Happy Birthday Marissa!!

We went to the Mexico hacienda to celebrate Marissa's 11th birthday today (it was yesterday)!! Wow, 11 years old...where does time go? We had a fruit cake (see it in the picture) and none of the kids were excited about it, all the adults thought it was great! She got a karaoke thing and spent a good time of the day rehearsing for the concerts during the day.

They got all the kids and men down to the beach and played a friendly game of baseball. Noah really likes team sports and especially likes baseball.

Hannah and I walked down to the tidepools and found a bunch of sea anenomes and Hannah discovered that she could put her fingers in them and they would close up without hurting her. She loved it and spent a long time going from one patch of anenomes to another. We found mussels, barnacles, sea snails and crabs too. 

Noah loves the ocean and just loves to play with sand. He gets it everywhere. His favorite part is taking a hot shower and washing it down the drain.

we're here...

yes we are back in town...just taking some time to backpost our trip :)

Night-time zoo...

We decided at the last minute tonight to go to the zoo. The kids were more interested in doing the extras they had than seeing any animals (although we did go and see the polar bears). There was a hula hoop contest at the entrance for anyone who wanted to participate. Ben and Hannah got busy and prepared for it by hula hooping but then when they called for the participants for the contest they dropped their hoops and stood out. Neither one wanted to do it. No biggie, we still go to see how good they are at it!

Then we walked about 10 feet to our right and watched the Splash! guy paint with his fingers and a few brushes. They really liked this I think it was because they had to figure out what it was that he was painting all along...and sometimes they were wrong. We watched him do 3 paintings over the course of the night!
We didn't do much more, they weren't interested in the storyteller so we went and had dinner. Noah was especially tired because he didn't take a nap so we called it a night. At least we got there for a little fun!

The garden...

So, we've been gone for 2 weeks and now I'm looking through the garden to see if we have any 'fruits' of our labor. When we left we didn't have many tomatoes but now there are several groups of them and the plant is very tall. The other tomato plant looks a little sickly so I'm going to see what I can do about it. Then the pumpkins out front are doing great! We left and it was the size of a baseball and still yellow and now look at it, bigger than a basketball and orange too!! We're all looking forward to using it for Halloween like we did a couple of years ago (um, before Noah was born) :)

That's all folks, we don't have much else growing in the garden this year besides the annual stuff that sticks around year-round.

Mammoth Mountain sites...

Since the kids have been really interested in volcanoes and earthquakes lately and we are in the area of where some are we thought we’d take a quick tour of what we could see on our way home.

We found the Inyo crater and the kids and Daddy took the short hike to see it. Noah was sleeping, so I stayed in the car with him. They loved it and took lots of pictures. I think the best part was that it was a short hike to the crater.

Inyo Crater

Then we went by the fault line that had opened and was down the road. That was cool, my turn to go and Daddy stayed with Noah (who was still sleeping). We took a few pictures but then my battery died and we were done with pictures. Noah woke up and was very unhappy with my leaving him in the car sleeping with Daddy, I mean, how could I? The visits to the crater and the fault line were very real and brought their learning to life. It was exciting for me to see how interested they were after the whole trip of telling us that they didn’t want to go near a volcano. They were a little scared that they’d blow their tops. But now they understand what dormant is and why it was safe enough for us to go and take a closer look.

Fault

Sometimes I doubt, or second guess, the unschooling route we’re taking with the children’s education but this trip really brought it home for them so we’ll continue with it.

Tonight we'll stay in a hotel and tomorrow we should be home :)

Grover Hot Springs...

Every time the kids asked us where we were heading next we’d say something like “Big Bird hot springs” or “Elmo hot springs”… they thought that was funny and corrected us. We got here in time for us to set up the tent in the daylight!!! Then they explored around a bit. They found lots of rocks to climb and they even found some friends to play with for the evening while we set up camp and fixed dinner. Here are a couple of shots of volcanos from our drive.

Volcano shots

Camp breakfast

Noah and our tent

Hannah in our tent

We have spent a good amount of time while camping playing cards. The kids are really into it. We have played lots of go fish, war, and old maid, but I introduced them to a new game called I Spy snap and Noah LOVES this game. We came up with a game just for him because he doesn’t like how everyone else wins and he doesn’t. But in his game he wins all the time. They usually play pretty nicely but when Ben decides to make up his own rules to the games then they get frustrated with each other.

