More October Happenings

Saturdays have been my hiking day this past month. Sometimes solo, like this trail just south of Tilden Park in Berkeley. I did 8 miles, and had 3.5 hours of quiet on the trails to think. It was just what I needed.

This was also a month of some pretty cool mushroom discoveries. This bright orange one was really big--about the size of my head. It has since faded to a dirty gray/white color and started shrinking, so I must have first found it at it's prime.

We still had really warm weather all month, and found a Wednesday when Bug and Bean could sneak away from school (they only have one 15 minute virtual check in on Wednesdays, and then are supposed to spend the rest of the day working on homework, but they'd both managed to get ahead that week.) We headed down to Rio Del Mar, where we met up with friends, and despite the cooler water temp and small waves, a few of the kids spent a lot of time boogie boarding.

Peanut preferred the incoming river which was a little warmer (and a lot shallower).

He made sandmen and women.

All the kids got into making drip castles. I love getting a good beach day in the fall. Just wish school didn't get in the way of us doing this more often.

Another hike in Tilden, this time with Daddy-o.

And we found another really cool mushroom.

Between all the hikes, I took a lot of early morning walks and because of the days getting shorter, I've seen a lot of sunrises this month! I'm just so grateful that the air has been so much better.

Yet another Tilden hike (this finished off the Bay Area Ridge Trail hikes in that park), this time with Bug. What a difference a week makes. Daddy-o and I were getting pretty hot with the sun blazing down on us. Bug and I had absolutely no view at all because of all the fog. But it was pretty. And sometime I'll have to go back to do this section again because it's supposed to have some pretty amazing views of the bay and hills.

End of the month, this girly FINALLY got to go take her Driver's test, and she passed with a perfect score!

And final hike of the month--another solo one, in Sycamore Grove.

This time, I had some companions for part of the hike. I followed these deer for awhile until a biker scared them and they ran down the creek bed.

 

October Schooling

October meant lots of reading, including books to go along with our election unit, our science studies, and math. We listened to Little House in the Big Woods, 5 Children and It, and the 2nd Harry Potter on audio, and read a ton of other seasonal picture books.

Peanut went to work with Daddy-o one day and got to do school in a different environment.

Daddy-o put him to work, too. And I realized why Thursdays are so stressful for me--because even without Peanut around all day, I was going hard all day, teaching science classes and all the other work that is involved with that, running to the farmer's market and taking kids to water polo. It's a lot of work even without a 9 year old who needs attention fairly regularly;).

The air started clearing up and most of the second half of the month was nice, so we took our school outside as much as we could.

It still counts as outside time, even if you're on a screen, right?😂

As always, this kid read a LOT. I love it when I find him lost in a book somewhere in the house (especially if it's not at a time when he's supposed to be doing something else, like brushing his teeth or helping with the dishes.)

We did some fun science experiments, working with yeast and bacteria and starting our plant unit.

We played new games--10 Days in Europe was just as fun as the other 10 Days games we've played, and a good stretch for geography. This will be perfect while studying more modern world history.

Another new game that was lots of fun, and good for the spatial reasoning.

We combined our read aloud, PIE, and it's recipes for every chapter, with our election unit and held a vote on which pie we should make for dessert one night. The buttermilk pie won,

and so Peanut and I baked a pie together. It was really tasty (and no one complained even if the crust wasn't quite up to level that Daddy-o usually serves us. We're still beginners.)

We took our multiplications table outside, too. Seriously, anything I could think of and convince Peanut of, we took outside. We're still really trying for those 1000 hours, but we've had some serious setbacks between the bad air, and then Peanut had some sort of allergy issue going on this month so we had a few days of avoiding most of our outside activities again.

Finally, this kid and I went on a Halloween themed field trip one day--a visit to Forest Home Farms where they had a themed scavenger hunt set up through an app that taught us little bits of Halloween history and about nocturnal animals. Then, we went to a nearby park where they had a scarecrow scavenger hunt. We found all 25 in an hour and a half, enjoyed some absolutely perfect weather, and Peanut didn't even end up with itchy red eyes at the end. Great day all around!

