At the Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum

It was an air-conditioned break from Florida's late-April sun, and so fun! A docent approached the girls as we wandered the exhibits--

--and led them on a private scavenger hunt, showing them how to find the entire alphabet on an alphabet shell, and teaching them to identify fig shells, and banded shells, and the treasured junonia. Finally, he bestowed upon them pencils, coloring books, and stickers! The girls were thrilled.

Willow shows off her skill in identifying most of the shells seen here. How many do you know?

We watched a super-dry but nevertheless fascinating documentary on mollusks, and spent loads of time kneeling down over the shallow live mollusk tank, our noses nearly touching the water, watching mollusks slowly do fabulous things:

The girls loved every part of the museum absolutely, but of course you know what my favorite part was, right?

Shell crafts!

Modern sailor's valentines:

And antique ones:

And another D.I.Y. sailor's valentine kit purchased in the gift shop to take home with me and try.

Oh, wait...the girls did have a favorite part of the museum, actually:

Hence the sight that I happened to spy that night, a few minutes after bedtime:

Treasure, indeed.

At the Imaginarium

Would you like to hold Miss Fuzzy Feet?

Or how about this sweet girl?

Perhaps you'd prefer to touch a starfish:

Pet a horseshoe crab?

Or are these animals more to your liking?

Ft. Meyers has more than just beaches--who knew?

On Sanibel Island

After we ditched Matt at the Orlando airport so that he could go back to his day job (I like my day job better!), the girls and I drove across the peninsula and down a ways so that we could make a few visits to Sanibel Island.

Sanibel Island is located in the Gulf of Mexico, so when it's not windy, the water is calm and smooth and gentle. Oh, and after Daytona Beach, which we did love, it was so quiet on Sanibel Island! The beach is a bit of a walk from the parking area (about which the two small children, who were required to carry nothing but their light-as-air inner tubes, nevertheless complained mightily), and as soon as you start down the last dune you immediately notice that, other than the shouts of a few happy kids playing in the sand, there's nothing to be heard but the ocean and the birds. So refreshing.

Sydney wonders about this lack of activity. Hmmmm.....will she like it?

She likes it!

Seriously, the water was SO calm. It's the first time that I've ever swam in the ocean, frankly, and the first time for the girls:

Of course, Sanibel Island's real claim to fame is the fact of its east-west orientation in the Gulf of Mexico, due north of some very interesting ocean environments. Because of this, it's one of the top beaches in the world to collect seashells. When I wasn't goofing around in the gulf with the girls, I was contentedly collecting an entire pail-full of seashells at every visit, thinking happy thoughts about all the seashell crafting awaiting me back home.

The girls collected a very many seashells, too. Their shells, however, had a far more important purpose than mine did:

A million more sandcastles for the memory books.

As you may have heard, Endeavor's launch has been delayed even further while the auxiliary heating units are repaired. I am devastatingly disappointed, but obviously I much prefer to know that the astronauts will be safe on their journey. After listening to me on the phone spinning out all of the dire scenarios that could occur for a space shuttle whose fuel lines are frozen due to a malfunctioning auxiliary heating unit, Matt agreed. The children and I couldn't simply live in Florida until the shuttle launch, however--Willow was down to her swim trunks as her last clean pair of shorts, for one thing--and so...

It's so good to be home.

Top 25 Homeschooling Blogs

Yep, we're STILL in Florida! Endeavor's launch got scrubbed, so while we're waiting to see if the auxiliary heaters will get fixed in time for us to still see the launch before I HAVE to head home (cloth diapering classes don't teach themselves, apparently), we're hanging out in Orlando in a motel/water park. Orlando is weird.

In other news, check out my blog (and vote for me!) in the Top 25 Homeschooling Blogs search over at Circle of Moms. There are some great other homeschool blogs represented, so I highly recommend that you check it out.

Ignore the intro paragraph to the contest, however, because it is offensive:

When choices for your children's school come down to a badly run public school or an over-priced private school, sometimes your best option is to educate them at home.


Um, no. 


Homeschool isn't the last-ditch best option only for people who are unfortunate enough to have crap choices among educational institutions. 


Homeschool isn't better than public school only if the public school is badly-run.


Homeschool isn't better than private school only if the private school is expensive.


