The Happiest Vacation on Earth!

Ahhhh, we just got back from the BEST vacation. Seven days away, six nights at a Fort Wilderness cabin, 4 days with The Mouse, and 1 day lost in space at the Kennedy Space Center. I could've stayed another week, I think, but it is nice to be home. A nice side benefit is that my mind is still on Florida time even though my body is in California. I got up chipper as Chip-n-Dale at 6am and have a ton of morning time left before we have to do anything today - which gives me time to blog! Now, if I could just get the kids back on Pacific Time (Linus woke up, ready to play, at 4am today) while I stay on Eastern Time, I'll be golden.

The flights went better than expected. The kids were really, really patient considering what they were being asked to do: 1.5 hrs from northern California to Seattle, an hour layover, 5ish hours to Orlando, then another 40 minutes on a bus to the resort. We left the house at 8am and checked into our lodge at 12:30am (yes, midnight). Lonnnnng day!

The cabins were FABULOUS. The kids had their own room - bunk beds, a double bed, and a portable crib all fit comfortable in the bedroom - and we took the fold down bed (You know, those ones that hide in the wall? What are those called?) in the living room. We had a full kitchen and a charcoal bbq and a picnic table out front. The only thing that could have been improved upon was the quality of the "trading post." They claimed to have supplies there, but there really wasn't much of anything besides souvenirs and beer. But there was a WalMart within a couple of miles of the place so it wasn't a huge tragedy once we had a car. (Yes, I bought food at WalMart; something I said I'd never do!) The resort restaurant, The Trails End, had really good food though, was open until 10pm, and they even had take-out. Our last night there we went to Chip and Dale's campfire and sing-along. Very fun. Big thumbs up for the Fort Wilderness Lodge and Campground (yes, a real campground was available too!)

The first day we went to Epcot. We had a great time. I heard from several people that it was huge and might be really boring for the little kids but it wasn't at all. It was really a homeschooler's dream, lol! We all loved the slow boat rides through history and through the different countries. The marketplaces were fun. The food, wine, and beer was great. The kids had a blast getting their passports stamped at each country... until they lost them. Cassia lost hers with only two stamps to go. She was heart-broken. Cameron waited until his was completely full before losing his. *roll eyes* But the fun was in the collecting. I should be glad that's two fewer things to mess up their rooms, right? They also had this really cool thing where certain parks stay open up to three hours late for resort guests so we just flew through the last few things and took another ride on our favorite attractions with no lines at all. It was especially easy since it was our first day and we were all still on Pacific time so staying until midnight was no effort at all for C&C.

The next day was not quite as successful. We tried to get up early and go to the Magic Kingdom after staying up until 1 am. Not a good idea. We overslept and decided to skip breakfast. Worse idea. By 11 or 12, everyone was cranky and crying. We had issues with the rental car we needed for Friday and need to leave the park early to pick that up. Lots of tears. And then on the boat back to the resort (sooooooo cool to take a boat back and forth!), Cassia's beloved Minnie Mouse ears blew off her head and into the lake. OMG. For twenty or thirty minutes all we heard were the desperate and tortured cries of "My Minnie hat!" Heartbroken does not even begin to describe it, even though we instantly promised her a new set of ears. Eventually she calmed down, but WOW. Getting the rental car itself was an adventure. The driver who came to pick me up got lost on the way so I didn't get the car until almost 6pm (even though the place closed at 5, lol) and then *I* got lost on the way back! I guess that's another improvement that I'd like to see at Fort Wilderness: lit signs! By the time I got back, we decided to just spend the night in and rest up for the next day when over-sleeping was not an option.

Friday we drove across the state to see the Kennedy Space Center. This was another place that I had been warned might not go over well with The Little Ones and The Girl but it was a huge success. Another homeshooler's dream! We took the Up-Close Tour and rode a bus out to the VIP launch viewing areas, the vehicle assembly building, International Space Station clean room, saw the crawler, and got the closest possible view of a shuttle on the launch pad. THAT was surreal. I didn't think I'd be so impressed with that but it was amazing. They had one of the best play structures I've ever seen, second only to the pirate cove at Legoland. Linus was not thrilled with all the bus riding, but Greyson had such a good time looking at all the rockets that he wants to be an astronaut when he grows up now. Firefighter is just not exciting enough anymore. ;) Cameron had a BLAST. Cassia got a little bored at times, but she still had a really good time overall. Overall, it was WELL worth the side trip. It was also nice to get a little different view of the state... and all it's toll roads, lol.