Ben and Noah playing cards together
We decided to go to the hot springs this morning. It was fascinating and so hot! I couldn’t get in all the way but it was fine because it was hot enough with just my legs in. I spent most of my time swimming in the cold pool while the kids and Daddy went from hot to cold most of the time. I am pretty sure it was a little treated but they didn’t heat it up. We found the source of the spring above the pool and checked it all out, read the billboards and the kids were really impressed. After seeing the cold spring water pouring from Burney Falls this was a trickle but hot. And both were underground water. It also tied into the learning the kids were doing about volcanoes over the past few months.

The hot spring bubbler

Ben in the hot pool

Hannah in the hot pool

Noah in the hot pool

Going into the cold pool

The source of the hot spring

Daddy got out his fly tying stuff to tie some flies and the kids were into that. They both made a couple of flies that turned out pretty neat. Ben made a bee and Hannah just created a big fly. Afterwards we went to find a part of the river to fish in. We found a quiet area off the side of the road where the kids would be able to cast in and it was calm enough to watch a bobber. Daddy took off and went up stream to try to catch a big one. The kids lost interest because the fish kept rising and we could see them, but they weren’t nibbling on our bait. So we’ll try again some other time…

Ben's bee fly

Hannah busy on her fly

Done!

Noah fishing

Hannah waiting

Ben and Daddy fishing

Nothing caught...better luck next time...

McArthur-Burney Park...

We camped at McArthur-Burney park (between Lassen and Shasta) for three nights and it was so much fun. There were so many families camping with kids all over the place. Our kids made quick friends with the neighbors across the street and every chance they could they played with them. There was no need for toys they were creative in their games. It was a great family campground.

We set up the hammock and Hannah loved to swing in it, every time I seemed to ‘lose’ her, I’d find her relaxing in the hammock. Hannah has a cold and is coughing a lot too, no one has caught it…yet, so we’ll see how the rest of the trip goes.

Hannah relaxing

Checking out the falls

We found the lake down the road from us, a popular place to hang out for the day or a few hours. We knew there was swimming so the kids and Daddy got their suits on and tried it out. They loved it since it is hot in the day here. Hannah and Noah practiced swimming and Ben borrowed an inner tube to see how it worked. They really had fun.

in the lake

Noah swims!

it's cold

There is a beautiful waterfall in the park that was a natural spring and we went to see it a few times, hiked to the bottom and around it too. The water was just flowing from under the rocks and down. It wasn’t coming from the river above, it was but the river was small in comparison to the amount of water in the waterfall. We had a few discussions about groundwater and the water table underground with the kids, it was a hard concept but I think everyone began to understand with the help of a little diagram on our hike.

waterfall from above

Hiking

Waterfall from below

Reading the plaque about groundwater

We had a campfire and ate s’mores. Ben just can’t get enough of them. Thank goodness they aren’t a daily snack at home, in one night I think he polished off a half a bag of marshmallows alone! The chocolate was hidden so he thought we were out of it…

We went fishing a few times…with no luck catching any fish ☹ Hannah was determined to catch a fish and really tried hard. I could see it in her eye. Noah really wanted to catch a fish too but he was having fun casting and dirt skiing down the side of the hill. We’ll try again, I am sure! Off to the south of Tahoe…

Hannah trying to catch the big one

Fishermen down the river

Ben trying to catch a fish with a net

Agate beach...

This afternoon we hiked to the beach. It wasn’t very far from our campsite but the hike down was pretty steep going down the side of the cliff. The beach is a bunch of agate and rocks of all sizes. We started collecting rocks when we got there. Hannah loved the ocean, we weren’t allowed to swim in the water because it was too dangerous, but we kept busy. Ben found a couple of tree trunks that were standing in the sand and pushed them over, decided to pull one to the water and build a barrier of some sort to protect them from the water and waves. We went to the tidal pools to see if we could see any crabs. All we saw were the carcasses of big crabs that were eaten up by the seagulls. We also found a bunch of driftwood that was softened by the water, we all picked a couple of sticks and took them home. It was beautiful.

Hannah
Ben pulling his tree trunk
what we're walking on
Noah being cool
Hikers