Park Day in the Redwoods

We had our annual Park Day in Henry Cowell State Park. The short hike through the redwoods is beautiful,

and then we spent the rest of the day on the river.

We had four families, 11 kids (and a few extras who joined the kids' fun throughout the day.)

They spent hours playing in the water, skipping rocks, and hunting for critters.

There were a lot of people at the park--more than normal.

Maybe because the weather was perfect.

One of the kids caught a carp with his bare hands!

I feel like this is the best opportunity for the kids to just be feral.

They had a fantastic day.

We finished off with pizza in Santa Cruz to wait out the evening traffic and the drive home was painless. I always feel like our longer park days in the summer capture everything that is good about homeschooling and childhood in general.

Summer Park Days

I love our homeschool park days in the summer--we plan days at some of my favorite places to play in the water.

Henry Cowell was better than ever this year. It's a farther drive and we've been lucky to get 2-3 families out to play in the redwoods.

But this year we had 4! Slowly, but surely, we're going to convince the other families that it's worth driving 1.5 hours to hike through the big trees to play in the river.

Despite the chilly overcast day, the kids went right in.

And a couple hours later, the sun came out! Playing on this train trestle was one of the hits this year. I love that our group of kids who have grown up playing together the past few years are now hitting those tween and teen years where we can let them explore a little farther and more independently.

Such a fun day!

And then there's the end of the summer swim party--where I took exactly one picture, haha. We had about 25 kids from 10 families and fun was had by all. It's always nice to spend one of the first days of public school at a pool just because we can. And the 5 hours can cross off the PE requirement for the week!

 

Family Time

We had so much fun when Uncle C and Aunt R's family came to visit for a couple of nights. 

They didn't have long, and we were in the middle of getting Bean ready to leave for college, so we opted for spending a day at the pool.

These cousins had so much fun together. We lucked out with a hot day so we could enjoy the pool early in the day before Bean had to go to work.

Impressive shenanigans happened.

Although this nap through all those shenanigans might be the most impressive thing of all.

It's never enough time,

but these kids crammed home-movie watching,

game playing,

and so much time just hanging out. Love seeing family whenever we can!

Why Does Everyone Move Away?

Had to say goodbye to our friends who live down the street this week. They've been our pool buddies, backyard dinner companions, and Peanut's neighbor friends who he could run back and forth with between the houses. It's going to be hard not having them here.

We took the younger two boys for a day to help out with the packing and got a couple other friends to meet us at the pool for a long afternoon (and then came home and fed them dinner with the food they had given us from their freezer, haha.)

And then Tuesday night was time for loading up the moving truck. The kids mostly ran around and got in the way until one of the dad's took them all over to the church to play dodgeball for awhile while the rest of us finished up. It's not fun having to say goodbye, but we're hoping that between them having family in the area, and us having family only an hour from their new home, this won't be the last of seeing these boys together.

 

Summer Park Days

Summer means park days at the pool. We hosted one at our pool and the kids all had a blast.

I love seeing the pool get used (and it's so much more fun when it's a bunch of people we know rather than when we run into other member families here, most of whom we don't know at all because we hardly ever see anyone else.)

We also had another one at the rec center.

We love our friends, and we love getting the longer days to play in the summer. Even homeschoolers feel a little more relaxed when we're "off" school.

 

It Just Wouldn't Be Summer Without. . .

Baseball games. Daddy-o has successfully indoctrinated at least a couple of his kids to be Dodgers fans. These two had a great time at a game one night, even if the Giants did win.

Sumer fruit. We love our pluots from the farmer's market, along with all the berries and peaches and nectarines and melons. So much delicious goodness this time of year!

Fire season. This one is sad, but it's become an expectation once we hit August. We haven't had as many bad air days this year as we did last year, so for that, we are grateful, but there's still a lot of forest burning.

A trip to the rec center pool. We have a different pool to swim at this year, but we did meet up with our park day friends one day for the water slide and big pool fun.

Beach days. It was weird not having Bug and Bean with us for a lot of these trips this year--their schedules are so much busier these days. But they joined us when they could, and we met up with friends most times, so it was still fun.

