Homeschooling Update

We are so busy homeschooling, I feel like I rarely get to step back and record about our homeschooling life.  It has been a busy, busy winter with school and all the activities, programs, learning we are doing.  It's hard to believe how close we are to finishing another school year.

Zach and Branden's Thursday group (while I'm teaching and older boys attend class at MSA) participated in a Playwell class of Lego Engineering.  They had a lot of fun with that.  They are now working on a mini play of "As You Like It", which is the Shakespeare play Jared's class will be performing.  The younger boy's version will be in regular English and shorter, but it gives them a good understanding of the play so they'll be excited to see the older kids do it.

We had a field trip to the Palomar Planetarium recently with our charter school.  The boys thought they knew everything about space, so they enjoyed finding out there were a few more things to learn. ;)

Branden gets a subscription box called "History Unboxed".  It comes with fun activities to do for certain time periods.  This one was painting a Terra Cotta Warrior from Ancient China.

We are almost done with two years of studying artists and doing art in the style of that artist.  Here are Zach and  Branden with their magazine covers of the Saturday Evening Post in the style of Norman Rockwell.  Very fun.

Craig has been busy with rehearsals for his play for Classical Acting.  They performed this past weekend and are performing as a "traveling show" at a couple places as well.  It was really awesome and will be covered in a separate post.

Jared is looking forward to his play which starts up rehearsals next week.  He is loving art class and doing well in his other classes as well.

Homeschooling provides with many opportunities we enjoy taking advantage of.  We went to free pancake day at IHOP recently.  It wasn't crowded at all since most people are at work or school when we went.  We've gone every year for a few years.  Fun tradition.

When the weather is warm, school can wait.  We enjoyed a beautiful afternoon at the beach.  It gives me much needed rest, restoration and peace.  And the boys have a great time.

We are almost completing our sixth year of homeschooling.  It is a way of life for us, and I can't imagine doing it any other way.

End of a Drought

California has been in a drought for several years.  But this winter, we have had a lot of rain.  A lot.  I have enjoyed hot cocoa and soup more this winter than all the years we've lived in Southern California. We moved to San Diego over five years ago.  I have never seen this much rain in a winter here.  And as spring has officially begun, I am loving driving around San Diego and seeing the fruits of all that rain.  The reservoirs and lakes are full again, which is such a blessing.  But the visual blessings of all that rain is all around us.  There are so many more flowers.  The hillsides are green.  Really green.  I love it!

A couple weeks ago I was hearing all about the super bloom out in the desert due to all the rain.  It was supposed to be the biggest, best bloom of wildflowers in the desert in twenty years.  I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to check it out.  I heard the weekends were crazy busy with people going out to see it.  And we didn't really have a free weekend anyway.  So we called for a school field trip and headed out on a Wednesday morning to the Anza-Borrego Desert.

Unfortunately, Zach had a pretty bad cold and still wasn't feeling great that day.  He didn't feel up to riding in the car for an hour and a half each way with some windy roads plus walking around in the warm sun.  He didn't want to stay home alone though and Branden was feeling like he might be getting the cold.  So he offered to stay home with him. So it was just Craig, Jared, Devin and I, which was fun in some ways because I don't get to do field trips with the older boys as much these days.

We left soon after Craig got home from seminary.  It was supposed to get up to 90 degrees that day.  I'd read the flowers often close up with hotter weather, so I wanted to get out there early in the day.  I wasn't sure what to expect and hoped our long drive out there wouldn't be for nothing.

We stopped in town and picked up a map marking the areas where the blooms were.  The visitor's center had a little walking garden we could look at a few things before heading out.

I didn't know which way to go or what would be best for us to go see, but I just picked a spot and headed out.  The town was bustling with a lot of people.  I can't imagine what the weekends must have looked like.  As we were driving out, I wasn't seeing much for a super bloom and wasn't sure it was going to be the amazing thing I heard about it.  And then, there it was.  A huge expanse of desert floor, heading out to the mountains, just covered in these tall yellow wildflowers.  It was amazing and beautiful and fantastic.  We pulled over to park and walk around through the fields.

