Cruise to Alaska Day 10: Victoria, Canada

Y'all are going to be so sad that these are the last photos from our cruise! Fortunately, it couldn't have been a more beautiful day, and I could not have been more excited that I was finally going to Canada!

It finally occurred to me that I should take some photos of the ship that we've been on for the past 10 days!

Canadian flag!

And here I am in Canada!

Matt came, too.

We did a bunch of sightseeing, including a giant bus tour around the entire city (which included free gardening tips, and that is why I've been putting banana peels around my rose bushes--they like the potassium!), but we also went to high tea at the Empress, which is a thing.

Look at all the noms! I ate that entire dish of clotted cream pretty much by myself.

This is The Empress. I want to come back to Victoria, stay here, and also buy a tea set.

And here's the Parliament.

Anytime we ramble, we always make it back to the ocean, and generally I have disheveled hair.

Random food truck. 

We stayed out in Victoria so long that we missed our fancy dinner reservation, so we made do with one last beautiful dinner out on deck. I love my face in this photo. I have been trying so hard this year to do well without Pappa, and then without Mac, as well, and just really sucking at it. There's been a lot of stress, a lot of extended family drama, a lot of toxic personalities coming my way, a lot of sadness, and I'm having trouble working out how to cope, because my support system died. The other day I wasn't coping well and when Matt asked, gently, if I was feeling sad, I snapped at him, "I am ALWAYS feeling sad!" That wasn't fair, and it wasn't true, but it is true that I am sad every day, sometimes for Pappa, sometimes for Mac, sometimes I can't distinguish, sometimes I'm angry, and sometimes I don't know what to do with myself. But I look at my face here, and I also think, okay. I am definitely, genuinely happy right then. I am definitely, genuinely happy every day, as well. I can do this. I have photographic evidence.

I have no idea when I'll next go on a vacation with Matt and without the kids. It's not something that I'd say that I need to do every year, or even that often, but it was 1000% worth it, and if you've got kids, and you've never taken a vacation with your partner and without the kids since you had them, I am telling you right now that I strongly recommend it. I make no bones about the fact that I am primarily a mother, and I think that Matt would also say that he's primarily a father, and that's great--I wouldn't love him the way that I do if he wasn't. Raising our children is THE most important thing to us.

But you also want to have a relationship apart from the kids, you know? You want to be able to send them out into the world, then sit down at the breakfast table alone with your partner, and know that you still have something to talk about every morning aside from the kids. You want to be able to sit alone at that table and have something to think about besides them, as well. So I needed this trip. I needed to relax, without being someone's caregiver. I needed to remember that I can still have fun, and not worry about where someone else's shoes went and how many granola bars to pack and who might need colored pencils and who might need an emergency book. I needed to take some deep breaths, bum around with Matt and not go to a single hands-on museum, drink dirty martinis and behave shockingly, and smile just exactly like that over my after-dinner cappuccino.

But just so you know... I smiled even bigger when I finally got my kids back into my arms!

Work Plans for the Week of September 12, 2016: Civics, Art, and General Washington

Yes, it's another four-day school week in a string of four-day school weeks! (And yes, I peeped into my planner and noted that thanks to another training session at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis next week, that will be a four-day school week, too!)

Fortunately, these four-day school weeks do seem to be working well for us. I'm somehow managing to fit all of my weekly work plans into four days instead of five, and we've still had time for play groups (although, to be fair, I DID spend much of my precious mom-time at last week's playgroup planning our first shark dissection for this week...), afternoons at the beach, ice cream with Dad, long walks and short museum visits with friends, and, fine, math and science and history and vocabulary, too.

Books of the Day for this week include some leftover books for my research into next session's Greek mythology study, more novels that I think the kids might like, and a couple of books about sharks. The older kid liked the Mythmaker book on J.R.R. Tolkien so much (thanks for that great recommendation!) that I've given her the one on J.K. Rowling, and the younger kid liked the first Princess Tales book so much that I've given her the second.

