Photo Update

Long Beach





Cookie sales

Learning about birds at the local nature center, including making our own bird call device. We also met this friendly snake.

Lizzy D. Lizard

Told ya. It's an absolute menagerie 'round here. Life science isn't a subject as much as an exercise in tolerance (at least on the part of this teacher!)

[Because of Winn] DIXIE

Look who came into our lives today...

Belated Halloween

I just realized I hadn't posted anything for Halloween. I guess we were too busy making yarn crows, drinking pumpkin milkshakes, harvesting pumpkins and gourds, making bat mobiles, crafting pumpkin votives, and going to parties to celebrate the holiday and I had forgotten to post photos of all these fun activities! ;)

10 Years Together

You ever feel like angels are watching over you? Let's just say that I've been really, really lucky to have ended up where I am today. [I had made some really bad choices in my early twenties that had me down a very bad path.]
A big part of my fortune has been my marriage to my dear husband. He puts up with ALOT and pretty much let's me do whatever I want, whenever I want. Fortunately for him, I am not one to buy expensive jewelry or even frequent salons for pricey maintenance appointments (eg, nail salons, etc).
For our recent anniversary, I would have loved for him to have surprised me with a trip to HERE or a new diamond ring. But these flowers were just perfect in the way they reminded me of our early times; times when I was still attending Long Beach State and he would deliver sunflowers to my work on special and even not-so-special occasions.
While nothing and no one is perfect, and while each year brings its challenges as well as its blessings, I can honestly say that the blessings have greatly exceeded the trials these past 10 years of marital life. So here's to us, Babe! And to the freedom you give me to be my crazy, obsessive, sometimes PITA self! xoxo

From the Science Files

Today we attended a fair put on by the Science and Technology Education Partnership. Considering the fact that we are doing the Animal Kingdom and not physics at the moment, I went with the intention of simply instilling the whole science-is-cool/fun/exciting attitude in my girls. It was a decent (not great) event but we all had a fair amount of fun. It helped that we were with friends and we had a great meal (from Simple Simon's) in our bellies. There were alot of schools there though so we had to fight the crowd, which is never fun.

Tennis, Anyone???

My 9 year old is absolutely loving tennis. I enjoy watching her patience and discipline grow as she learns to listen to the voices of her coach and her body instead of the voice in her head that seems to expect her to everything perfectly the first time around. They really could use some shade at the matches though. I mean, over 2 hours in the high desert sun on exposed bleachers is not exactly showing much fan appreciation. Am I right???

Birthday Adventures

Sea World, Ramona, La Jolla, Julian

From the Science Files: NaturePrints

This was super cool to work with - and fast, too!
We went to the botanical gardens @ UCR to collect interesting plant specimens to use for this project. Our favorite by far was the evil horned one that the girls thought looked like the saber of an ancient Egyptian god up to no good...

[The other photos are from the other day in the pool; taken from the 2nd story window.]

What We've Been Up To Lately

I've been a bad blogger but I have a really good excuse: My less-than-2-year-old computer --- you know, the one connected to the $1200 monitor, the $600 printer? The one that is the life-blood of my very connection with the world??? --- Well, it's good as dead. I got a virus. A really, really BAD one. And so now I'm stuck with a borrowed laptop that has none of the capabilities of the old that I was so fond of :(
Today I managed to upload & edit some photos so here's an update of some of our recent activities.

We set up the pool in the front yard in this 100+ degree weather. The girls vacillate between jumping on their boogieboards in the 2 ft deep water and riding up and down the empty street on their skateboards.

We're continuing our studies about the ancient Egyptians, mummifying Barbies and making pyramids out of sugarcubes. I also built this most-awesome model from a book in this series by Iain Ashman/Usborne. (We also have the skeleton and Trojan Horse ones for science and later history studies!)

Finally, we joined a community garden effort near our home. Thus far, we've only toured the grounds and spent a few hours harvesting sunflower seeds, but we are all looking forward to how we can schedule gardening days into of our learning-thru-living lives.

we {love} s'mores

Say Hello to My Little Green Friend: Part 2

I so need a macro lens... :(

The 1st Writing

We have been exploring the people of the Nile and the Fertile Crescent in History these first few weeks of 1st and 4th grades. I gave the girls a choice of whether to write in heiroglyphs or cuneiform and they decided that pictures were more interesting than wedges.
I am happily surprised how much Ella can retain after reading our section in The Story of The World. And Shelby told me this week that History is her very favorite subject this year :)

Mission San Luis Rey: Oceanside, CA

Yesterday.

Fun With Math: Tangrams

WANNA PLAY?

Fare Ye Well

We Interrupt Our Normally Scheduled Topics...

to bring you something OTHER THAN education and politics.