Peach Pie. Daddy-o taught Peanut how to make a delicious pie. 

Park Days at the water. I love summer park days where we visit all the good splash pads and swimming holes around the East Bay. I hadn't been to Shadow Cliffs since I was a kid, but we were in town this year and while there was a little snafu with the swim test for these two kiddos, we still ended up having a pretty good day.

Bike rides. Okay, I'll be honest, we haven't done any amazing bike riding, but this kid does love his bike and so we've ridden around the neighborhood a couple times. I need to get a rack for the car so he and I can go adventure a little more on the bikes. There are some great trails around the Bay that would be a lot of fun.

Lazy pool days. I've loved watching this kid turn into a fish this summer. 

And so much hammock time! If we're at home and it's not 95 degrees outside, this is probably where you'll find us. Lots of good books have been read in these hammocks. And naps taken. And ice cream eaten. Best investment ever.

Pool Days

This kid has been living his best life, floating in a pool day after day.

Having this pool membership this year has been so fun. It's really made summer feel like summer for us, and luckily we've been able to get friends to join us most days.

These two kiddos have spent so many hours here, playing one game after another. 

The two have had a lot of fun, too.

Can't think of a better way to do summer than in a pool.

Just the Two of Us

There's a lot of just the two of us these days (and I'd be lying if I didn't say it's still a little strange for me to not have my other kids along for so many of our adventures. Growing up is hard!) But when we were looking at the calendar and realized that both Bug and Bean had separate camping trips with church groups, blocking off a couple weeks that our family couldn't do much, Daddy-o and I decided to each take Peanut on an overnight trip somewhere kind of close.

First up, Peanut and Daddy-o spent the night at Pinecrest Lake while Bug was on a backpacking trip and Bean and I had a girl's night at home.

Peanut went to work with Daddy-o that day so they could leave from the office. They had time to set up camp, make dinner,

and make it to the outdoor movie--Jungle Cruise. I think the movie was pretty much the highlight of Peanut's camping experience, possibly from all the camping he has ever done, haha. You really can't beat an outdoor theater right by the lake.

Such a sweet boy. This kid knows how to sleep in the morning, even through all the camp sounds.

And then, the next morning, after breaking camp and packing up, they rented a kayak for a couple hours. They had a great time paddling around the lake just before a storm rolled in. They both said it was a great campout!

For our trip while Bean was on her campout and Bug went to work with Daddy-o, we went to Henry Cowell State Park. We'd been to play in the river last summer, and I'd been trying to make it back down there, so this was the perfect chance to explore the park a little more.

I'm not going to lie and say it was a perfect trip--Peanut was not so excited about my hiking aspirations the first day (they couldn't live up to an outdoor movie, for sure)--but we did have a lot of fun. After we set up camp, we hiked through the redwoods to the river.

By the time we'd made it down there, everything was good again so we hung out for a little bit before hiking back up the hill to the campground.

There, we had a great evening--games, dinner around a campfire (which I made with no lighter fluid--the go to method for a couple other people in my family who I won't name, haha.) We told stories around the fire, wrote our own Madlibs, and then read in our sleeping bags until we fell asleep (which was very quickly for one of us--I don't know how this kid isn't more tired at night, but he can outlast me pretty much every night.)

The next morning, after breakfast, we went for another short hike before we took down camp.

This park is unique in that it covers several different habitats. The redwoods are the big draw, but the campground is actually just past the redwoods in an oak forest, and at the edge of these sandhills.

We hiked up the hill to the lookout tower for the amazing views of the Santa Cruz mountains and then took a little walk through part of the hills. It's crazy that this is about a 10 minute walk from towering redwoods. And then, of course, there is the river area, too, which was our next stop after we cleaned up camp.

We drove to the main parking lot and then walked along the river trail until we made it to the train bridge. I'd been wanting to check this spot out, and it really was a lot of fun to hang out here where we got to see a couple of the tourist trains pass overhead on there way through the redwoods.

We hung out there for a couple hours, reading

and floating.

This has definitely been the summer of water--so much time spent in pools and rivers and lakes. It's been awesome.

And I'm so glad this kid is still around for the fun!