Only an hour away, yet we never go.

Today we did something we very rarely do. We went into San Francisco.

My husband and I agree that it isn't a city we really enjoy. Maybe it is because we both grew up around here and have visited many of the sights already. Or maybe we are just home bodies that get busy doing or normal things and don't take the time to enjoy the sights in our own area very often. Or maybe it is just that driving in San Fran is a bit scary with the thin narrow streets that are often one way and people everywhere walking, biking (I don't know how they do it with all the steep hills) and even Segwaying their way through the busy streets. Then there are all the busses and cable cars and such that bustle about and we have to dodge. Parking in SF is also quite a chore and often very expensive. For what ever reason we usually try to avoid going into the city unless we have to.

So what would cause us to drive an hour up the Peninsula and endure this city? We went today because some blogging friends of ours happened to be in the Bay Area, so we went to the Wharf to hang out with them for a little while. I haven't had the opportunity to meet any of the new friends I have made through blogging so this was a special treat.

We meet at Pier 39, one of the most busy places in San Francisco. And we spent a few hours walking around and looking at the sights around the pier. The kids loved the Aquarium of the Bay where they got to see some of the sea creatures that are found in the bay. But most enjoyed touching the rays and, if lucky, a tiger shark.

We mostly just walked along taking in all the sights, sounds, and smells of the wharf.



The kids climbed on anything they could.

And we just enjoyed being out in the sun with friends.


We said good bye to our friends and then drove up to Coit tower,

to see the view from up there. It was beautiful.

We could see Lombard Street from where we were on Telegraph Hill so the kids decided we had to drive down it.


Ian didn't much care for the steep hills we had to drive up and down in order to find Lombard, but the others thought it was quite a fun roller coaster like ride.

We didn't ever make it to a trolley ride. We had thought that sounded like fun. One day we will take the kids on a ride up and around SF on a real cable car but for now they just got excited about spotting them out the window as we drove around.

No, we don't make it into the city very often. But once in awhile it is worth the time and effort to head out on an adventure. This is how my kids referred to our day. They called it "a fun adventure". Maybe we should plan more of these excursions into the jungles of San Francisco more often.

Thanks Cellista, and family, for heading our way. We had a great time.

Juice

With each of my pregnancies, I have never really noticed a specific craving. Never have wanted Ice Cream with pickles or anything strange like that. Most of the time I just want something to give me some energy or a pick me up when I am tired. This is usually where sweets come in. I need to really lay off the treats for awhile. I have put on enough weight already and don't need more to feel guilty about not loosing after this baby comes. There have been times cheese or protein of some kind just sounded good and often kept me from feeling sick, but nothing specific that I just had to have.

When I was about 2 months pregnant, this go around, I was walking through the grocery store and saw a box of Tropicana orange juice and just felt like I needed it. I could almost taste it while standing there in the store looking at it. I haven't bought juice in a very long time. I don't buy it or serve it because I would rather my kids drink water and get their fruit and such from the actual fruit. So I walked past the box of juice and went on with my shopping but kept thinking about how good it would taste. I ended up buying a can of Orange Juice concentrate, the country style kind with all the pulp (I like my o.j. with all the chunky bits!). I went home and immediately made the juice and drank about two tumblers full. The kids of course wanted some and I saved a little for my husband for when he came home from work. That about wiped out my pitcher of O.J.

This same thing happened the next time I went to the store. I bought two cans this time, so I would have a spare for when I wanted it again. I have tried actual oranges to satisfy this desire for the juice, and they are yummy but for some reason they just don't hit the craving like a nice cold glass of orange juice. Now, I don't have orange juice every day. I don't even crave it everyday. I only buy one or two cans each week and they don't last long once they are made. So I haven't become an Orange Juice junky yet. And the craving hasn't jumped to any other juices. In fact they, the other juices, sort of make me feel sick, they are too sweet or something.

