Saying Goodbye

Can't believe the day has come, but this girl is off to college. First goodbyes were to the animals (well, I guess she'd also had to say goodbye to her friends throughout the last week or so.) She got one last "baby" snuggle with Poppy--Poppy is going to miss this because for whatever reason, she loves when Bean holds her like this and is never quite so relaxed with anyone else.

As much stuff as it seemed like she was packing up, there was plenty of room in the car for her things and for our bags for the weekend. We made the drive down to San Diego on Thursday so she'd be ready for her move-in time the next afternoon at the Chapultepec dorms.

We went for lunch in Old Town before we dropped went to campus.

They only allow 2 people to help each student move in, so they boys stayed in Old Town to do some sightseeing--they went to the Mormon Battalion,

and had a great time exploring some of the history of San Diego.

They even got some sarsaparilla from the General Store.

And while they were off exploring, we got this girl set up in her new home for the school year. Just about all of the rooms were turned into triples this year, which means it's a tight fit, but Bean was happy that her roommates wanted to share the bunk bed and offered her the loft. It means she gets this little part of the room all to herself.

It's not much--her bed up top,

and her desk and wardrobe below.

There's not a lot of space, but hopefully they'll be able to get along well enough to make it work. We keep reminding her that she doesn't have to be best friends with her roommates, just get along with them in a civil, respectful way. And that may be all she can hope for--she doesn't have anything in common with them and we're not sure how the school matching system read their questionnaires and decided that this would be a good match, but at least with the move in, they were friendly and have already gone a couple places together--to buy for storage for their dorm and to dinner at her more local roommates' house. She's not planning on joining them at the nightly frat parties or for the sorority rushing that happens in a week or two, but we'll cross our fingers that they can respect their different lifestyle choices and not get in each others' way too much.

We didn't have to say a real goodbye until Saturday but it was still a little weird driving away from her Friday night. We ended up picking up the boys from Old Town and coming back to her dorm because her roommates both went off with family members. So we walked around campus and then got sandwiches from the cafe by her dorm before we left her for the evening.

Then we were back the next afternoon for the Convocation ceremony where they introduced a few of the department deans and basically had a graduation type ceremony, but for the beginning. It was a nice ceremony--not quite the must-do it was made out to be, but still nice.

Our college girl.

And then, it was time to say goodbye for real.

This girl is going to be really missed.

These two have had a really good summer with lots of late movies, working together, water polo--I think Bug may feel her leaving more than any of us. But we're ready to see how this next stretch goes!

Sacramento Field Trip

We had the chance to go on a tour of the state capitol with our charter and I thought we should take advantage of the field trip. Sacramento is really not too far away for us--about 1.5 hours, which it easily takes us that long to get to SF most of the time, too.

I have found that homeschoolers tend to be habitually late. We were listening to a really good audio book on the way up, The Boys in the Boat, and were at a crucial part of the story when we got there, but even though we sat in the car until the last possible moment, we still were the first ones there and our tour started about 20 minutes late while they waited for everyone. It did give us a chance to look around the rotunda a little and take a few pictures.

Most of the group finally arrived.

I love old architecture, especially in these domes.

We got to visit the State Senate room and our tour guide explained how it runs in there.

Interesting note--everything in this room is green. The State Assembly room is a replica, but done in all red. Guess that would help you to make sure you weren't sitting in on the wrong meeting.

Another interesting fact--the state mammal is the bear, which I knew, but I found it funny to see the various artists interpretations of bears throughout the building. I wouldn't have recognized these wood carvings in the stair posts as bears if they weren't pointed out. Looks more like a wolverine or something.

And another one--a little more bear-like, but he has pretty scrawny legs.

Our guide was excellent with the kids and talked a lot with them about how important each individual is to making the system work for the people. Maybe it's time to get the kids involved a little more in politics. I need to pay attention to the opportunities that come up.

CA state seal--the kids were able to identify a lot of the symbols in here from our CA history last year, which was fun.

The capitol at Christmas--looks like they were just getting everything set up.