Other daily work includes journaling for the younger kid, cursive drills for the older kid, work in Scratch for both, and progress in their Wordly Wise.

And here's the rest of our week!



MONDAY: I had a long weekend getting lots of things done, so today's school work is hopefully mostly stuff that the children can do independently. I sent out the assignments for the 2016 Children's Pen Pal Exchange last night (so if you registered, you should have received an email from me!), so much of the kids' work today will consist of catching up on their correspondence, if you will. The older kid has already written her pen pal letter, so she can finish up the last of her birthday thank-you notes while the younger kid writes her pen pal letter, and then they can make envelopes, stuff them, address them, and off they'll go!

Song School Spanish remains an excellent curriculum choice for this session. The older kid is absorbing a lot of vocabulary, thanks, as well, to the Spanish-language books that we read each Friday, and the younger kid is enjoying the study so much that she wants to continue to study Spanish next session (part of the reason is that she does NOT want to continue Mandarin, but I'm probably going to make her continue that, as well).

In Election 2016 on this day, the kids are going to learn about the electoral college. We've discussed it several times already, so I'm hoping that they won't find the concept as obtuse as I found it at the younger kid's age. We'll be watching this TED-Ed video after the reading, and then playing a game in which each child will represent exactly half of the voting populace, will also be assigned half of the states, and then will vote in opposition to each other on something (something that probably involves what the older kid likes to refer to as "sugarnoms," on account of we love our sweets!). They'll record their states' votes on this actual electoral college voting map, and we'll see who wins!

In Math Mammoth, the older kid is breezing through percentages and the younger kid is slogging through advanced multi-digit calculations.

TUESDAY: It's Homeschool Day at the Indianapolis Museum of Art! We're going to see all the sites, take an art lesson, and play bicentennial-themed mini golf.

We're also going to get back home in time for the older kid and I to go to fencing that night!

WEDNESDAY: It might be overreaching to try to finish the three different civics badges that the Girl Scouts offer (Junior Inside Government, Cadette Finding Common Ground, and multi-level I Promised a Girl Scout I Would Vote) before the November election, but on the other hand, I can't imagine a better time for it, since politics is in the air! I had hoped that we could find a local mediator to help the older kid with the mediation activity from her badge, but we're having some communication issues (humph!), so I'll have her complete the activity in which she researches a national conflict, instead.

On our road trip, we'll be visiting Washington Crossing State Park, but on this day, we'll do some guided study on a large-format printout of the Washington Crossing the Delaware painting.

The big event of this day, however, is the beginning of our shark dissection! We'll be studying the shark's external anatomy in great detail, identifying features and observing them through our USB magnifier. I also might take samples and make microscope slides.

Mental note: I really want to buy a more powerful microscope!

THURSDAY: Well, last week's voter registration booth was an eye-opener: as the older kid put it, "It's like we said, 'We're doing voter registration!' and people heard, 'Tell me about your craziest political theories!'" On the ride home afterwards, the kids were consumed with wondering why one guy, in response to my telling him about a hunting/fishing amendment that would be on the ballot, said, "If I don't mind cows being electrocuted, why would I mind hunting?" (he also declined to register to vote).

"Why would he electrocute a cow?", they asked. "Does he think that they electrocute cows in slaughterhouses? I thought that they knocked cows on the head in slaughterhouses! Should we look it up?"

No, I informed them in no uncertain terms. We would NOT be Googling slaughterhouse practices. Our ready referencing does not apply to slaughterhouses.

We all have assigned ourselves the job of figuring out better ways to present our offer of voter registration this week.

Even though this is one of our most exciting weeks in our American Revolution study--all those battles!--I don't have a lot of great ideas for interactive activities to explore them more deeply. What I wouldn't give for an obsessive model-maker to make me a detailed topographic map and a bunch of intricately-painted little soldiers for us to play with!

Barring having thousands of dollars' worth of manipulatives, we'll make do with this interactive map of the Battle of Trenton.