Saturday was originally supposed to be our "hang out at Fort Wilderness" day, but since our Magic Kingdom day turned out to be such a flop we decided to try that one again. We got such an early start that we were too early for the first boat over there but we took a boat over to the Contemporary Resort instead where we hopped on the monorail. Greyson loved that! He's a train man. Before the park even opened we got Cassia her new Minnie ears. Those ones did NOT get lost. ;) Once we got in we headed straight for Fantasyland and did all the rides before the lines got long. That was about all Greyson could handle. We could see the sanity just leaking out of his little head and the maniacal three-year-old seeping in. We still had to return the rental Bohemith (Suburban, lol) and Cameron had a 2:45 appointment on the archery range so we headed out at about noon once again, but this time with a much more satisfied feeling. After I returned the car (and did not get lost coming back) we hit the pool for an hour, let Linus nap while we had leftovers for lunch, and then Cameron went to archery and Cassia and Greyson had a pony ride. Next was an early dinner at Trail's End and then the little boys stayed home with Daddy (and were both asleep by 7:30!) while I took the big kids back to the Magic Kingdom and boy did we have fun! There were still virtually no lines and we hit up just about everything we had missed. I think the only ride we didn't go on was Aladdin's Magic carpet and Space Mountain (which was closed) and we did our favorites (Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain) twice. We did miss a few shows that we would have like to have seen, but we left feeling like we had thoroughly done the place. Overall impression - fun, but Disneyland is way better. It was nice to actually be able to do everything in one day though.

Our final day was spent at the Animal Kingdom. DH originally wanted to skip it, but we talked him into it. We were all very pleasantly surprised with that park! To me, it felt like real Disney magic there. The Magic Kingdom felt a bit like a cheap copy of Disneyland, but this was the real thing. I was transported to other worlds and very impressed with the message of conservation and respect for our world. And Expedition Everest rocked. Cameron went on it 4 times. First DH went with C&C and I got us all Fast Passes to go later but the line was so short that we decided I would go ahead and go with C&C then too. But Cassia didn't want to go again. So Cam went once with DH, once with me, and then again with DH and again with me using the Fast Passes. LOL, he tried to talk us into going again later too! Greyson got his first big/fast ride there on the rapids. Apparently, he LOVED it. It'll be nice when we don't have to keep splitting up to go on rides so someone can watch the little ones. Again, we did everything except the Nemo show and left feeling good and tired.

We finished up the night roasting marshmallows and singing campfire songs with Chip and Dale and then called it an early night in preparation for our big travel day home. The bus picked us up at 5 am (yawn). That means we got up at 4am... 1am our time! The wonderful thing about that though is that just about everyone (except Cameron) slept on the plane. It is a much shorter flight when you are asleep. This time we got on the plane at 8:30am and were back in our home county by 4:00 pm. Gotta love gaining 3 hours! But we were all asleep by 8:30, lol, and up this morning before 6:00. Oh well, like I said, it gave me some time to blog. And now we have arrived at the time I would normally be getting up so I guess I should get ready for the day.

I hope I can continue to get up early (while convincing the kids to sleep later) to enjoy a little bit of me time each day. I really miss my daily mind dumps - so therapeutic. ;)

Time flies!

OMGoodness, I cannot believe I've let another week+ go by without blogging. And I thought I was doing so good. Hmph. Well, to the inquiring minds that wanted to know... YES! The car trick worked amazingly. Cassia sat there pouting at her math book for TWO hours. I finally said, "OK, it's time for us to go pick up our meat order now." I could see the relief (as in, I won, now I don't have to do it!) pass over her face and then I said, "Grab your math book and get in the car." To my surprise though, she said "OK!" and happily grabbed it and got in the car. She had the entire problem set done before we even got to the gas station down the street. Literally, less than five minutes. Weird. And that was that.

This last week has not been quite so productive. The kids have been sick. I broke my toe. (Insert sympathy here.) So we've done spelling, and some math, and Harry Potter maybe once or twice, and that's it. Next week the new 4-H year starts. There are some amazing sounding projects lined up. I think we're going to be very busy!!

Dinner is on the stove so I better go attend to it! I'll try to be better next week, I promise!!

Back in the Saddle Again

Now that we are in week two of "Fall" (if you can call mid-August fall), we picked up a couple more subjects again. Yesterday, in addition to spelling, math, and literature (i.e. Harry Potter), I officially started Cassia on phonics a la The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. Wow, what a difference in waiting until a child actually shows you that they are ready instead of forcing it upon them at "the right age" and then just assuming they'll pick it up as you go. They don't. Much, much, much easier to just let them learn and explore letters, sounds, and words via Starfall, Bob Books, Dr. Seuss, and whatever else strikes their fancy and then pick up the formal rules and regulations once they are already reading a little bit. She and I whizzed through about 5 lessons yesterday and another three or four today. She's reading confidently and enthusiastically, unlike Cameron who did those same lessons grudgingly and dragging his feet the whole way.