 

Yosemite, 2020

Under the new Covid policies, we had to make reservations for Yosemite a couple months in advance. I chose the first Friday in October because the kids had the day off of school, and it would give us the option of spending a couple days there if we wanted to. 

What we couldn't plan for was the continuing bad air quality and nearby fires that shut down one part of the park we'd wanted to visit. We watched the AQI all week and it was looking pretty good in Yosemite Valley, so we found a new hike to do and set off for a day of adventuring and then a backyard camping trip at the grandparents house.

And then, when we were almost there, we realized the air had totally changed and it was in the range that we usually stay indoors. But we had driven for 3 hours, and it wasn't REALLY bad, and we really, really needed some outside time, so we chanced it.

We found the start of fall colors, and streams to play in, and sticks to play with, and some hiking to do (although part of the new trail we'd picked was also closed!)

Daddy-o and these two hiked to a view of Nevada Fall. You can barely see it between the trees. The Mist Trail was closed along here, so we were just on the John Muir trail that is in the same area.

In the meantime, this kid was highly distracted in a world of make believe and absolutely didn't want to hike, so I offered to hang back with him and go slower, hoping we'd eventually catch up with everyone else. We didn't, at least not until they were on their way back down the trail, which was a little disappointing for me,

but I did get some good pictures of the jays we saw, and of Peanut pretending he was clinging to the edge of a cliff.

On the way back down, we stopped for a snack and were quickly joined by this guy (or girl),

who had absolutely no fear of us and a strong desire to eat our snacks.

I love wildlife, but I kind of like it when they are still wild, and stay away.

After lunch, we found a spot on the Merced river to hang out for the rest of the afternoon. Peanut needed some serious free play time, and everyone else was done hiking, and I was getting a headache from the smoke (probably was a good thing I didn't get to hike as far that morning--heavier breathing=more smoke inhilation).

So we sat by the river, wading, soaking our feet. Bug and Bean drew for awhile, the Bug joined Peanut in exploring and playing.

We did not see the bear that apparently crossed the river just upstream from us (darn!), 

but thoroughly enjoyed the setting, even if it was hazy from smoke (and this was at the point of the day where things had cleared up a bit.)

We had a really nice afternoon,

 and then cooked dinner over our backpacking stove to finish off our adventuring.

Even with the bad air, we ended up camping out in Daddy-o's parents' backyard, which was probably a mistake. The fact that we couldn't see any of the stars we were sleeping under was probably a good clue as to how bad the air had gotten, but we stuck it out, all ended up with sore throats and my headache took several days to go away, but got in our overnight trip and had another 24 hours to add to our outdoor time tracker. Some of those hours have been harder to earn than others!

 

September Recap

I didn't realize how long it had been since I updated here, but this photo sums up a lot of September (and August, and into October, too.) So many wild fires, so much air pollution, so many days with varying levels of weird looking skies. We've turned to checking the AQI multiple times a day, and had a lot of outdoor plans foiled by the bad air.

We were able to escape up to the mountains past Sacramento for a day of apple and pumpkin farms. We met up with friends at Apple Hill, and despite a couple of the farms being a little more crowded than we'd hoped, and the air not being quite as clear as we'd thought, it was a really nice day outside. (And it involved apple cider donuts, which is a necessary part of fall for our family!)

Other September activities: 

Lots of hot weather. Any day that we have had decent air, we've tried to get outside. We finished off the rest of our water balloons,

found cool fungi,

did a family hike,

and Peanut and I spent a day doing outside school,

which included a little nature study page on the turtle we found.

So, looking back like this makes it look like we've been outside a ton, but it's more that I documented every hour we spent outside. Some days, the air would clear up for a couple hours and we could get out during that time, and a couple days were pretty good all day. But then we had the day that the sky glowed orange for most of the day and the AQI was in the 300s. Water polo was cancelled off and on this month, and our meet ups with friends were few and far between. It's been a weird one, for sure.