Visitors we Love!

We had the best visit with our friends who came from California. I love the WHOLE family. The kids all got along great. Later I will post more, but here are a few shots of the gang.

Because of the configuration of the ages, there were plenty of different combinations of friends who could hang together; girls, boys, youngers, olders, tweenies with adults, etc. These two loved hanging out!
Aren't they a gorgeous family? This is at the Kennedy Memorial in Hyannis. We drove by the compound, but maybe those shots will be on my friend's blog.

We went to see the Fort Hill area in Eastham, and there was plenty of poison ivy to avoid, but I think we did alright. Ticks were also present to join in the fun, as usual on Cape Cod, but we seemed to do okay there as well.

This is outside the Three Sisters Lighthouse at the National Seashore. The kids all went up in the light house. I've always thought that I would like to be a lighthouse keeper, but the tour guide made the lamp lighting schedule sound a lot like a nursing schedule and I am all set with that *grin*.

Shake Things Up

Okay, the Christmas decorations are down, the day is grey and the video games are getting old (I guess that's what happens when you have a LEGO Star Wars marathon).

So, it is time to start shaking things up. We have had some fun around here making things and creating science experiments, and we are really s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g our comfort zone by going vegetarian.

When we are transitioning away from holidays, it seems we have to put a little more effort into being engaged. Here are some things we've done to shake off the cobwebs of Christmas and get more into the fun of winter (an oxymoron if *I* ever heard one, but my kiddos like winter and who am I to say anything.....)

Some things we have done to get the fun rolling again are:

*museums (especially small-ish ones, like plastics or associated with a college. I think we'll hit the MIT museum next time we're up there.)

*a new crafting tool (next time this happens, I have my eye on a wood burning tool, I may get it sooner, but right now we have enough craft material lying all around the house for me to want to buy something new. Both Ella and I are a little in love with the Crafty Chica)

*bowling, roller skating, or a video arcade (last time at the arcade,my dd got a Newton's cradle http://www.officeplayground.com/newtonscradle3.html with her tickets won on the games, and there have been some unbelievable discussions that branched off from that toy!)

*a new music CD or video or computer game...or season three of the Gilmore Girls

*a road trip (even just to the next town over)

*the supermarket to buy strange fruits and veggies and figure out how to cook them (we have a coconut sitting on our counter right now waiting for a smashing)

*a day/week of foods from a different place, or eating on the living room floor instead of the table, or breakfast in bed

*checking out books from a different library (somehow I come out with completely different kinds of books from the library on the other side of town...we've been all over looking for our Gilmore Girls DVDs)

Spectacle of Lights

Last night we went with Meg and her young friends, Paul and Doug, to go to the Spectacle of Lights. Declan had a blast riding the carousel. Once you are up there spinning around it is pretty fast and high, but he hung in there.


We went through the whole display of lights, which was extraordinary! We saw some friends there, which is always nice. I am still adjusting to the small town nature of Cape Cod (in the winter especially). We saw three families there that we knew! People always wonder if home schooled children are going to be well-socialized. It was nice to see that last night my children made friends easily with the two boys they'd never met, and then saw plenty of people that they knew from their wide world experience.

Scrapbook Fun

We have found a wonderful place! It is called Simply Scrapbooking, and the woman who runs it, Michele, is awesome with the kids. We have been twice, and both times the girls (we have yet to get Declan or any boys to come!) made stuff they were really proud of.

It is so fun to hear them chatting in the "back room." Ella is really concentrating here.
Ahh! The finished product! A picture book for Dad for Christmas. Shhhh. . . it's a secret!

MIT Flashlight Building

We went to MIT this week to the Edgerton Center. They have an amazing outreach program for the city of Cambridge, and I did a little research and found out that homeschoolers can access it as well. We did a workshop called flashlight building. It was so fun. Maybe we should do it as a funshop at a conference. That'd be fun!

They had to make a complete circuit, but one of the best parts was "shredding the flashlights" and putting them back together so that they would work.

This is the innards of the flashlight. It is hard to see, but there is a light bulb, a circuit, a 9 volt battery and a set of straight and stranded wires all attached.

The finished product. As girly as it can be!!

I was able to make one, too (hooray!!) and I made it yellow and black for Declan in honor of the transformer Bumblebee.