What we then discovered was the flowers had tons of caterpillars all over them.  The boys thought they were much cooler than the flowers.

We drove to a couple of other areas and saw some other purple flowers, white flowers, and these fun little yellow flowers that were different than the first.  

Craig really liked the more rectangle shape of these petals, different than the round or curving of most petals.

As we headed back towards town, we came across these huge metal structures.  They were also cooler than the flowers. :)

It was really a cool field trip, and I'm so glad we went.  Sometimes, you just have to set aside the to-do list and busy-ness of life and have adventures.  This was a great one.  On the way home, we stopped in Julian and had some pie.

Another afteroon for cub scouts, we went to the preserve to hike and clean up garbage.  Here was another beautiful sight to see of drought relief.  We have hiked this preserve many times while living here.  I have never seen so much water.  Usually there's a little creek if anything.  And here was a beautiful river.  The preserve said it has flooded a lot this winter.  Not great for the preserve, but a blessing to see all the water.

Happy 15th Birthday, Craig!

Craig asked to have a birthday party for his 15th birthday.  He wanted to do the Escape Room with some friends, so choose a few of his closest friends to do that with.  He chose to do the "Forbidden Aztec Temple".  They went on a Saturday afternoon and ended up being joined with another group of kids.  They didn't quite make it to escape, but they had a lot of fun participating.

They came back to our house and had pizza and hung for a bit til the rest of the party showed up.  He had about 20 people over to watch movies outside with a fire pit and lots of yummy food.  They watched Cool Runnings and The Three Amigos - movies many of his friends hadn't seen before.  

Instead of cake, he asked for homemade ice cream.  We made three types - strawberry, rocky road, and mint chip.  

Craig has a great group of friends.  That many teenagers hanging out at our house, and they were so polite, loved being together, and had a lot of fun.  It was a great night, and Craig felt pretty great having so many people come celebrate his birthday with him.

His actual birthday was several days later.  He had asked for one thing for his birthday - a keyboard he could plus earphones into and play anytime of day and record music he creates.  He hasn't been in to playing the piano much the past couple of years.  I was pretty sure he was going to drop it.  So when he asked for this gift, I was so excited.  He has been printing music and working on songs himself, and I love it.

We had cookies and ice cream on his birthday.

We now have a 15-year-old.  Fifteen.  More and more I am realizing how short the time is that we will have him still at home.  He has been doing a lot of "soul searching" this year, trying to figure out who he is and what he wants.  He has come to realize a lot of things and figure out some of his strengths and pushed himself in many ways.  He is almost 6'1" now.  He faithfully rides his bike to seminary and contributes a lot to his class there.  He likes pizza, hamburgers and Chinese food.  And Cheerios and Goldfish.  This past year he has become an Eagle Scout and held his first job.  He is a good friend to others. He is super cute taking care of Devin.  He is a valiant young man, and we sure love him.

Happy 15th Birthday, Craig!

Day at the Zoo

We have passes for everyone to the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park.  While Craig was at youth conference and Jared was camping with the boy scouts, I took advantage of using our passes for the first time with the younger boys.  It was Devin's first time going to the zoo where he was old enough to really get excited about the animals.  It was so fun to watch him.  The first bear we came upon who was lying in a hammock playing with sticks, Devin said, "I want to go play with him."

He really liked the fish and most animals in the water.  Although when the hippos would swim right up by the glass, he thought that was a little scary.  He liked the petting zoo a lot too.

Every animal he'd stop to watch, he didn't want to leave.  We had to tell him we'd go look for more of that animal before he'd agree to walk on and see more exhibits.

It was a beautiful day, perfect temperature, and fun to just wander around the zoo.  Sure love getting out with my kids.