Lots of Random Goings On

After such a dry Jan/Feb, we finally got some rain halfway through this month, and it was lovely to see everything wet and fresh.

The almond blossoms have been beautiful. It's fun that we have a park so close to us with a lot of trees to enjoy this time of year. Our homeschool park group has been there this month and I went a couple of times without any kids, just to catch up with friends.

Peanut had a fun 4-H meeting. We haven't made it to any of the project groups he was hoping to do this year, but at least he can go to the club meetings once a month and have fun seeing friends.

And now, in an effort to be a lifelong learner, my fun find this month:

UV flourescence! I watched a lunchtime zoom seminar one day on bioluminescence and UV fluorescence that we can find all around the Bay Area and was so excited to go out and see what we could find, so I got a new UV light (I have a couple of cheap ones I've used in my science classes, but turns out the better ones have a different wave length, and it makes a huge difference.)

And we took the light out to explore one of the redwood parks in Oakland at dusk. We only found the one group of mushrooms (Sulfur tufts) and these little flowers, but a lot of mushrooms and flowers will do this.

The moss on the redwood bark was pretty cool. Redwoods are a lot redder under UV light.

And a lot of plants will glow red--it's the chlorophyll in the leaves. I have no idea what the blue parts are--I still have a lot to learn about this.

Redwood sorrel, which looks very green during the day, is a deep red under UV light. It was so much fun looking for things and realizing how different the world looks if you change the lens you're seeing it through. I've been reading a book--An Immense World, by Ed Yong that explores this concept, too. Living things have very different umwelts, specific ways that an organism experiences the world based on the capabilities of their sensory organs. It's fun when we can get a glimpse into another species umwelt.

All that rain finally got the creek going again. It's already slowed and largely dried up, but it had a few days with a lot of water.

Peanut and I went to the Science Odessey night at one of the local K-8th schools so I could see which community groups had booths there (getting ideas of who to reach out to for my science fair I'm doing in April), and one company had a couple of snakes there. They do research and analysis for a lot of organizations, including East Bay Regional Parks, working with endangered and threatened species.

And then, the next day, I had a nature hike scheduled at Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve. It's fun that we have an extinct volcano right in the Bay Area, even if the area has been crumpled so the volcano is lying on it's side now and doesn't look anything like a volcano. But there are some cool volcanic rocks to see in the area.

And there were a lot of these butterflies--California Tortoiseshells, I think.

And the real find of the day was about a dozen newts in a small pond on the hike. They were actively mating and laying eggs. We found this one that looks like it's curled around several large clusters of eggs. I've only seen eggs one other time and they were just attached on the side of a rock, but I'm guessing these were laid very recently.

This was by far the favorite stop for everyone on the hike. The kids also found a couple of young bull frogs, and had fun exploring the labyrinth that was right by the pond. I seriously love my job.

Our weather has been unseasonably warm this past week after the rain storms, so while we were working in the backyard on Saturday, I got the animals out for a bit. Our sweet girl, Charkie, just turned 6 years old this past week. Never would have guessed that she'd outlast the other guinea pigs, but here she is, the oldest one we've ever raised.

Luckily she's still around to keep Poppy company. Not sure what we'll do when the bunny is the only one left--I think she's going to be lonely.

We got to finish the day off with an evening in Palo Alto, getting pizza as a snack before watching San Francisco, a 1940's musical, at the Stanford Theater. I'd seen the movie back in college, but it was fun to watch again. And then we got crepes afterwards. 5:30 movie times are awkward for dinner, haha, so we kind of did a split meal with popcorn in between. It had been a few months since we'd been to this theater--it's seriously my favorite.

In Other Happenings

Warning: These first couple of pictures are disturbing--no blood and gore, but still hard to look at if you don't like that sort of thing. So scroll past if you don't want to see!

This summer/fall has felt like it largely revolved around Bug leaving us, but we have had other things going on. Starting with the biggest thing--

Daddy-o took a nasty fall off a ladder at work and ended up spending a day in the ER. It ended up not being broken, just a severe dislocation which they had to put him under in order to reset.

The doctor told him he was lucky that he didn't die since a lot of ladder incidents end up much worse. He was about 8 feet off the ground when the ladder slipped down the wall it was balanced on so he had about 1 second to try to figure out how to land to inflict the least damage (and have the smallest chance of hitting his head), and he did fall pretty well, just got his left leg tangled up with the ladder.

Orthorpedic surgeon decided he didn't need surgery, just a boot and physical therapy. Swelling was so bad at his first PT appointment that they couldn't really do anything. Over a month later, it's still swollen, but not nearly as bad. His orthopedist is really happy with his progress (he's walking in normal shoes already!) and has hopes that he'll recover full range of motion, but he's got a lot of work to get there. We're just glad it wasn't his right ankle so he's been able to drive the whole time.

Peanut had an awesome swim meet where he got three PRs, which finally broke through a plateau he'd had for a while. He's got a new coach, and is swimming 3-4 times a week now and it seems to be making a difference.

Property news has been frustrating. There should be a house in this picture on the right, but this is still what it looks like (but at least there was a nice sunrise!) We are waiting on the final permits and they have been sending us back with something to change over and over. We've submitted the final change they asked for, so we *should* have our permits any day now, but I'm not holding my breath.