(I also have issues with referring to a private school as "over-priced"--just because a private school costs more than I can pay does not mean that the private school charges more for tuition than it provides in education).


Homeschool isn't the last-ditch choice, and it isn't THE best choice, and neither are well-run or poorly-run public schools, and neither are expensive or inexpensive private schools. 


Homeschool is a choice, just like all the others, and it's up to you to not simply default into a choice, but to research it, to think about it, and to MAKE that choice for your own family. If you choose to put your children into public school, then you can provide them supplementary educational experiences if you don't feel that the school is run well. If you choose to put your children into private school, then you can work more to pay more for an expensive school.


And if you homeschool...well, then you've got a billion more choices to make, every day. What will you learn? Where will you go? What shall we read? What games should we play? What would you like to make for lunch? Should we stay for an extra three days in Florida, to see if we can watch the shuttle launch?


Us homeschoolers, we have a word for those choices:


We call it freedom.

In Downtown Disney

We didn't go to Disney World, but since we had to drop Matt off at the airport one morning we did stay the night in Orlando--that's almost like going to Disney World, right?

And going to Downtown Disney, the picturesque strip mall next door to Disney World, is even more almost like going to Disney World, right?

Actually, no, it's nothing like going to Disney World, but we didn't go there because it was like going to Disney World. We went there because they have a gigantic LEGO store:

 
We didn't even buy anything at the LEGO store, either, but we did buy Willow the next book in the Kingdom Keepers series (we listened to the first book during the drive to Florida, and Will is now a BIG fan), and Sydney this creepy gummy Mickey Mouse that she devoured, also in a satisfyingly creepy fashion:

We didn't buy anything at the LEGO store, but we did play with EVERYTHING, of course:

The other reason that we went to Downtown Disney is that I'd read about a certain gimmicky theme restaurant that I was dying to take the girls to:

T-Rex Cafe! Seriously, the props and the decor looked exactly like the atmosphere stuff that you'd find in an excellent dinosaur museum:

And I have been to many excellent dinosaur museums.

Yes, it's contradictory to have the girls pose with their heads in the mouth of a Triceratops, since it was an herbivore:

How could I resist, however?

Animatronic dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures were all over the place, all around the booths and tables and posed just everywhere:

My favorite room was the Ice Age room, with animatronic mammoths:

We, however, were in the room with the flying creatures:

That room was the best, because it was the center of the meteor showers.

Other theme restaurant gimmicks included very involved dinosaur activity books, and, look closely--can you tell?

The girls' drinks are different colors because the glasses? They STROBED!

Yes, we got to take them home.

The adult menu was tasty enough, although I ended up ordering an appetizer, since that was the only vegetarian option. The kids' menu was the usual well-beloved crap, with what at that point was likely Sydney's sixth meal of macaroni and cheese in a row (we brought Easy Mac with us):

No, I did not even look at our final bill, although I think that it will even out now that Matt's gone back home, because in our family I am notorious in that I NEVER go out to eat on the road. Sure, if I'm with Matt I will, because he loves it so much, but even then I have to find reviews first and check out the menu online (hey, if we're going to spend the money, I want it to be special), but when it's just me and the girls, we eat sandwiches and fruit and other boring grocery store stuff for every meal.

That's why right now, Willow and Sydney are sitting on the carpet in front of the TV, eating instant oatmeal and pretzels dunked into a jar of peanut butter, drinking milk from those little cartons like you get in the school cafeteria. And they're blissfully happy at the fare.

At Kennedy Space Center

The center of our whole wild, ungainly, homeschool road trip field trip is Kennedy Space Center. I've been fascinated with the space shuttle since I was a small child, and it's a dream of mine to watch a space shuttle launch.

We think that we have a lifetime to make our dreams come true, and so it was with a gasp that I suddenly realized, very early this year, that this end to the space shuttle program that I've been reading about? This marks a deadline to my dream!

If I don't watch this space shuttle launch now, in April, or this summer, in June, then I will never in my entire life watch a space shuttle launch--it will forever be something that I simply haven't done.