We also added science back in. We studied light and transparency and did a couple of really fun activities holding different materials up to a light bulb and qualifying how much light came through. We've agreed to do science Mondays, Wednesdays, and then Fridays if we have time.

History is also back on the table. It had been so long, I completely forgot where we were, lol. Turns out we were on the Byzantine Empire. I still have no scanner though, so I'm going to really have to think ahead to go out and copy the maps and coloring pages at Staples or something. I'm also going to have to get my butt back to the library soon too. I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and drag everyone in there because I can't imagine when I'm going to have a chance to go by myself. DH has been working weekends and will continue to do so until mid-September. I hate taking the little ones in, but I also hate not having that resource.

Cassia decided that we also needed to add grammar back in to our days. She really missed the poems and silly little exercises in First Language Lessons. Sure, why not. I'm not going to argue that one!

So that was our day today and yesterday. Cameron spent all of his free time today making up a golf board game. He drew 18 holes and wrote the distance and par. He made a bunch of little cards too, but I'm not sure how you play yet. I came up with the idea that you could hit little Lego dots along the courses to get your score. I hope we can play after dinner.

Cassia is having a major crisis at the moment. She was all gung ho about the her schoolwork today until we got to math. She kept saying that she didn't want to do it, so I put it off until last but she is just sitting there crying and pouting over a handful of subtraction problems that would take her all of 10 minutes if she would just do them. I've tried everything: walking her through them; sending her outside for a 5 minute exercise break (She refused to exercise too. She just sat next to the sandbox wimpering.); giving her the option to clean her room instead; telling her that we weren't leaving the house until they were done even though she has a soccer game tonight. I just don't know what to do. After all this fussing, I don't feel like I can say, "Fine, don't do it." I don't like being manipulated. Greyson does enough of that on his own. He will just flat out refuse to do something he doesn't want to. He gets a little leeway with that because he's three, but I'm getting less and less tolerant of the behavior because it is getting out of control. So, in order to show everyone that I am to be taken seriously, I don't feel like I can give in here. I'm not being mean or getting angry; I'm just refusing to let it slide. Probably a battle that was not worth fighting from the start, but I'm kind of bound to it now.

We have to go pick up our meat order now and it's a bit of a drive. I think I will make her take the math with her and do it in the car. My friend, K, says that her kids can always focus better in the car for some reason. Less distractions, I guess, and something about the buzz and rumble of the road. We'll see. Wish me luck.

Welcome to Fall!

I can't believe it is mid-August and school is back in session already. I mean, the way the weather's been it's hardly seemed like summer at all! One week of 100 degree weather, two weeks of 60 degree weather, and then one week of 100 degree weather all over again by which point my kids are all sick from all the temperature changes! But at least this means it will once again be safe to go to the park and the library.

I haven't blogged the last couple weeks, not necessarily from flakiness, but because it was our in between Summer & Fall break. The first week of August was all about getting ready for Cameron's birthday party. It was an Indiana Jones theme and turned out to be a lot of fun. We had treasure hunts and treacherous tricycle rides where you had to dodge an onslaught of water balloons, lol. The second week of August we went camping way up high in the mountains so that we could have a clear view of the Perseids Meteor Shower. We went with several other homeschooling families that we know from 4-H. It was so fun. I definitely think it will become a yearly tradition.

In the midst of camping, we took a day off to go to the San Francisco Zoo and see the new baby chicks join the rest of the colony. Cameron is an adoptive parent of the penguins and so we had a special invite to come witness the March of the Penguins 2009. There were several news crews there and I happened to notice one of the cameramen taking special notice of my little ones. And looky, looky what I found on the internet...

Watch the video and keep an eye out for a cuter than cute Greyson near the end, chewing away on his fingers in rapt attention.

Our local elementary schools started yesterday, so I'll say we did too. ;) We started the school year out with roller skating! There were still quite a few older kids at the Tiny Tot session, so I'm guessing that a lot of the neighboring schools haven't started quite yet. Our learning experience of the day: one of our friends found a $10 bill on the ground! Rather than hoarding it to himself, he put it into the change machine and split it with his sister. She in turn split it with another girl and bought some candy which they then shared with Cassia. The boy who originally found the money used his to play a game of pool with Cameron. It was a great lesson on generosity (and division!).