We've played with the decanomial square before, but long enough ago that it's definitely worth revisiting. It's a great way to explore multiplication and square numbers, and hopefully the free play will encourage the kids to think more deeply about multiplication and how it's represented.

FRIDAY: We are close to being done forever with our Draw Write Now set, but every time I pull them off the shelves and think about selling them, I come across a couple of lessons that fit neatly into whatever we happen to be studying at the time. And that's why on this day, when we review History of Us and its chapters on Valley Forge and George Washington, the kids can also learn how to draw him! We'll be visiting Valley Forge on our road trip, but it shockingly does NOT offer a Junior Ranger Program. Weird, right?

We're also going to visit Mount Vernon, so we should be well-steeped in George Washington information by the time we return home.

We've got another unit on sedimentary rocks, before we move on to metamorphic rocks and then to review. LOTS of review, because I'm not sure how much of this text the younger kid is absorbing at all, sigh. Regardless, she'll know a lot about carbonate sedimentary rocks by the end of this day, after subjecting them to a dilute solution of hydrochloric acid, mwa-ha-ha!

We'll also do a little more with shark dissection on this day, whether it's to complete our study of the shark's external anatomy or to finally make a cut and move on to musculature. Or maybe take a sample and subject it to a dilute solution of hydrochloric acid...?

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Oh, my gosh, this weekend! Nutcracker audition. World music festival. Drive-in movie. Hopefully a day at the George Rogers Clark national park. Maybe a nap?

And then another four-day school week next week!

Cruise to Alaska Day 9: Cruising the Outside Passage

When I looked at my photos after we were home, I thought, "Huh. Did we do nothing but eat on this day?"

And then I came to these photos:

The wind was blowing at 40 knots, and you couldn't breathe when you faced into it.

Oh, that's right! It's cold and windy on the ocean off of the coast of Alaska! Best stay inside, eat stuff, drink champagne, listen to the string quartet, etc.

Life can be tough, yo.

You won't get any photos of breakfast, on account of Matt and I slept until 10:30 (tough life, remember?). Thank goodness for the coffee bar, so that we could sustain ourselves on caffeine, sugar, and carbs while lying in bed and watching Iron Man 3 on DVD. We were lounging so hard that we even missed the cooking demonstration that Matt had been looking forward to--it was just too much effort. Pants. Shoes. Better stay with pastries and caffeine and movies...

We did eventually find something important enough to get us out of bed: lunch! Here's my Very Important Lunch--

It is formally known as A Taste of Italy. Lots of nice cheesy things, and prosciutto-wrapped cantaloupe. Nom.

--and here's Matt's:

You can act like he has less food than me, but he also had, like, sixteen more courses than me!

Later that afternoon Matt went to work out, and I was going to meet him there, I swear, but then a pod of white-sided dolphins began to swim alongside the cruise ship, leaping and playing right outside our window, so I sat and watched them, enraptured. I don't know how long they swam with us, but Matt got back in time to see them for a few minutes before they swam off, so it was a long time.

We DID go to the lecture on the Deepwater Horizon, and then later, just before the string quartet concert, some random guy called me over to sit by him, said that he'd seen me taking notes during the lecture, and then engaged me in happy conversation about it. Interestingly, he'd taken a cruise to Valdez just prior to their oil spill, so we had a lot to discuss.

I forced Matt to attend the string quartet concert with me, and then he forced me to fulfill our reservation at the super-fancy steak restaurant. I hadn't been looking forward to it, because after my comfy day I dreaded the exercise of conversing with a large table of strangers, but instead we were placed at a cozy table for two, exactly centered on the giant picture window looking out the aft of the ship:

Best view on the ship, especially over a nice steak and lobster dinner.

Matt had oysters Rockefeller, and then the Kobe beef and crab mini burgers, and greatly amused me when he asked the waiter if he should use a knife and fork or his hands to eat them.