I couldn't get a great picture, but all three animals were snuggling together the other day and it was just so sweet. We kind of can't believe that the guinea pigs are still holding on. They're both about 5.5 years old which is about as old as they get. We've already started talking about what we're going to have to do for Poppy when that day comes--she'll miss her piggy friends.

Pool time ended with some weird days--Bug's last day of lessons was totally raining. I showed up to swim laps during his break, but there was thunder and lightning, which is really weird for us.

Science classes have been going pretty well. Chemistry is a fun topic with some good labs we get to do this year and a lot of the kids are pretty into it. (and shh. . . don't tell anyone, but I have a couple favorite classes for sure--it's just so nice when they can follow directions and really seem interested in what we're doing.)

Nature hikes have also been fun. We've got a smaller core group this year, but the families are a lot of fun.

We're revisiting some of my favorite topics since none of my current families were around when I first started. So we learned about woodpeckers and returned to the redwoods.

The banana slugs there were a hit. And I had to laugh, but also felt really legit when a random hiker stopped to listed to me when I was talking about the redwood root networks with my group.

I went to see the movie release of the new Taylor Swift album. After missing out on the Eras tour and regretting it, I decided I wasn't going to take any chances. I'm loving the new album, and it was fun to see the making of the music video.

And in other music news, Peanut and I went to the symphony at Temple Hill in Oakland for the Star Wars night.

The music was great and we got to watch a friend from church in her inaugural night as the conductor. 

It was fun meeting up with homeschool friends and pretending that we're still living that life. I think that once you're a homeschooler, you're always a homeschooler.

And finally, I got out for a hike after dropping Peanut off for his Ranger Explorers day today. 

It was a gorgeous morning and I did the new trail which has some incredible views. Also got to hike with deer, watch a white-tailed kite hovering and diving for food, and a red-shouldered hawk take off with a gopher in its talons! All in all, it was a really great hike and I still had time to spend the rest of the day with gimpy Daddy-o ;)

 

Merry Christmas, 2024

Christmas always means good food.

And this year, that included the pretend foods we got the animals.

They must have had some sort of flavoring on them because they all went nuts for these things, which were so cute. A salad bowl,

which they attacked, 

and a piece of cake, equally exciting to them. Plus the ice cream cone and a pineapple. They were all pretty excited about all of them and tore them to pieces.

We spent the morning opening gifts, and eating and talking to extended family.

And then everyone headed down to the church field for a little baseball and Peanut rode his new bike around and I went for a walk.

This has kind of turned into a tradition--whatever outdoor toys get brought out and then there is also batting practice and catch.

And then we had to come back for Daddy-o to make dinner. He loves having a traditional Christmas dinner of some sort, and luckily doesn't mind cooking it, too.

It's so fun having all three of these kids together again. A little loud, and not every moment is full of fun, but overall, it's better than NOT having the three of them home together.

Dinner was delicious! I love this family we get to be with, whether it's for holidays or just every day. These people make every day just a little more interesting.

A Peek at the First Couple Weeks of School

Peanut and I have had a couple of dog check-ins with these two pups. Sophie, the smaller one, loves to play hide-and-seek and we've got her pretty well trained. She's awesome (and Brinkley, after 4+ years of us visiting, still won't come near us voluntarily, haha.)

This one spends a lot of time on homework now, although he also spends a lot of time getting sidetracked and diving deep into things that really aren't required. But the love of learning never stops.

Peanut and I took our read-aloud to the pool. Might be my new favorite spot to read.

Bob is coming along nicely!

We fit in an evening swim with dinner at the pool one night. Probably should have let Bug stay home to get started on his homework, but it was just too nice out.

I got out for an early morning walk, which I haven't been doing much of this summer, and was blown away by all the wildflowers down by our creek, which still has water in it! Unheard of at this time of year. It's really beautiful to see what a wet winter can do for our state. Maybe not quite as wet as last year, but it has made for some different plants popping up, or lasting longer than normal.

Peanut started LAC again--practices two time a week and he says he might do a couple swim meets this year. We'll cross our fingers that he's at least willing to give it a try. But I'm glad he gets the swimming time either way.

School water polo started again. Bug is a captain this year and trying to do everything he can to improve the team. He started a lunchtime club last year that meets one day a week to go over different rules and plays and just help the kids learn the game a little better. They're going to film the games this year and watch some of the footage, too.

First game could have been worse (and would have been if Amador hadn't pulled way back after being up like 15-2). 2 of those 7 goals were Bug. Our team just doesn't have the coaching to dig them out of this history of losing badly to most of the teams in the league (and our league happens to have a lot of REALLY good players in it--the ones who are going on to play D1 polo in college at some of the top schools in the country.)

Love seeing these cute moments with all the animals cuddled up in one part of the cage. I spent 3 hours doing a deep clean on the cage that morning and I think they were all so excited to snuggle into the fresh bedding downstairs in their stink-free cage. I love animals, but sometimes wish we had outdoor pets without cages to clean. Not sure what that would even look like, haha.

And finally, I'll end with this awesome burger that Peanut made for us the other night. He gets a monthly cooking kit and these burgers and drink were from a couple of his kits. He was actually testing out the recipe so he can make it again in a few weeks for some friends he wants to have over. I can't wait for him to be able to take over a night every week all on his own.

We've had some other fun these past weeks, but I'll give those days their own posts.