Bug had a water polo tournament in San Jose this weekend--which worked great because there were two other things going on down there that I wanted to hit up. So, first we watched him play.
Well, some of us watched him play--Peanut finished another book. He gets a lot of reading done when we go to these tournaments, and at least he's outside.
Between the games, we ran to pick up a bench seat for the new van--that's the first step in our cargo van conversion and it's exciting to be starting!
Then, after the last game, we drove to Mountain View for their German Christmas Market, which was very underwhelming and overwhelming at the same time. I don't know that it really captures the spirit of the European markets in the first place, but it was kind of small, and there were thousands of people croweded around all the booths and in line at every food booth. We didn't want to wait for almost an hour to eat, so tried to look at some of the stalls and then went to an Italian restaurant down the street. I really hope we can go see the real markets someday--and hope that at least some of them aren't as crowded as pretty much any event we try to attend in the Bay Area.
Our school district has taken a new stance to deal with the Day After Halloween sugar high that the kids are on--making it a teacher work day. And this means that we have a random day off, in the middle of the week. I had class that morning, and Bug had a bunch of college applications to work on, but we got out for lunch and a hike.
The boys joined me to check out a hike I was hoping to use for a nature group next year--a ridge with fossils in our area.
The fossils were cool, but the hike is probably too steep to be practical with little kids. I'll have to keep looking for another good fossil spot that we can do.
. . . the mice got to do some playing, but also a whole lot of keeping up with the day-to-day chaos that is our lives. But we did have some fun mixed in while Daddy-o was on a boys' trip to Ireland for 9 days (I'm going to try to get him to do a post about all his fun soon).
We had homeschool park day fun for two of us. The weather has been great this month and some days we end up staying at the park for 3 or 4 hours--as long as there are friends there, who wants to leave?
And I took pictures of lichen, because when do I not take pictures of the little things I notice when we're out?
I snuck out for an evening walk while Peanut was at a church activity. I did get out 3 mornings to swim with a friend, but wasn't going on my usual morning walk, so this was nice.
Got to take this kiddo to his Senior pictures. I do not know how we are already here, and it feels extra weird because he's only 16, but ready or not, the senior stuff is all happening.
We played with paper airplanes in science--the kids all loved it, and some of them even did the measurements and calculations, not just the flying of the planes, haha (I made them all do the experiment, but there were a few who would have been very happy to just keep flying their planes all morning.)
And Bug played 9 water polo games in 9 days. The tournament in Sacramento was the first weekend Daddy-o was gone, then 2 weekday games, and we finished off with another (local) tournament of 3 games.
This was a smaller tournament without different divisions, so harder teams, but they won the final game.
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Bug was sick (caught a cold from someone the weekend before), so he wasn't enjoying it all quite as much, but still managed some good plays and goals. (He's #15, in front of the goal being drowned by two guys.)
After the last game Saturday, we stopped by Eden Landing Ecological Reserve so I could check out the site of my next nature hike.
So many cool places around the Bay--I wasn't disappointed by the options at this one.
And then, we had Daddy-o's homecoming to look forward to the next day. When the kids were little, a 9-day absence would have been really challenging to deal with (and that is why he never would have done a long trip for fun back then!) But now, even though it ended up being a crazy busy week, we were okay. It was more a matter of Daddy-o being disappointed that he had to miss so many water polo games. We're glad he got to have fun, and glad that we survived!
but it just doesn't guarantee it will be a good hike.
This was the last smile we got out of this one. Right after taking this picture, he slid down the rock to get back down and got a friction burn on both arms. I'd forgotten to repack the first aid kit, so had nothing to put on it, didn't have food that he wanted for lunch, and we were about 3 miles from our car. He was hot and tired and there was no turning back from all of that.
So what started out as a fun adventure ended in us splitting up--Daddy-o ran back to the car while we hiked a mile farther to get to a road where he could pick us up. None of us were enjoying the day at that point and it was almost enough to make me wish we hadn't even tried.But we hadn't hiked hardly at all this summer and I keep going because some days ARE magical. Some hikes we're all pretty happy, and the views are incredible, and we have fun conversations. Sometimes an adventure goes down as a family memory that we'll hold on to forever.
I don't want to miss those incredible hikes because we're trying to avoid ever having a rough one, so we'll keep trying and pushing through the hard times because the next one just might be a legendary adventure.
Some weeks, there isn't a lot of HOME in our homeschool. But on-the-go learning is the best, anyway, so we aren't complaining.
Peanut and I went to the Oakland Museum of CA as a follow up for some of our CA history we've been studying this year. It had been a few years since we'd been and so it was mostly new to him.
This exhibit on recycling was pretty incredible.
We explored the natural history area, which tied in really nicely to some of our recent nature group field trips.
And we spent a long time in the Native American section. This was a fun history unit and the museum has a lot of great things that we recognized, like this fish trap which we had read about in the book, Adopted by Indians.
We spent another afternoon hiking in Del Valle. I love this area in the spring when the hills are all green.
Along with looking for birds and wildflowers and other signs of spring, we also brought along our read aloud because you can't beat a view like this while you're reading.
I managed to get a few miles out of this kid, too. He prefers hikes with friends for actually going much of a distance because apparently I'm not exciting enough to distract him from the pain, haha.
But it was too lovely to turn back.
I love these weeks when we have time to get out of the house and explore.
Bean, Peanut, and I went to explore a new park on the bay in Fremont.
We "hiked" along the water,
and spent quite a bit of time trying to identify the birds we saw. (We also realized this would be a better bird spot in the morning, so the sun isn't behind them, making everything just look like dark blobs.)
And while we were hiking, Daddy-o cashed in on one of his gifts--a boy's day with Bug. They went bowling, miniature golfing, to the arcade at Dave and Buster's, and out for burgers and pie at Nation's.
Hike with the women's group at church--I've been pretty terrible at scheduling these hikes since school started, but we squeezed a quick local one in this month and have a more involved hike planned for February. It's always so fun to talk with these ladies.
Peanut decided the animals needed a playground for their outdoor pen.
The weather has been so mild, they've been able to have a lot of outdoor time most weeks and they do seem to love the tunnels and caves to hide in.
Another hiking adventure with these three.
We went exploring behind the Oakland Zoo and found this labyrinth.
Got to see the bears from the backside of their exhibit.
And found the swing I had heard was in these hills.
Pretty nice view of the bay from up here.
My monkeys.
I've been seeing posts about swings all over the Bay Area and am now determined to go find some of the ones with the best views.
Finally, we wrapped out our Chemistry unit this week.
I think this has been a pretty fun one for the kids. Lots of mixing and testing, color changing and burning things.
I love seeing my students get excited about what they are doing--that's pretty much my main goal with these classes. I figure if they learn something, that's bonus, but the real point is to get them excited about science so they'll want to learn more later.
