



It is so sad to see. Yes, my family is a bit bitter about the whole thing. It is so hard to see a business my father bought before I was even born and then spent years working hard to build up taken away from him in this way. When he bought the franchise all those years ago, it was in a different location with a tiny little lot that barely held 5 or 6 cars. Over the years he has grown the business and has done well and has been able to contribute to the community. Now, without any compensation, he is no longer a Chrysler, Dodge, or Jeep dealer. It is difficult not to take that hard


My Dad recently retired and my brother has been running the dealership. He, my brother, is trying hard to keep the place going, and to maintain the relationships and maintain the reputation that the business has built over the years. You can still go get your Chrysler cars and trucks fixed there and of course they do still have a lot of pre-owned cars you can look at.


A few years ago, Ok... time passes really quickly, a lot of years ago the dealership added the Kia line. So you can still get new Kia cars, suvs and vans there. We love our Kia van!

So if you happen to be in the Mother Lode then look for a sign with this logo


That other sign is gone.

More Nesting/Prep work - One month to go!

On Saturday we decided to go look at beds. We decided to get a new twin bed for our baby. No she isn't going to be sleeping in it any time soon. Her crib bed is still hanging out in our walk in closet waiting for me to finally get it set up. We just thought it would nice to have an extra bed in the house when the baby comes. We had a free bed when Henry came and it was very nice to have. It is a great place for Grandma to sleep when she comes to help. It is also the place my husband escapes to when baby wakes up several times a night and he needs to get some sleep so he isn't a zombie at work the next day. Well Saturday we went to the bed store and were just going to look but ended up buying one because they are having a great sale and figured why wait.

So the bed is being delivered tomorrow, Monday. In anticipation of its arrival we were clearing out a space in Sophie's room for it. But Sophie has the smaller of the two kid bedrooms and we decided that putting two twin beds in her room wouldn't really work space wise. We thought the two twins should go in the other, bigger, room and the bunk beds should be in the smaller room. So tonight we set to work taking apart the bunk beds and then reassembling them in the other room. The kids are so excited to be switching room! The boys will now share the smaller room and have the bunk beds up (we had them separated in the other room). My poor husband did all the heavy lifting while I just pushed things around a bit and swept all the dust bunnies that we stirred up as we moved everything around. He didn't want to send me into labor, although I feel pretty much ready to have this pregnancy over and done. The magic 37 weeks, full term, isn't until next week, so he had me take things easy.

This ended up being a really long project and we aren't even done yet. The beds are moved but the kids were upset that their stuff was in their old rooms and not the new rooms yet. I told them we would spend all day Monday making the switch but it didn't totally appease them. They kept taking thing back and forth between the room trying to exchange as much as they could. But for now they are put to bed. I hope they stay there and don't have any nightmares because things are a bit chaotic in each of the rooms and they are all sleeping in different rooms then they are used to.

But the new bed arrives tomorrow and that is one less thing on my list that needs to get done before the baby comes. But there is a lot to do in the morning to get the kids rooms all organized again. But it will be good to muck through their stuff and throw out a few things, if they will let me.

Politics

I know politics is one of those subjects to avoid so that you don't offend anyone but...... Politics play such an important part of our lives that it really is a subject we shouldn't be afraid to discuss and talk about. I grew up in a home that discussed politics all the time. My parents were involved in local political groups and had all sorts of political magazines, books and such around the house. Talk radio was almost always blaring out of 2 or three different radios through out the house that way while my mom did her work she wouldn't miss anything. I couldn't help knowing and learning about what was going on in the nation and how my parents felt about it.



My husband and I discuss the goings on in Sacramento and D.C. all the time. Our kids can't help but learn all the names and some of the bills and such that we discuss. It is always so funny to hear little Henry or Ian talk about those "robbers in Washington", or those "bad guys" in government. But I think it is great that they are paying attention and ask us questions all the time if there is something they don't understand. We try to take the time to explain why we feel this or that way about something that is going on so hopefully our kids will have a pretty good grasp of government and economics and how they affect our family and their future.



One of my favorite things as a kid was the look through the magazines that would come in the mail. I didn't read many of the articles but loved looking at the political cartoons. I learned a lot from these cartoons and miss seeing more of them. Occasionally there is a good one in the one in the few magazines that we do subscribe to but I get most of my information on the internet so don't get to see as many of these cartoons. When I see a good one or receive one in my email I need to start printing them out so my kids can see them. Sometimes cartoons can make a point, especially in children, when talking doesn't.



This one reminds me of School House Rock's Tyrannosaurus Debt. My kids love School House Rock. I think we need to break this out again.



Next week in honor of our nations birthday we are going to read a bunch of books about our founding fathers and The Constitution. I have a feeling we will be discussing how different our government is run today compared to what the founding fathers planned. Even at my kids' tender ages they are learning all about politics and how our world works.

15 years later..... still so TRUE!