After that we came home and the kids did some work on their 4-H record books which were due last week. Ooops. It took a ridiculous amount of motivating to get them started. In fact, I didn't do a very good job because they only grudgingly got through half of it. I was pretty frustrated because I thought that that was the VERY last day we could turn them in. Luckily, we had a reprieve as I had gotten the dates wrong. One more day! So today we got up bright and early (well some of us did - Greyson didn't wake up until 9:30 and Cassia didn't get up until almost 10!) and resumed work. Cameron was having a hard time motivating himself again but we switched focus and did the part of his record book that he could dictate to me, instead of writing himself. He told the story of his 4-H year and really got excited about the things he had done and what he had accomplished. That made finishing the rest up really easy. Cassia is still finishing hers as I write this.

A couple weeks ago, Cassia asked if Greyson shouldn't be learning his letters and numbers now too. I said no. I'm definitely anti- pushing preschoolers and Kindergarteners now. I kind of feel bad for all the stuff I tried to make Cameron do when he was that age, lol. Oh well, live and learn, right? Anyway, in my quest to let the Little Ones just absorb I decided that I actually had been neglecting Greyson a little bit. So I've been trying to read to him more lately and I've found that that has been attracting the big kids to my side too! :) Today I decided to officially start introducing letters to him and started reading the Cat in the Hat Beginning Book Dictionary to him. This brought Cassia to my side and she started reading it to us instead. She's really doing well with reading. I'd like to pick up phonics with her again because I think she's truly ready now to do it without getting frustrated.

We read the Aa and Bb entries and part of Cc and then they got bored and wanted to read something else. Cassia ran off to get a couple Bob books. She read one and then Greyson ran off to get his own Bob book... he came back with a Bob the Builder book! LOL. Cassia ended up reading four Bob books and I read another couple board books to Grey. We were all very snuggly and comfy. It was nice... especially because Linus was napping the whole time. ;)

Cameron wrote his spelling words and then looked up the first three. He still hates doing it, but he's much faster. I explained to him how much it's helped his spelling, and reading, and penmanship and I think he is seeing the value in the exercise a little more... rather than it just being a case of me being evil. Bwahahahaha. ;) He had spent the entire morning doing his recordbook and then playing Timez Attack for a long time, so I called that a school day. Cassia wrote her spelling words three times each. She needs to spend a little more time working on letter form, but she's doing pretty good.

We dropped off our record books, had a mini-playdate with the leader's kids, and came home to curl up with Harry Potter. We only have a few more chapters left in book three. We'll do number four, I've decided, but I'm still not sure about five. Six and seven really should wait, I think, but will Cameron let me?? He's really into them. Next we'll do something a little shorter, like Huck Finn or Treasure Island and then maybe we'll try Narnia. I'm finding that finishing up our schooling with a nice read aloud is a good motivator for me to get things done each day. Motivating Mommy is always a bonus. :)

Summer - Weeks 4 & 5?

I've lost track of what week it is, lol. I wonder if that's a good or bad sign?

We've been chugging along. Last week Cameron was the one who got 100% on his spelling and Cassia only got 33%. The words are getting harder though. Cameron is now PAYING ATTENTION to the words and thinking about them. WooHoo! I'm having Cassia write each word three times each day now. She's complaining a lot about it but I really believe that you need a physical-mental connection for writing it correctly before it will sink in. We'll see if she does better this week.

We've also added a new read aloud to our daily curriculum. Last Wednesday was Cassia's 6th birthday and one of her gifts was the complete Chronicles of Narnia (abridged) on CD. We've been listening to it in the car and the kids are absolutely enthralled! I am so thrilled about that. They play Narnia when they come home and Cassia took a box and turned it into a magic wardrobe for her dolls. She cut out trees and a lamppost from paper and drew in the snow. So cute! And the BEST part about our Narnia obsession is that Cameron happened across our paperback of the collection and decided that he wanted to read it! He got up early and read the first chapter of The Magician's Nephew before I was even out of bed. He even made himself a bookmark. I think this is the day that I have been waiting for his entire life. :D

I always wondered how people could simultaneously read more than one book without confusing them but I guess I just never tried it! We are having no trouble at all enjoying both Harry Potter and Narnia. We have just five chapters left in The Chamber of Secrets and no plans to stop reading the series until we're finished! (Cameron and I went and saw The Half-Blood Prince last weekend and he wants to know what's going to happen next. I told him that he's just going to have to read the books to find out!)

Our other newest summer time indulgence is the swimming pool! I know, not really a novel activity for July but we just never really got into the whole public pool thing. BUT we've found a gorgeous little pool about a half hour away that is fed from a natural warm spring and tucked away between the oaks. We've been meeting some of our park friends there and let me tell you, it is heaven. The days just melt away in the sun and laughter. There are actually three pools so there is something for everyone. The only hard part is getting them out of there!

And now I need to start cracking the whip on the spelling work that is NOT going on behind me so that we can read our Harry Potter for the day!