Happy Valentine's Day!!

So it's Valentine's Day and most schools have some kind of Valentine's activity....

Well, we went to Christian Home Educators' Valentine Party! (which means no formal schooling today, not that any day is really a 'formal' schooling but you know what I mean) It was held at a church nearby. One of the homeschooling moms asked the pastor is she could use his church and he said "it's YOUR church, not mine. of course you can use the rooms!" so we did our best to give the rooms back the way we found them :) We were told to bring 40 valentines per family, so we made bookmarks with some scripture verses.... OK, I must admit, I did do most of the work, but the kids came with me to the store to buy the strings AND helped me cut some stuff out.

The kids decorated their own 'Valentine's bag' to put all the goodies. Every gift was so precious for there were barely anything that was not made by the kids themselves. And then there was this. M&M's were added by Tesla, but can you imagine what kind of time it must have taken to decorate 40 of these!!!!???!!?!? WOW!

We also brought finger foods to share! The kids had a great time eating and socializing! mostly socializing.

Then it was time for the group photo!!

You can only imagine how much effort went into keeping all the kids together and facing the same direction. This gathering was mainly for younger children, which made group photo op even more interesting. There are many older children in the group too. This Saturday is the annual Famous American day, when the children can dress up as any famous American and do a report or skit or whatever he/she wants. We've never been to one so we're looking forward to it. I also heard that there are 11 high school graduates this year! Graduation ceremony is some time in June and I've already signed up to bring some food! It is going to be so exciting!!!


Well, well that's it for now. I need to go check on the kids. They are awful quiet.......

Time traveling

It's been a relatively dry winter for us this year (note:relatively). Though it's been raining for 2 days now, it was pretty nice and dry on Tuesday, so we went out for a walk!

Our destination was Old Town Eureka. This was the main part of our town when the town first started 150 years ago. It is right next to the bay and there are many old buildings still standing. In fact there's a whole block that hasn't changed a bit since the buildings were built between 1884-1904!

While walking, I noticed a cute sign.





This belongs to a building that currently house a little restaurant/pub kind of place. It's right across the street from the pier.

It must have been beautiful in its prime! I can only imagine someone sitting by the window upstairs in turn-of-the-century outfit. I love everyday history!! California is a pretty new state and yet it's full of places that let's you imagine the past (my favorite time period is the 1920s). Can't imagine what it must be like to live back east where the history is much richer and longer. Or Europe or any other place with really long history.

Speaking of history, Kepler just studied the old Indian dynasty (Gupta) and is now moving on to the beginning of Islam. Next is China I think. He's also been reading a lot on his own. He reads over 1000 pages each month. This month he's about to finish Inkheart, which is about 530 pages long with almost no illustration at all!





Tesla got a new toy recently. It's phonics blocks. The package consists of color coded blocks with vowels, consonants, consonant blends, vowel combos, etc, activity booklet, dry erase board, dry erase marker and activity cards. She can look at the cards and try to spell the words shown using the blocks. Then she can practice writing them!



That's all for now! I better get school started!

Winter is here!!!?

So it's february and it's as warm as our summer days today! of course that only means that we're up to about 60 today :) But it sure beats the 40s. OK, so that's not much of a difference, but the temperature variance here is not much through out the year.

Not much to report, but I thought I'd stop by and write just to let the world know that we're alive. UCLA is ranked 2nd in NCAA men's basketball this week, so all is well :) But A&M is playing Texas in about 30 minutes, so we'll see how well this week REALLY is....

We're all feeling a lot better now and pretty much back to our routine. Kepler stopped going to his cub scout for a while, but we found a good den, so we are seeking to transfer. His previous den and pack were a bit too sedated for boys. They really didn't do anything boy-ish. Needless to say it was too unexciting to keep Kepler's interest. The new den we found does more boy stuff (outdoors, running, hopping, jumping, fixing bikes, you know things boys like, instead of sitting in a classroom and coloring...) PLUS he dropped wolf cub and went onto the bears which is for the third graders, so that should be closer to his interest level.

We're also considering martial arts and/or gymnastics for Kep and possibly Tes too. But there is NO authentic (?) martial arts school in Eureka, so I'd have to go and see what each dojo is like, before deciding on what to do! Gymnastics would probably work great for Kepler and there is a good gym in town that has a class for boys his age.

Sorry, no pics today, but i'll try to have some nice ones in the near future.

Well, I better go and get food ready for THE game :)