Today I made a pitcher of juice after breakfast while the kids were busy doing something else, so my nice full pitcher stayed full and I just took my small glass and put the rest in the fridge looking forward to taking little sips throughout the day. At some point in the day Sophie realized the orange juice was there and decided she needed some. She got herself a cup and tried to pour herself a cup. The next thing I hear is a big splash and an "Oh no!". I looked up and tried not to get upset. I held my disappointment in as long as I could and just told her to get some towels to clean it up. This is the point where she announces that she really needs to use the bathroom and starts doing "the dance". I tell her to go potty and then come back to clean up the mess. She runs to the bathroom and I just look at all my orange juice, almost the entire pitcher of MY orange juice all over the table and floor. Sophie comes back and begins her half hearted clean up of the big mess. She is mainly just swishing it around and not actually cleaning it up. This is where my anger surfaced and I told her to just leave it and I would clean it up. She whimpered on the couch, and kept telling me it was just an accident and that the pitcher was too full and that she suddenly needed to use the bathroom at that very precise moment and that is why she dropped the orange juice, MY Orange Juice.

I let her have the cup of juice that did make it into the cup she was trying to fill. I had thought to drink it myself. Boy did it look good and there wasn't any more left. But I let her have it and tried not to think about it. But now after walking on my sticky floor the rest of the day and then mopping the floor with the hardwood floor cleaner tonight once dinner was finished. I now really want some orange juice. Just looking for a picture of OJ on google to put with this post makes me salivate.

I guess there are worse things to crave. I just need to keep a better supply around the house maybe. No! because then I really will drink it all the time and become an O.J. junkie. I could just blame it on the baby. She is really the junkie, I am just the facilitator.

Our Horse Unit

Well we started our Horse Unit today. It seemed to go over well. I haven't planned it all the way through yet but I have got this first week or so thought out. I am taking ideas from this review I read from a blogger that I follow. Most of the books are Marguerite Henry books. We have actually read quite a few of them. We read Brighty of the Grand Canyon last fall. And the Misty of Chincotegue series of books were some of our favorites last year. But Marguerite Henry wrote so many more and they are all included on lists of books that kids should read. I read a few in my youth but don't remember many of them, so I am enjoying them too.

Before we even started today Sophie got out every stuffed horse we have in our house, we actually have many, so they could read along with us. The first book we are reading is The White Stallion of Lipizza. We made it through a number of chapters just to get the story going. We then read about Lipizzan Horses in our Album of Horses (this is a book from my childhood. I poured over this book when I was little and all the pictures are so familiar). I brought out Sophie's little white toy horse, which I believe is supposed to be a Lipizzaner horse. The kids pranced it around and figured out which of the ballet moves it was doing. We then went to YouTube and watched a few videos of Lipazzaners. The kids really enjoyed watching the horses do their ballet moves. I then had a coloring page for them to color of a Lipizzan with rider doing one of the airs. Sophie even gave drawing one on her own a try.


Over the next few days we will learn all about Austria, which is where this story takes place. I have a flag printout for them to color and a map of Europe for them to label. I also have the Blue Danube waltz by Johann Strauss to introduce to go along with our study of Austria. Maybe I will also have to show the Sound of Music so we can see those Austrian Alps.


We are also going to start going over the parts of the horse and how to take care of them. I have a bunch of books about horses in general to read and a few picture books with horses in them for us to read for fun.

But before this unit is over. I hope to also read Black Beauty which is the only book not by Marguerite Henry. This one will be good to read and go over all the different uses of horses and some English things like the Fox Hunt and such. King of the Wind is another on the list. We will get to study about arabian horses and Arabia. Maybe a bit about racing. If we haven't worn out Horses after these then we will also try Justin Morgan had a Horse (I actually don't know much about this one at all) or Mustang - Wild Spirit of the West (Sophie really likes mustangs) or even Born to Trot which is one I do remember reading as a kid.




There are all sorts of other things to study along with each of these books. It won't all be horses but they are the linking theme. I also splurged and bought some horse stickers which I hope will go into a lapbook. I also found a little sticker book that goes through the parts of a horse and all the tack involved in riding and care of horses. This is for the boys, or at least Henry to enjoy.