Well, I didn't give up a PhD in English and a full-time career and keep my wonderful children out of institutions of formal schooling to simply pass up opportunities, to simply let dreams die, unfulfilled. Why, out of the many thousands of reasons that I could give you for being a stay-at-home homeschooling mom, I'd tell you that among the most important is the ability to choose from a vastly larger bounty of opportunities simply not available to those who spend their days in the daily grind, and to have the time, the mindset, the focus, and, yep, the opportunity to fulfill our dreams. By "our" dreams, I'm in the habit of mostly meaning the children's dreams, of course, but you know what? My dreams are important, too.

Can you say "homeschool field trip?" Yes, as a matter of fact, I believe that you can.

Fortunately, Matt was able to pretty much leave the jury room and hop right into the first part of our field trip with us, and thus he was able to help out with the baby wrangling at our visit to the Kennedy Space Center, where I was afraid that the girls would be bored and whiny and need wrangling so that I could sightsee.

Actually, once they got it into their little heads that, unlike Indiana, it is simply hot here, and nope, there's nothing to do about it, and yep, you do have to wear your hat and your sunglasses even if you don't want to, and while you're over here trying to hand them off to me why don't we rub some more sunblock on you, they both enjoyed themselves quite a bit and didn't need much wrangling, and we all got to happily sightsee:

Loving on the Astronaut

Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB)

Those grey vertical lines on the left side are big garage doors that open up to let rockets and the shuttle through.

It's a BIG building

The Crawler Transporter!

It is SUCH a rare treat to see this out and about! This is the gigantic piece of equipment that the shuttle, solid rocket boosters, and external fuel tank sit on as they're driven, soooooo slowly, out to Launch Pad 39A. You would only ever see the crawler transporter hanging out by the launch gantry if....

Space Shuttle Endeavor is Waiting for Launch

My nerd heart beat with joy at this sight.

I might have even squealed.

All that equipment that conceals the shuttle, the solid rocket boosters, and the external tank will be rolled away as lift-off nears, but it's necessary to have until then to allow access to the exterior of all the equipment. Tragically, a worker actually fell off of this equipment back in March, in a horrible accident, but accidents like that are extremely rare.

Matt was a good sport, but the vehicles for space travel aren't really his thing like they are mine, so he got to take every single...

Nerd Portrait

He likes the Apollo stuff a lot, however--I think there were a lot of comic books that revolved around the Apollo program?

Apollo Spacecraft with Matt and Girls

There was a fabulous shuttle launch simulator which everyone except for short little Sydney could ride, displays of the actually Mercury Mission Control and the Apollo Mission Control, and a full-size walk-in model space shuttle:

Looking up at Mirrored Cargo Bay Doors in Model Shuttle

Heat Tiles on Bottom of Model Shuttle

See how they're all labeled? They actually do look like that on the real shuttle, too. Each one is made for a particular spot on the shuttle, and labelled so that they can all be assembled correctly.

Can you see us standing under the full-size model of the solid rocket boosters and external fuel tank?

Upcoming Event--next week!

Rocket Garden

Plenty Roomy in This Capsule--perhaps they should have just sent children?

Which brings me, finally, to the rocket that Willow has declared is her favorite:

Mercury Redstone

It's the rocket that sent the Mercury missions into space. 

Parenting a little girl who has a favorite rocket--that's another dream come true, now that I think about it.

On Daytona Beach

We're having a week of leisure in Daytona Beach, Florida, this week. Even Matt is here with us on a nearly unprecedented use of his vacation days (next year's homecoming logo won't design itself, after all), which has given us ample time to discuss and process and discuss again his jury experience.

All of my library guidebooks noted that Daytona Beach is a little...um...seedy?...and I will tell you first of all that, in my opinion, this is true. People can drive their cars right onto the beach (and oh, they do!), and people are apparently permitted to smoke EVERYWHERE (and oh, they do!).

However, our room is nice and overlooks the beach and costs something like $40 a night, the two pools are nice, and the ability to walk across the patio and open the child-proof gate and step right onto the beach is very, very nice, and has made us very, very happy here this week:

 
 
 
 
 
 
Also this week, we're going to visit Kennedy Space Center a couple of times and spend a morning at a big-ass flea market (squee!), and then the girls and I are going to send Matt back home on a cheap-o one-way flight on Southwest, because we're going to be headed across the peninsula for a few days to study seashells, but we've got to be back on the Space Coast by Friday!

The launch of Space Shuttle Endeavor won't watch itself, after all.