We Have Therapy Animals!

So, not ACTUAL therapy animals, but I think these two ladies will be providing us plenty of therapy! I've been looking for guinea pigs for a few weeks now and the pet store finally got two girls in today and I grabbed both. I honestly couldn't stand the thought of leaving one there alone.

They don't have names yet, and are pretty skittish right now, but it's been a long, traumatic day for them. 

Hope they'll settle in quickly and realize that we're nice :)

The kids were all crazy excited. We've needed a fun change. Hoping this satisfies Peanut's need for "something furry to snuggle with." 

Just Another Day

I'm not remembering to take many pictures, and those I'm taking are probably of questionable interest, haha. Kids are getting tired of me saying, "Wait, let me take a picture of you doing ____."

Tuesday was Bug's art class, piano lesson, and virtual park day/friend chats. Peanut and I made the model of his bedroom for his Park Day Lego challenge. A few too many colors going on, but I was proud that we could make the dressers and bookcases/shelves in the right color :) We just don't have enough white Legos.

We pulled out one of the new science games that I had bought for my class to play this year. This one (Periodic) was really fun--would have been great for our classes.

We Love State Parks

Today's post is brought to you by our love of the state parks. We've got a great system here in CA and have visited many of these parks over the years. Now that we can't go to any of them, they've brought the parks to us with these online classes.

The class we participated in today was on the tidepools at Crystal Cove in Orange County. We have done a lot of tidepooling so there wasn't a ton of new information, but I'm missing the beach a lot, and this was a nice little taste of it.

Peanut's tidepool animals.

And Bug's.

And mine. Every now and then, I just want to do art with the kids. It's a nice distraction from all the other things.

Bean had a big history project due, along with a couple other assignments, so she spent the day locked in her room on her computer. The boys got a few other things done for school, some done outside to get those hours in, too.

The highlight of the day was when I handed this boy the 5th Harry Potter book. I almost thought he was going to cry from joy. We'd held him off for a few months because he was flying through the series so fast, and I needed him to come up for air so we could do other things. Plus, we weren't sure if he should be reading the last 3 books, which are significantly darker and "older" at age 8. But he's been begging to read it, and has a couple friends who have either watched all the movies, or are just finishing the series--I'm worried about it being spoiled for him, so I figure being shut in for several more weeks should give him time to finish them all before he has to spend time with people again.

He read the rest of the afternoon and was only okay with putting it away for the night because we watched Solo. Star Wars might be the only other story that rivals HP in his mind.

Other highlights from today:

*While out for my morning run, I ran into a friend, and while practicing social distancing, joined her for awhile, and accidently ran a mile more than I was planning to. Wonder if I'm going to be sore tomorrow. . .

*Daddy-o, Bean, and Bug also went running--they've been going 2-3 times a week for about a month now--never thought I'd have a running family, but these are strange times :) (We do not run together, however, because they run shorter distance than I do, but at a much faster pace. Until someone gets old and creaky, I won't have a running partner, haha.)

*Peanut and Daddy-o were on dinner duty. Peanut loves the idea of cooking dinner, but it seems like the parent helper spends most of the time trying to call him back into the kitchen because he gets distracted and wanders off.

* Bug played his second round of D & D with the past-San-Diego gang. Technology truly is great when people who live all over the world can get together and play games.

Just a "Qwick" Recap

No pictures from our morning, but I began with a church leadership meeting, then we had virtual church with Rara. After that, there was a lot of reading and scheduling for the week (not so many places to go, but there is food to plan!)

After lunch, Peanut and I played a game of Qwirkle, which led to him wanting to create his own game using the tiles. He pretty much can't play a game without trying to think of another way to play something similar. At least this time he stayed focused on the game we were in until we finished.

Then, we did a zoom game with Rara--Qwixx, which works great over the computer as long as everyone has the game. (Random note, but we have played 3 games this past week that start with Qw/Qu--Qwixx, Quiddler, and Qwirkle. Who knew there were so many Q games?)

While we played, Daddy-o made this amazing pork tenderloin dinner. I love Sunday dinner :)

Then, we went for a family walk, with lots of silliness,

and got to see the dark side of the moon.