And then, our group went to the CA State Railroad Museum. We had just been there in May, but school groups can get in for free, so I figured why not? Plus, there were a couple things we had to rush through last time, so we tried to get to those.

And some things had a little more significance after the rest of our learning last summer. We listened to a great audio book about the Chinese involvement building the RR, the Dragon's Gate, and learned just how dangerous scenes like this were for the workers. 

And this diorama is of the spot of the Golden Spike, which we got to see in real life this summer.

We also toured the different cars, like this mail car, and a dining car, and sleeper cars. I would love to do an overnight train trip with the kids someday.

We also explored a circuit exhibit--these kids love hands on stuff.

And saw the models, which are always fun. Such a great field trip in the capitol.

CA Weekend

We're winding down our Gold Rush studies and had a free weekend so we decided to visit a couple of historical sites from the Gold Rush days. On the drive, we listened to another Sid Fleischman book, Jim Ugly, which wasn't directly about the Gold Rush like two of his other books we've read, but was set in the same time period, and in Nevada and Northern CA--he must have really liked that time.

 First stop, Old Sacramento.

We happened to go on the weekend of a music festival, so along with the old buildings and museums, we watched a parade.

These police were walking with their paddy wagon,

and came over to give Bug a ticket.

There were a couple community marching bands, as well as some school bands. The festival took away from the Old Town feel a little, but it was fun hearing bits of music as we walked around all day. We even stopped to listen to a high school jazz band that was playing over by the Delta King.

The steamboat was beautiful and sometime, we'll have to come back and eat here, or maybe even stay overnight.

We saw the old schoolhouse.

One thing I regret from the various years we've homeschooled is that I have never organized a group to do one of the old schoolhouse field trips where the kids get to "attend" school for a day. I have always wanted to do this and I know my kids would have loved it.

At lunch time, we met up with my cousin and her family, who live just outside of Sacramento. I can't believe that I didn't get a picture with everyone at some point during the day, but I didn't.

We went to see the old store.

The hardware displays were beautiful--I wonder if the stores really looked that good when they were actually in use.

And then we went to the California State Railroad Museum. It made for a nice intro to our next social studies topic.

Only picture I got of one of my cousins kids--we had a lot of fun with them and are glad to have someone from my side of the family in the area. After the museum, we went to their house for dinner and movie night. They were also kind enough to let us crash there for the night so we could continue our explorations the next day.

Because our next stop was where it all began--Coloma, CA, site of Sutter's Mill and the first CA gold discovery.

We took the self-guided tour of all the spots around town, some recreated (like this mill), some original. The kids worked their way through the Jr. Ranger booklets and earned another badge, and we learned a few new things.

James W. Marshall pointing down to the river where he first found gold.

There were a couple blacksmiths working in the shop, one of the few buildings that was actually open for us to go in.

Peanut loved these "mustaches".

Lots of fun buildings.

I really liked this section on the different mining techniques and equipment used.

As close as they could get to riding a mine cart.

"Oh no! The mine is caving in!"

Even if we had some moments of serious whining and crankiness, it was still a good weekend. As always, history is so much more fun when we can see where it all happened.

And for me and the kids, the weekend wasn't quite over. Daddy-o had to go into work on Memorial Day, but the rest of us went with some friends to explore the newest national park--Pinnacles. I am loving showing the kids how many different types of beauty there are in CA. This felt more like southern UT, compared to the coast, or redwood forests, or the Sierra foothills we'd just spent the weekend in.

The caves we were trying to hike to were closed for the bats who live there, but we did find a few other cave type places.

And we hiked up to a small reservoir, where we found a water snake, tiny frogs, and lots of different insects. The kids started the Jr. Ranger booklets for this park, but had to finish them at home because we had to get back home to go to a cookout at another family's house.

Jam-packed weekend, but so much fun. The kids have loved that we managed to squeeze in 6 field trips in 10 days. I'm hoping to still do some local excursions during the week this summer, but our Saturdays are about to be taken over by swim meets for the next 2 months so weekend travel is over for awhile.