I hope the kids enjoy this unit. I have purposely keep it somewhat light. I know the kids just want to play but I need to feel like we are at least doing a little something each day. If nothing else we will read a bunch of really good books.

3 out of 5 isn't too bad!

Our week started off well but it fell apart toward the end. We "did school" three days and played the last two. I have no excuse other than that it was my husband's birthday, we started Swimming lessons, and I was just a tad bit lazy perhaps.

Monday we did listen to what I thought was the last two chapters of our Story of the World, there ended up being three and then a sort of sum up mini chapter too. Oh well. Maybe we will start off talking more about these early settlements in the Americas when we start the next Story of the World book in the Fall. I just have hit the wall with History and Science lately and need a change.
We also did some Math, Phonics, writing and Ian read his first book to me. We had been reading passages from our McGuffy's Reader but I decided it was time to try an actual book. I chose Bears on Wheels. I could tell he was looking a the pictures for help but when I pointed to the words on the page he would be able to give me the exact sentence rather than just what he could see in the picture.
We also listened to all our Shakespeare books and audio books in the afternoon. My kids couldn't seem to get enough Shakespeare.

Tuesday was about the same as Monday. We did history related reading about maps and Sophie decided to draw a map of our house. It looked great until she started to put too many details in and it got a bit cluttered but it was a good exercise. The kids then spent some time drawing maps of their made up land, Bardarland. They put in all the symbols and things to show where the waterfalls were and where the bardar lived. I love it that my kids have an active imagination!
In the mail, on Tuesday, I got a book via Paperback swap, Annos Math games II. The boys insisted we look through it right then so we all sat down on the couch and we went through the whole book doing the different activities and puzzles. When it was done they didn't feel like they had had enough so they went to the shelf and found our copy of Anno's Math Games, which was also a book I recieved via Paperbackswap. The boys again sat through this whole book too. So I guess we did Math with Anno on Tuesday.
The kids started their swim lessons Tuesday afternoon. They are each in a different class but they all happen at the same time. I get a half hour of quiet in the lobby, twice a week, while they swim.

Wednesday was the day things really started to fall apart. I just couldn't get the kids away from their Knex Wednesday morning so they listened to audio books again. I believe this time it was a CD about Queen Elizabeth and her Pirate Sir Frances Drake called The Queen's Pirate. I think we listened to it at least 3 times during the week. It certainly fit well with the Story of the World chapter about the Spanish/English war so at least that was some History for the day.

While outside playing in the yard the kids made an exciting discovery. In our birch trees there are all sorts of ladybug eggs and larvae. I still haven't replaced my camera so I am using my gimpy camera with the screen that doesn't work so I never know what I am going to get. This is the only picture that didn't turn out fuzzy. but there were all sorts of different pupa and even some of the larvae crawling around on the leaves. It was pretty exciting to see them on our tree.
We went to the park as usual in the afternoon to meet our park day group and that was about it for Wednesday. Not a whole lot accomplished but at least we did a little.

Thursday is our usual library day. I have given up going to story time. My kids don't go to story time so we just go when we want to. Henry always thinks he has to play some of the computer games that are available and Ian usually coaches him along. Sophie heads to her favorite sections and looks at books. I actually didn't have to go in search of books because all the ones that I wanted were already on my hold shelf so they were already found for me. I love it when that happens. I was able to scan the audio books in the children's section for awhile and found the Tale of Desperaeux. It is one I had thought I should get for the kids to listen to since the movie came out on DVD recently. They also loved The Rescuers which was one of the Audio book we have listened to recently. So I knew they would enjoy this one as well. On the way home the kids wanted to listen to it. So I put it on for our 5 min drive home. They immediately put it on in the house and listened to the first two CD's without stopping while they built extensive train tracks that went through a zoo and castle. They had every toy out all over the front room. They were having a great time and were more or less playing without fighting so I just enjoyed the story along with them as I cleaned my room and folded laundry.
At swim lessons on Thursday Ian was able to swim without a float. I knew he could swim he just needed a little confidence. He was swimming back and forth between the wall and his swim teacher. He was even jumping in off the side and then swimming to his teacher by the end of the lesson. I was very happy to see him swim on his own finally. Sophie is having a great time swimming and is getting better at her strokes. This is Henry's first lessons so he is giving his teacher a bit of a run around. He has no fear and she has to keep a close eye on him to make sure he doesn't just let go of the wall and think he can do it on his own.