One-on-One Time

Bug and I got to go on a hiking date this morning. As the only two morning people in our house, we figured we could go out for a few miles before things really got going at home. 

We hiked 6 miles on the Bay Area Ridge Trail in Castro Valley, and at the peak, had this amazing view. The hills we climbed were the steepest I've done, maybe ever, definitely during this quest to do the whole ridge trail.

Our turn around point. Beautiful fields.

We saw a few lizards, lots of rabbits, a flock of quail, and tons of other birds as well.

Walking and talking with Bug reminded me of what a cool kid he is. I'm so glad that I've been able to be so involved with his life these past few years and have a front row seat for his learning and growth. I don't claim to have taught him much, but I get to hang out with him while he figures things out and then teaches me. Whatever he decides to do, he's going to be great at it.

We made it back in time for an appointment at the post office to submit the kids' passport applications, and then a birthday parade for Peanut's friend. Bean had written on our car for her friend, and I think we'll just leave it until this whole thing is open so we can go drive by all our friends for their birthdays.

We had a busy afternoon. I hung out with friends again in our social distancing square in the church parking lot. It does me so much good to have a couple hours off-duty and talking with people in person. Then, we had a virtual talent show with our church congregation. There were the traditional entries--piano pieces and quilting and art work, and then a few people took advantage of the recorded format and did musical pieces where they sang all the parts, or played multiple instruments--very fun!

Bean and Peanut submitted artwork, and Bug played the piano.:

Bean shared a few of her Star Wars watercolors.

Peanut wanted to share his earth chalk pastel.

And Bug played Pachelbel's Canon.

It's weird that so much about this is becoming normal. It makes sense that we'll adapt and figure out ways to celebrate things, but at the same time, having a busy Saturday full of friends and social activities under the current circumstances is odd. Just a few weeks ago, all of this would have been unimaginable, but here we are.

Another Day, Another Trail

 We've settled into a rhythm and Friday is hike day. Bean's schedule for school is busy enough that it's hard for her to go more than once a week in the morning, and it's getting too hot for us to go later in the day, so Friday mornings it is. 

We explored a new trail in Sycamore Grove today.

It was mostly hot, but did have some beautiful views and even though I didn't have a good camera for getting close to wildlife, we got to watch a northern harrier hunting up on top of the hill. It caught something at one point--we could see it in the distance, tearing into something and then when it took off, it looked like it had a small bit of it's prey with it. Pretty cool.

Back down in the valley, this great blue heron let us get really close. He also was hunting and we got to watch him catch some small insect or something as well. I didn't catch that on video, but just watching him walk is pretty cool.

Lots of wildflowers, too. Spring has been really good to us.

Peanut has really stepped up his hiking game. Almost no complaints today in 5.5 miles (I think the only time he started saying he wanted to go home was because we saw a bee).

The creek over there is still flowing. I wish the one by us still had water, but at least we can come this way. They are all controlled by reservoirs and just depend on whether they need to release water or not.

So many flowers!

After that hike, we had school things to take care of, an attempt to get the kids passports (long story, but I had put off going in for their passports and then everything shut down and I haven't been sure what to do. We finally decided to just get them so we'll have them when we can someday travel again, but had a little issue with the post office, so we now we have to go back tomorrow--because having people come in repeatedly is totally a good idea right now. So annoying.)

We finished off the day with Family Movie Night--Bug's turn to pick and he chose Revenge of the Sith. Peanut has now seen all 9 Star Wars movies and I think he's planning on having us watch Rogue One next time. I have a feeling we can just go in Star Wars circles for months over here, haha.

Science and More Science

Watching the meteor shower yesterday has kicked off a renewed interest in all things space with Peanut. We listened to a couple Brains On podcasts over breakfast about space volcanoes and Pluto, and then he pulled out the solar system he made a couple years ago.

He also started working on his invented solar system that he created a couple months ago. He's adding comets and meteor showers and naming everything on the different planets in his system.

We did take a break from all the science to do some math and handwriting and reading.

