Super Blue Blood Moon

Despite the impressive name, we were having a hard time imagining how this moon could live up to the solar eclipse in August. I had planned to wake the kids, but was second guessing whether it would be worth it to have everyone a little more tired and cranky that day.

In the end, I got up and peeked out the back windows and when I saw the red glowing moon, I was impressed. Nothing like the experience of totality during a solar eclipse, but beautiful and slightly unnerving anyway. So I woke up the two older kids and they were properly impressed.

I should have woken up Peanut, too, even though we would have all paid for it that day, but he actually remembered on his own in the morning and was pretty upset when he realized he missed it. He was finally pacified by watching a video of it and the fact that there is another one in a year and I promised I'll get him up, too. Crossing my fingers that it is in the middle of the night so he'll go right back to sleep.

Monterey Bay Birthday Fun

Homeschooling has some fun perks, like free admission to the Monterey Bay Aquarium on Mondays if you are lucky enough to get some of the much sought after tickets. We lucked out this year and got to spend Daddy-o's birthday at the aquarium.

It had been years since either of us had been there, and this was the kids' first visit.

We all had so much fun.

It's am amazing place, with great indoor and outdoor spots. We even found some sea otters out in the ocean.

And there's Hopkins Marine Station, with the little beach that I used to  watch the seals from and occasionally nap on at lunch time,

We drove down the afternoon before

and had time to play at the Dennis the Menace playground for a little while before we went over to Fisherman's Wharf for dinner. We sampled so many different clam chowders while trying to pick a restaurant that we probably didn't actually need dinner. But food always plays a prominent role in our travels, and celebrations. Waterfront dinner, amazing breakfast at Rosine's Restaurant, and clam chowder from The Fish Hopper, followed up by a sundae at the Ghiradelli Ice Cream Shop. Good eating!

We had a great, quick trip, celebrating the birthday boy.

Moving Day

It's been more like moving week, but Saturday was the day that EVERYTHING came over to the new house and finally slept here.

I thought it was going to be so smooth because I had already moved most of the kitchen over, and managed to unpack it all on Friday while waiting for the internet to be hooked up and our fridge to be delivered. Well, it turned out the fridge never showing up (after I waited for 7 hours) was just the first of our moving issues.

Next up was a flooded kitchen on Saturday morning when we showed up with the first load of stuff because of a clog somewhere in the pipes, which meant we couldn't use the laundry or kitchen sink for the next 3 days. And a couple of the drawers that I had unpacked into had to be emptied and dried out. So much for being ahead of the game. But, because I had already unpacked some stuff, I did know where all the swim towels were so we had plenty of things to mop up the mess. (And even when it's flooded, our kitchen at the new house is so much nicer than our last one.)

We ran into one more snag when we found mold in the boys old room, and all over the bottom of the bunk bed. So we had to sanitize that before we could put their bed together, which just made for a late bedtime. I'll admit that my motivation was drained by then. I was feeling done with the whole moving thing, which isn't great when you still have a house to unpack, haha.

But thanks to a lot of friends and family showing up to help, we made the move.

Not a lot of pictures yet, but here's one more glimpse of the new space. I'm loving this open kitchen/living room plan, and having a family room as well (on the other side of the kitchen) makes the house feel so much bigger. I think this house is going to work a lot better for us. Lets hope we don't have to move again for awhile.

Our First Livermore House

The time has already come to move on and I realized I never really took pictures of where we've been living for the last year. Honestly, I was a little underwhelmed when we first got here, and even after we'd gotten settled, it didn't seem worth photographing. But we're moving this weekend to another (slightly bigger) house right down the street, and I felt like I shouldn't miss recording where we spent our first year in Livermore. So here it is, in all it's glory (and still partially decorated for Christmas because we hadn't gotten the tree down when I took these.)

There's not a whole lot to the house, but we tried to make it work. We carved out a "mudroom" along one wall of the living room.

The kitchen isn't huge, but at least it was open to the dining area, and had a lot of natural light.