By the time Friday rolled around we had already skipped a day of school so I felt like we really should do more but.... we didn't really. We just finished Despereaux and played. We read a few fun books and played some games but mostly the kids just did what they wanted more or less. They had the little legos out and were all about building ships for their Star wars Lego men. Ian had received his Lego magazine the day before and was all excited again about legos. I spent the time cleaning out my closet a bit more. My walk in closet is supposed to be where the Baby will be sleeping when she comes. I have to clear out a bit more stuff and find new homes for it in the next two months so she will have a "room" of her own, half of which will still have our clothes hanging in it.

Sophie had yet another doctor's appointment in the afternoon. This time with the ENT. Her last hearing test didn't go so well so the ENT needed to check her ears for fluid. He couldn't see anything but his simple test of her ears with the telephone showed that her hearing in one ear is fuzzy. She may need tubes again. Wow... if it isn't one thing it is another, poor girl.

Today, Saturday, Sophie had her Ballet recital. She was very excited and she had so much fun with her classmates while they watched the other dancers. I am sad that this is the last recital. The community center where we have been doing ballet classes only does classes up to age 8 and then they switch to hip hop dancing and I am not excited about hip hop. So we are going to either find something different for her to go or some other dance studio to take classes.


That was our week. We were busy but I can't claim that a lot of formal schooling went on. I am looking forward to our Horse Unit Study, which we will start next week. Hopefully a change of pace will be good for us.

The Man of our House

I don't really talk much about my husband. Not that he isn't a major part of our household. He just likes his privacy and would rather I not talk about him much. But today is his Birthday so I though I would share a few pictures from the past and give a little more information on him.
Here he is as a little guy.
He grew up in a military family so lived in many different places growing up.
He is the youngest of 5 boys.
He was often told he is the last failed attempt at a girl.

He was a little scared when he found out our first child was a girl. But Sophie quickly won his heart!
We don't know exactly how it happened but he isn't called Dad but goes by Papa. When Sophie was small I just started calling him Papa instead of Daddy. I think it is because he has always thought of himself as Tevye from "Fiddler on the Roof", insisting on TRADITION and singing the "If I were a rich man" song.
Sometimes however he thinks of himself as George Bailey from It's a "Wonderful Life" and has to be reminded that he does live a very blessed life.


He is not afraid of looking a little silly some times. When asked for something that makes her laugh, Sophie replied "My Papa".

He is the best story teller. When he reads books he gives each character a different voice and at times an accent. He also makes up stories each night for each of the kids.




He loves all things scottish. His only requirement for his funeral is a bagpiper. (We had one at our wedding reception as well.)









He loves to teach his children some of the important things in life.




He enjoys going on outings with the kids. He is always planning new places for us to visit.








He is passionate about politics, religion, and money. (The three forbidden topics, if you don't want to offend anyone) and is always up on current events.
He is always able to find some topic of conversation with just about any person.
He knows a lot about everything. And loves to talk about things.






He catches onto languages easily and can actually speak a number of languages at least well enough to get his point across. He has picked them up from friends and old roommate. He says on his mission he learned "Red Neck".



He is a History buff and knows just about every thing there is to know about WWII as well as most other events of the past. When at my parents house he loves to "goon out" in front of the History Channel all day and night.




There is so much more about him I could share but, as I said, he likes his privacy.
I just wanted to say Happy Birthday. We are lucky to have you in our lives!


p.s. Sorry the pictures are all skiwhumppus (Is this a word? I use it all the time. But have no idea how to spell it.) I just don't have time right now to fix it up.

I can hold on one more week!

