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.

So Much To Be Thankful For This Year

It really was a happy Thanksgiving getting to be with family, even if it meant spending the whole day outside, which isn't completely pleasant in Utah in November. But we got lucky with sun, which felt really nice for the few hours the sun was up.

Cousins make everything fun. 

The kids made turkey place markers.

and placemats.

It gave them something to do for a bit.

They moved tables around enough to play a little basketball.

And after stuffing ourselves with great food, we visited a small slot canyon.

Kids ready to go in!

The cousins have done it many times, but mine are a little unsure about tight places.

Peanut only made it part way in and then came back out to wait with me. This girl didn't love it, but was glad she finished.

So many fun rocks to climb around on.

It was such a great outside day.

The whole family. I love these people, and it was so great spending a couple days with them.

We finished off the day with pie (no homemade pies, but Costco is a pretty good substitute and it meant Daddy-o didn't have to fit pie making into our busy schedule)

and an outdoor movie. A VERY cold movie, but it was fun. The projector was an early Christmas present for our kids. We figured it was better to give it to them now so we could extend the outdoor time for a couple more hours.

We kicked off the Christmas movie watching with a little Home Alone.

Not our normal Thanksgiving, but so much fun. And honestly, whether we are outside, freezing our toes off, or cozy in a house together, it all feels like a special holiday when we can be together.

Life Goes On

Things aren't changing much around here. Still closed, and this is the building I'm missing the most. It only took about a week for me to be craving a library visit, and two months in, it's still a struggle, but we continue to wait because what else can we do? 

In the meantime, we keep plugging away at school stuff. Lots of science happened this week. The boys both enjoyed their constellation studies. And it helped that I had bought a couple new books (because of that whole library closure thing -- guess it could be considered a perk that our own personal library is growing :) ) which they've enjoyed perusing.

Thursday was science class day. The younger kids got to watch this astronaut read them a story from the International Space Station. We also watched a tour of the ISS and saw how they sleep, brush their teeth, use the bathroom, and what the kitchen looks like. Space stations are pretty cool!

Friday was Fun Day! I started it with an early walk.

Then, the kids and I climbed another hill.

Lots of trees gave us some green, but the grasses are just about done with their transition to golden. I'm glad we got to enjoy the spring green as much as we did this year.

We saw a lot of lizards, deer, and even a small garter snake. Not a bad wildlife sighting day. 

Getting outside is always nice, but this hike would probably only rank on the "ok" list, except for this short stretch along a creek. Those open hillsides are more enjoyable in the winter and early spring, or maybe it was the level of whining from the youngest that kept this hike from ranking in the top 10. I thought I had brought along a fun motivator when I packed Jolly Ranchers as "top of the hill" rewards, but Peanut, who has been a great hiker the past 2 months, became a serious complainer if he didn't get a candy after every little uphill stretch. Maybe we won't bring along candy in the future.

Friday finished with some reading, virtual hangouts for both boys, a math test for Bean, several rounds of Mastermind for me and Peanut, a Chicken Alfredo Linguine dinner courtesy of Bean, and Raiders of the Lost Ark for family movie night. I'm pretty sure our Saturday will now be full of Indiana Jones adventures as Peanut fully immerses himself in this new movie. He is a story teller and story absorber through and through and every new story is a chance for new play!

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.