Concord and Lexington

We read a great book called Louisa May and Mr. Thoreau's Flute. Ella read Little Women last year, and saw the play with Boston and Nana. We had never been to the house that the book was set in, however. We went this week and it was great. It is called Orchard House, and has a school of philosophy attached. Apparently, Bronson Alcott, Louisa's father, had to start his own school since at the time he kept getting fired from teaching jobs for being to radical.

He was really obsessed with letting children ask questions, explore nature, and learn what they were interested in. What a concept. Interestingly, Horace Mann was also a neighbor for a while, but he was not a friend of Nathaniel Hawthorn and Thoreau (also a fired teacher) and Bronson. I have more research to do.

In fact, a young man who was a homeschooler and now plays Nathaniel Hawthorn's son (who was a friend to May Alcott, Amy from the book) was our guide. The house is just like you see in movies and plays. And our guide was a phenomenal source of information.

We learned that the man who sculpted the Lincoln Memorial was named Daniel French and he was given his first sculpting tools by May Alcott (she was married by that time, but her married name escapes me right now).

This is the museum of National Heritage not far from the Alcott house if you take Paul Revere's Midnight Ride route.
Declan loved the idea of making butter. This museum is very kid-friendly and has loads of stuff to touch and explore. It is a great find, and free which makes it even better!

Renaissance Fair

Declan made a friend at the Renaissance Faire. Although he declined a sheild, he did feel it made this opponent "unstoppable".
Hmmmm, are they attacking this other kid in a team?



Photos by Ella.

Cape Cod Wildlife Center

Today we went to the Cape Wildlife Center
and it was great! Although it staffed by only four full time people, they serve all animals in the area that are injured or sick or orphaned. They recently relocated to an old estate. It is like something out of an animals dreams! They have a hot tub that houses turtles, and the in ground pool is in the process of being converted into a salt water pool for seagull rehab. The mansion has rolling grounds with apple trees and berries and beautiful quiet, wooded corners for large kennel style cages for the squirrels, raccoons, opossums, coyotes, and foxes (among others) to recuperate and yet not become familiar with humans.

It was interesting to hear the woman who met with us talk about having your cat outdoors. The number one reason that animals come to her shelter is cat attack. Millions of birds are killed each year by cat attacks. I was shacked, and abashed as an outdoor cat owner.

One thing she said about cats really stuck with me. She said, "We treat cats as if they are wild animals. They have been domesticated since the age of the Egyptians. They are not wild."

We saw a red squirrel and I decided that that was the animal most like Declan. She said red squirrels were like regular grey squirrels on drugs.

I guess what we learned in Over The Hedge was pretty accurate after all. All that info, and learning the lyrics to "Rockin' the Suburbs"...hmmmm...was Over the Hedge more valuable than this field trip. Only time will tell.

Atwood House in Chatham

Today I got up early, packed my bag, made a delicious lunch of all kinds of snackeroos, the camera, a knife, some peanut butter, my date book, directions and sunscreen.

I felt like uber mom until I pulled out of the driveway and drove all the way to Chatham without any of that stuff.

Yep. It was all still on the kitchen table.

Oh well, no pictures of our great day, unfortunately.

The amazing Cathrine from the Cape Cod Maritime Museum led us in a great "Speech Without Sound" program today at the Atwood House in Chatham. She had the kids signaling with semaphore flags and decoding those signal flags.

We also had the fortune to have a dad there who knew Morse Code and had a transmitter in his car so we could listen to Morse Code on the little radio. I was glad we listened last, as it was quite humbling to hear how fast the signals are going over the wire.

Military personnel can transmit 60-80 WORDS a minute! I can't even write 60-80 words a minute. Uh, maybe I can. Hmmmmmm, I feel an experiment coming on.

After we went to this great park. One thing I really miss about living in the city is having an abundance of public parks with climbing structures. There just aren't that many around here. We are lucky enough to have one right down the street, but after living amidst so many parks, it can get boring to go to the same one every time.

It was lovely, and I think I met a really nice woman from Wellfleet. She seemed much more laid back than the other mom I met today who was taking about washing her kids mouth out with soap. She said she even got a mini bar of Dove and told her kids that the doctor gave it to her if they said bad words. This was the mom of the child who punched at least one kids from every other family there.

Go figure.

Deep breath.

Everyone is on their own path.

Maybe she really really needs that mini bar of soap in her life.

Or maybe just a minibar.

Maybe I need a minibar.