I have decided to finish our "school year" next week. When I went to look up books for next weeks history lesson, I figured out we have only two chapters in our Story of the World book left. I think we will just do them both next week and then take a break for a bit. I say a break but that just means we will be doing a unit study or something during our mornings rather than history and science. I need to keep the morning schedule going through the summer just for continuity and my sanity. We will still do Math, but probably more fun math stuff. Language Arts will have to continue also since I can't say we have done that well at doing it regularly. And of course our Nature Study and such is always a pleasure and not a chore so that will continue. So nothing is really ending except maybe History and Science. But that is usually filled in with the unit study.

We are going to start with a unit study on horses. I will have to write out my plans in another post. It isn't that well planned out but I am sure my kids will enjoy it.

As for this week.......

We covered Shakespeare this week in History. My kid actually really loved reading some story book versions of his plays. They sat through Midsummer Nights Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, and Macbeth. We didn't make it to Hamlet or The Tempest yet. But the books are here on the shelf so I will try to get to them in the next week. We listened to a few different children's audio book versions of his plays also which went over really well.

And we really liked the biography by Aliki the best. I have found my kids looking at this one a few times after we read through it. They also sat through the entire Magic Tree House book about Shakespeare. They didn't want me to stop in the middle so we read it in one sitting.
Just for fun I showed them the movie Kiss me Kate. It was a little beyond them but they enjoyed the singing and dancing, especially once the actual play started. When it was over. Ian was singing "brush up your shakespeare, start quoting him now". I was sort of surprised they enjoyed it so much. It is fun to read all these children's versions of the plays. I am starting to understand more about a few of these plays that were forced reading in High School. I am starting to think children's versions of Classic books are a great place to start when trying to get through a book that is "difficult". There is so much I missed when studying these books before.

Henry decided he couldn't be left out of school any more. He asked for his own math book last week so I broke down and bought him a few Kumon Workbooks (they were at Costco for a good price). He now has a book to do letters, numbers and cutting. He was so excited to have his own workbooks he brought them to me first thing Sunday Morning to do them and I had to tell him that they are for school on Monday. He didn't want to wait. He had to do some right then. He wanted to do page after page but I had to try to slow him down so he gets to do one cutting page a day and one lesson of each of the letters and numbers books each day. He often pulls them out and tries to do some on his own but I have to stop him or else he will just scribble through the whole book. We will see how this goes. But he is loving it!


Ian is doing great with his Explode the code books. He only does a page or two each day and is going very slowly through the lessons but he is sounding out the words a lot easier. His math is also coming along. He still needs me to help him with each problem since he can't read the directions but the actual arithmetic is easy for him. He does a page or two of his Math workbook each day as well.

Sophie is having no trouble with the Multiplication and Division that she is doing in her math. She just started to do multiplying multi-digit numbers and completely got the concept of having to multiply each of the place values by the number.

We actually did do a little science this week. We have pretty much covered all the planets over the last few weeks. Sophie can name them in order from the sun. Ian knows the names and Henry just loves to sit through the books. They keep insisting on keeping Pluto as the 9th planet even if it is now considered a dwarf planet. They included pluto when they made a mural this week. I broke out a poster board and construction paper. I went in search of a number of round items that we could use to trace different size circles. Ian and I traced the circles. Ian cut them out and then Sophie did all the gluing and labeling. I let her have free reign with the placement of the objects which, as usual, was hard for me. But this is what she came up with.

She loved it. Henry took a white crayon and added a few comets, stars, and a few orbits but they don't show up too much. He had fun anyway.

We did do a few language arts lessons with Sophie. This is still our weakest subject. We just have a hard time getting excited about it. It isn't fun and therefore doesn't get done. Every other subject seems to have games or books or activities that go along with it. Writing still just seems like busy work to Sophie. I am going to have to really think about this one so we can do a better about our grammar and writing.

We did attempt to do our outdoor hour challenge for the week which was humming birds. We bought a hummingbird feeder and filled it but have yet to see any hummingbirds. Even on our walks and bike rides we haven't seen any. The bottle brush bushes (a humming bird favorite) are blooming but still no sighting of any hummers. I think because the weather cooled off and is even raining now these little birds have gone into hiding. Maybe later in the Summer we will see some more. We did read the pages from Burgess Bird book for Children about the hummer. The kids always enjoy this book. But I couldn't really say we did the challenge since we didn't see them. But we were and still are on the look out. The kids are always checking the new feeder to see if the water level is any lower. And everyday it is just the same. We just wait.

