I really love the older gravestones around here. There are lots of lost at sea ones, sadly, and here is a Captain's stone.

Isn't this an awesome pattern of lichen?

I would love that on my gravestone.

This is my attempt to be artistic with the camera.

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.

Plimouth Plantation

We had great weather for a visit to the Plimouth Plantation. It was really nice there today. I am always a bit uncomfortable talking to the people in costume, but we were able to have a nice chat with a young woman today about kids games, and a gentleman in his house who was talking about his neighbors (the Wamanoag emissaries sent by the tribe sachem to communicate with the newcomers). It was actually a family of ten that lived there in the Hockamock settlement.

In was an interesting stream of events that led us here today.

Yesterday, we were inspired by the Curious George show to make some instruments of our own and I thought of this paperbag book I had seen at our library with instructions to make Native peoples' instruments. The book had some information about different tribes, and we talked about the Wampanoag Nation that was involved with the Pilgrims in 1627. Our little library was gifted by patrons with some passes this year, so we were able to reserve a pass for the Plimouth Plantation for today.

These beautiful woven mats on the inside of the We-Tu (whee-two? spelling unknown to me!) provide a path for cool and hot air to flow through the dome-like structure. There was a man in Native dress today who was making a new structure. He asked for Declan's help. I love hearing about how the children were raised alongside the adults learning by observing and playing.

In this particular structure we met a great collection of fellow homeschoolers. They were snapping pictures of all the differently shaped We-Tus because they were going to make one of their own when they got home.

Note the chamber pot! That is the green pot under the bed, which has its curtains drawn. The kids were very interested in this, along with the conversation they overheard about "snot" being fluid from the brain. Yuck.

Declan *loved* this treasure chest and the thought of it sailing over the ocean. There were only blankets in it, tho.