A Very Busy, Busy Week

The past week has been quite full of activities. This was the first week of Summer Vacation for most kids in our area, so of course a lot of the Moms planned things for their kids to do and we got invited to come along. We don't really do Summer Vacation, as in do nothing but play. We still do some school work but do go about things a lot lighter and take a break from the usual History and Science stuff but try to keep up with Language Arts and Math while doing unit studies or just fun read alouds. This week however wasn't an average week.

Since Father's Day is tomorrow we spent the week (we actually started the week before, knowing how busy this week would be) rowing the book Papa Piccolo. It is a great book about Fathers and what they do for their kids. The kids really enjoyed learning about Italy, Venice in particular and gondolas.

We read a few books about cats. And of course had to read Jack and Annie's adventures in Venice as well as listen to Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery number of times. We even did a few crafts. The kids made cat masks for Carnival and ended the week by making father's day cards. We read a number of great go-alongs that the kids really enjoyed. They always enjoy Theirs a Dolphin in the Grand Canal and we found a great book that our library has but I couldn't find it online at Amazon but did at Alibris. It is Felice by Marsha Brown. It is about a cat in venice that needs to find a home. It is a very old book probably out of print but it went perfectly with Papa Piccolo.


To give Sophie a break from her normal math I got her The adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat and she has enjoyed looking through this book and finding all the different ways math is used. We made Tessellations one day and did origami on another. I often found her with her nose in this book and then she would come and tell me about what Penrose had been learning. She has also been revisiting all the I Love Math books. She knows where to find them at the library and picks up a number of them each week. And the ones that our library doesn't have she asks me to put on hold so they will get them from the other libraries in our system.

This has been about all the academics we have been up to. The rest of the week has been spent playing or on outings.

On Monday we took the kids to a Minor League Baseball Game and I couldn't believe we made it through the whole game. They of course especially loved the cotton candy and getting to play with some of their friends.

On Tuesday we had a swim party at a friends house. I am so happy Ian was swimming without his float. At first he wanted it but I asked him to give it a try without and that was that. He swam around the pool having a great time the rest of the afternoon.

Wednesday, Sophie and I had to go to Oakland for her yearly Cranial Facial Clinic. We saw about 15 different doctors in 3 hours. Sophie was really tired of being poked, prodded and questioned. I don't blame her it isn't a fun morning. But the doctors did say she was right on target for her next surgery to happen within the next year. Once this round of orthodontics are done we will set a date for that. But she still has fluid in her ears causing her to have hearing trouble in that ear, which means she may need to have tubes put in again.
After our morning of doctors I took the kids to our weekly park day and they dug in the sand and water all afternoon.

Thursday was our hike. I already discussed how well that one went in this post.

Friday was spent at the beach. The kids are now a bit crispy and we have all decided to say inside today and Sunday to let our skin recover a bit.

I am glad next week isn't quite so packed with activities. We had a great time but another week of this much going on and I will wear myself out.

"The Best Day Ever" according to Henry

My kids have been looking forward to today all week. Once they heard that a Beach trip was planned with our friends they have been talking and talking about it. At first I was not going to go because we have be going and going all week and this is a lot of work to take 3 kids to the beach all by myself. Yes we were meeting a bunch of friends but they had their own stuff to lung out there and their own kids to keep track of. But we went and according to Henry it was "The Best Day Ever".

The Beaches in Santa Cruz are only 40 minutes from our house so we really have no excuse not to go more often and the kids really do love it. They enjoy everything about it.
Running through the waves and trying to catch sand crabs are my kids favorite things to do at the beach. I was actually really surprised by the size of some the crabs the kids in our group caught. Watching them quickly burrow into the ground when dropped into the sand was amazing to watch. I think by the end of the day their big bucket had about a hundred or more. (Not all caught by my kids. In fact my kids usually liked to watch them burrow, so theirs never went into the group's bucket.)
Ian kept saying he was trying to stand his ground as the waves pulled back and the sand felt like it was pulled out from under his feet. Later he and Henry said it felt like they were surfing or skateboarding.
Henry just enjoyed going to "the deep end" of the waves. If the water ever got up to his waist he said he was in the "deep end". I guess he knew that was as far out as he should go. He just loved running around through the waves.
Sophie actually tried to ride a few waves in. She needs a boogie board or something next time I think.

After playing in the waves some we took a walk over to the rock wall the divides the beach from the marina. The rocks were covered in sea anemone and muscles as well as star fish.Here are the kids looking into the crevice between the rocks.
This is what they they were looking at. Sorry it is blurry. But there are some starfish stuck there on the rock.
Henry actually broke out off the wall and the kids got a closer look at it. They put it back even though they would love to have taken it home.
Most of the sea anemones were small. Just right for a kid finger to touch and see it quickly close up. This one was almost a big as my fist. None of them would touch this one. For some reason because of its size they thought it might hurt them.

So now my kids are all a bit red. We spent 4 hours at the beach. No sunblock lasts that long and I didn't reapply like I should. My kids were too busy and too covered in sand to even think about reapplying sunblock. The kids don't seem to mind. I never did either when I was a kid. The beach was and still is "The best day ever" to a kid. They are already planning on us going again next week.

We will see about that.