A few Haphazard Thoughts

Since I haven't posted in almost a week I figured I better write something just to remind everyone that I am here and alive and somewhat on top of things.
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Trying to Homeschool while being pregnant has proven to be more difficult than thought. Sophie wasn't doing school back when I was pregnant with Henry, we were still just playing everyday. He was already 6 months old when we started doing "Preschool". Five in a Row was so much fun and took very little planning and only about 15-20 minutes a day. Now school is much more complicated. I have three kids all wanting to "do school" or on some days not wanting to "do school". And a lot more planning is involved. My patience is a lot thinner, my energy levels are low, and any creativity is sucked away. But still we press on. And the kids don't seem to really mind that school is short and they get to play a lot. I know they are learning things even if we are just playing games so it will all work out alright.
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Am I the only person with RH negative blood? I went to the doctor yesterday for my 28 week visit and this is usually when I get to get my Rhogam shot. After my Dr. Visit I had to go to the lab and have blood drawn and then come back to the OB office for the shot. The nurse at the front desk didn't have a clue what I was there for. She had checked me in already for my visit and couldn't understand why I was back again. When I said it was for a shot, she told me shots are given downstairs at the lab. I explained that the doctor just told me to come back up for the shot.
This is my fourth child, I had been through this ritual a few times already and know this drill, the shots are given up in the OB department. She finally had to call my OB and ask her about it. What should have been a quick in and out procedure ended up taking over half an hour. But I got the shot in my shoulder this time rather than the hip. My hip usually hurts for days after this shot but my arm is fine. Hurray for that!
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While talking to the RN giving me my shot yesterday. She said she was grateful to be doing something other than swab people for flu. People in our area are freaked out about this swine flu. There are schools closed for a week because someone tested positive for the flu. Most other schools have a no symptom tolerance policy. Which means even if you kid just has allergies they can't go to school because they may have the flu. The nurse was not impressed and expressed what most doctors feel about this flu is that it is just big media hype. This flu isn't any more deadly than other flus and the only difference is that this one has a name. Flu shots are only good for 3 different flu strains and there are hundreds of different ones out there. The treatment for this flu is the same as any other flue. So she said we don't really have anything more to worry about than we would with a regular flu and cold season. Just wash your hands and avoid sick people. If you are sick don't go out and infect others. This has pretty much been my feelings on this whole "epidemic" and it was nice to hear it from a medical professional.
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Sophie has finished with the first part of her orthodontics. Not the whole first phase but the first part of the this first phase. Two months of having an extender and her teeth are moved enough for her to move on to actual braces. She gets the braces themselves in a few weeks. I am glad this process isn't taking too long. She didn't love me having to turn the crank on her extender each morning so she is happy. We will see what she says about the brackets and such she will be getting next.
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Henry has quite a file at the YMCA. While I go and swim or whatever at the YMCA the kids go to the Kids corner and play for an hour or so. For some reason Henry can't seem to keep out of trouble there. A few days ago he tripped over another kid who was laying on the floor playing. Henry has a nice rug burn across one side of his face. But the ladies that babysit the kids in kids corner had to fill out an accident report and come and tell me all about what happened. This isn't the first time this has happened. It has been a fall while outside on the tricycles and a little road rash on the face. And once it was something else. The YMCA always calls me later in the day to check on Henry to make sure he is doing alright after his incident. I know they are just covering themselves. I am not surprised by any of these things. Henry is a very active little guy and gets himself in all sorts of scrapes. He almost always has a band aid somewhere on his body. The marks on his face now are so normal for him. They are really ugly scabs now but it looks like they are going to come off soon. He heals quickly.

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Well.. I need to get back to the real world of kids bickering over knex and playmobile pirates. I often wonder if kids can actually play without fighting. I have yet to see it