But we were back to the science after dinner. I hosted my first science fair, and while it wasn't the event I had in mind when I first started planning, I think it went pretty well. We had 10 video submissions and after each one, the kids asked and answered questions. I was impressed with the things they wanted to know more about, and their experiments. And while it would have been fun to all be together actually looking at their display boards, this worked better than I hoped.

Only 4 more weeks of science before we're done for the year. I really, really hope we'll be meeting in person when we resume in September!

Other things of note: 

Bean had a Zoom church activity tonight with the other high school girls. They baked shortbread cookies, which meant it was fun for her, and for us :)

We got pizza for dinner, and I have to say, it's actually one of the easier meals to unpack and feel like everything was kept "clean" assuming that it was corona-free when it went in the box. I hate that food is so stressful to me now, but I have shied away from getting pizza for the past 6 weeks because it somehow didn't seem as safe as some of the other options. Nice to add that one back in.

Our backyard is so full of bees. It's nice, unless you are a kid who got stung 4 times last August and still hasn't gotten over it. We are working hard to get and keep Peanut outside, but it's not easy, and mostly involves sitting within 3 feet of the house because there aren't bushes and flowers along that side of the lawn. I regret that trip to Tahoe pretty much every single day.

Finally, mid-afternoon chocolate is a great pick-me-up for all of us. That's all :)

Earth Day!

Our day started early--4 a.m. early. I had set an alarm for 4 and was under orders to check the sky and weather forecast and if it was clear, to wake everyone up. I'll admit to being torn between wanting to see the meteor shower, and wanting to go back to bed, but the skies were perfectly clear, so we all got up and bundled up and drove about 15 minutes south to a spot in the hills where there's a lot less ambient light.

It was early, a little chilly, and even after an hour, Peanut never did see a shooting star, much to his dismay, but otherwise, the trip was a great moment of making memories. We saw shooting stars (Bug wins the prize for seeing the most), several satellites (Peanut DID see those), and Venus and Mars. We could see so many more stars than from our house, so the sky looked cool even without the occasional streak of light, and we had the police stop by 5 minutes after we got there! We had parked just before the closed sign to a regional park, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and they randomly happened to be driving by right after we'd gotten set up, but luckily they let us stay. Luckily, they knew about the meteor shower and didn't question us much. They did shine a very bright flashlight right in Daddy-o's eyes, so that set him back another 15 minutes or so in being able to see much in the dark sky.

We got home by 5:45 and everyone went back to bed, so we technically got two starts to the day. The second one was slow and much later than normal for everyone. We had a 10 a.m. zoom meeting with our teacher from the charter, and the boys were still eating breakfast as we began. But it was worth it for the memories.

We played a game outside, did some art, read some books.

The kids discovered the bee game Google had up in honor of the 50th Earth Day, which led to watching a short documentary about an up-close look at bees.

Peanut had online art class, Bug played Dungeons and Dragons with the children of a couple of friends from San Diego. It was so fun to see them all online together--one is a second cousin of ours who Bug has met several times, but the others live in Japan and we haven't seen them since the boys were 1, so kind of crazy to have them all connect now over a mutual interest in D & D.

Not the most outdoorsy Earth Day, but we try to honor the earth every day.

Tuesday Means. . .

-an early morning walk for me, and another a little later with the boys,

-Live No Sweat Nature Study for Peanut

where he learned about the riparian zone,

-art class for Bug, where he did this gorgeous continuous line drawing/watercolor,

- piano lesson for Bug,

-virtual park day, with Peanut and his friends making up word puzzles to solve (or typing gibberish)

-virtual park day with a few of the older kids, where they did Lego challenges for a couple hours,

-park day for me, where I read and dozed on a blanket on the lawn for an hour,

-coloring on the patio (which looks so uncomfortable, but he stayed there a long time),

-yoga and strength workout for Bean,

-a volcanic eruption.

There was also some reading, videos about eclipses and volcanoes, drawing, zoom meetings and studying for Bean, lots of emails to the charter school about end of year stuff for me, a virtual seminary class for Daddy-o and Bean, lots of cooking and eating, and an early bedtime so we can get up at 4 a.m. to look for shooting stars from the Lyrid meteor shower. It was a pretty full day, and yet felt so sluggish for a couple of us. Some days are just not great. Glad that some are.