This is where we ate, schooled, and lived.

Our room.

The boys' room.

And Bean's room.

And that's the house. It's been quite the adjustment leaving our home in NC, and required us to get rid of about half our stuff (which I'm really very happy about), but we've made it work. We're pretty excited about the new place, though.

Final Count

I think we can say Deacon Dave's was a success. These kids worked hard and set some good goals for this year and it paid off. They sold over $1400 worth of hot chocolate and cookies in 10 nights! A big chunk of it is being donated to a couple charities, including the Make a Wish foundation, but combined with last years' profits, that still leaves them with more than enough for what they wanted to do for themselves.

Looks like we are going on a trip this May :)

A Maritime in SF

We spent Martin Luther King, Jr. Day exploring the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park.

The museum had a few exhibits about the history of ships in CA,

but the really fun part was Hyde Pier where there were several boats to explore, from this small row boat

to a ferry boat that used to shuttle 3500 passengers at a time.

The kids had a lot of fun exploring the ships and even had time to do the Jr. Ranger booklet (Bug's 6th badge, the other two have 3 or 4, I think).

It was a beautiful day.

Schooling Around

I think we ended up doing more school-on-the-go this week than at home. This semester, the kids are taking art and piano lessons, swim lessons or conditioning, and we had field trips two different days. Thank goodness for audio books. (This week, we're listening to Percy Jackson's Greek Gods in preparation for diving into ancient Greek history in a couple weeks. It's been a pretty fun crash course in all the myths and legends.)

First field trip: Bug and Bean had a programming class at Intel on Tuesday and while they were doing that, Peanut and I explored the little museum they have onsite.

While we were on that side of the bay, we also spent a couple hours in the NASA Ames Research Center. I didn't even realize the Bay Area had any NASA stuff, but there is a fun little museum and the kids were fascinated by the videos of life on the international space station and the Mars rover. Not quite the Kennedy Space Center, but it was still interesting.

Then, on Friday, we went to see Elephant and Piggie, the play. Peanut LOVES the Elephant and Piggie books and makes me check out several every time we go to the library, so when I saw that the Bay Area Children's Theatre was doing this, I had to get tickets. He was so excited, and leaned over to let me know every time he recognized one of the storylines. It was a cute play.

 

On the way home, we stopped by the rock gym again. These two had come along for the play, which they thought was cute, but they were probably about 5 years older than all the other kids in the audience. The promise of going rock climbing on the way home made up for it, though, and they had a good hour before I dragged them away so we could face the Friday traffic that was already backing up.

Dia de los Muertos in Oakland

Oakland Museum of CA or Bust!

We took advantage of the Bank of America Free Museum Weekend, and a Discover and Go pass from the library, and went to see the Dia de los Muertos exhibit in Oakland. Bug has always had a special affinity for the holiday because he was born that day.

The exhibit, Metamorphosis and Migration, was very timely since we had just seen Coco on Tuesday, and the kids and I had gone to see the butterfly sanctuary at Natural Bridges St. Park.

Peanut made the connection between the ofrendas in the museum and the ones we'd seen in Coco immediately.

I didn't realize how many cultures connect butterflies to the soul. It's a beautiful symbolism, especially when considering the generations of butterflies that it takes to make the yearly migration and the changes the butterfly goes through in it's life. And the fact that the butterflies arrive in Mexico for the winter right around the time of Dia de los Muertos makes this all make sense.

The kids had fun making origami butterflies,

and made a couple for Daddy-o and I to add to the display. (They, of course, couldn't leave theirs behind because everything they touch is special and must come home with us.)

After the art galleries, we spent a little while in the history gallery. The Creative Hollywood section was the favorite of the day. Bug, Daddy-o and I played around in the sound effects studio for awhile, and Bean made a short stop-motion movie.

And, of course, having an absolutely beautiful day with post-rainstorm clear skies made for some beautiful views from the rooftop sculpture gardens.

Califorina has some real perks. This time of year, especially.