We weren't even necessarily hungry for dessert, but somehow we made do:

It's funny, because at the time I was a little disappointed that we didn't have any high adventures to experience on this day. I didn't even realize at the time, but I see it now: it was the perfect vacation day.

Cruise to Alaska Day 08: Sitka

We were up and at 'em early this morning on our adventures in Sitka!

We fueled ourselves with caffeine and sugar in the ship's coffee bar. I don't know what those delicious creme brulee doughnut thingies were, just that I ate them obsessively every single morning for second breakfast, and they were DELICIOUS.

I think you'll agree that Matt looks pretty great in his rain gear, like a sexy salmon fisherman. Of course, we're actually going sea kayaking, not salmon fishing, but whatever. In related news, one of our bus drivers taught us this way to name the five types of salmon using your hand, and also what a "king salmon salute" is.

The more gear I put on, however, the surer I am that I am going to drown.

But could one choose a more beautiful place to drown?

There are very few house permits available for this sheltered cove, and it's apparently a prized location for its privacy, although as far as I'm concerned, not only would you have a clear view of all the other cabins from your porch, but you've also got, you know, KAYAKERS paddling by you every day.

Paddlers like us!

We paddled along the intertidal area, so that we could see blue crabs, urchins, and plenty of starfish like this little guy, who got put back where we found him.

Don't we look happy here? I highly recommend tandem kayaking in lieu of (or in addition to) marriage counseling. As the front person in the kayak I was supposed to be the navigator, which means that Matt was SUPPOSED to paddle where I wanted, but I want to paddle as close to the rocks as possible to see all the critters, and Matt wanted to paddle as far away from the rocks as possible because he's lame. So he would basically paddle against me, and we wouldn't go anywhere, and we would hiss horrible things at each other while young honeymooning couples paddled smoothly past us in beautiful tandem. Let me tell you, we worked through a LOT of shit on that 90-minute paddle, and look at us afterwards!

There were eagles on the paddle, but it was too difficult to take photos. Fortunately, eagles just hang around in Alaska like pigeons or starlings, leaving plenty to photograph as we tromped around town later.

We passed a science museum that made me sad because if the kids had been with us we'd have for sure spent half the day there, but fortunately we found the beach right afterwards, and spent the rest of our time in Sitka there.

Another blue crab, and look, Matt, you don't have to paddle near the rocks to look at it!

Don't fall down onto these. I'm telling you--it hurts!

And just look at this beauty that I found! Matt put wrapped it up in bubble wrap for me, and it's my favorite souvenir, our only one from Sitka, although I super wanted some of this expensive fancy salt.

Oh, just a little lobster for lunch! I may have eaten lobster for dinner, as well, although the only thing that I really remember from dinner is that my waiter made one of those fancy milk foam drawings on top of my after-dinner cappuccino. I loved all the little luxuries just as much as the big ones!

Work Plans for the Week of September 6, 2016: Sharks, Patriots, and Getting Out the Vote

I could get used to these four-day school weeks! We crammed a lot into last week's four-day week, and it still felt great because it was only four days for all of the brain hat making, Scratch coding--

--human eye diagramming, Spanish learning, and math doing.

Well, maybe math didn't feel great for one of us:

The kid hates math because she loves mastery, and in math, as soon as she's mastered something, I make her move on. I should probably break down her Math Mammoth curriculum to make room for more review, but that would take more time than just mindlessly handing her the next lesson in the series every day, sigh.

And then we had a three-day weekend to refresh us (indoor trampoline park! Cupcakes! Drive-in movies! Tree house! Friends!), and now we have another short, four-day school week to zip through before there's yet another delightful weekend. Daily work this week includes progress in each kid's Wordly Wise, work on Scratch (Will still uses Coding Games in Scratch, but Syd has fallen in love with animation, and instead makes a new cartoon every day), and one journal entry (well, Syd journals, but I've given up on Will and this week will instead require her to do a page a day in the last half of Syd's abandoned cursive handwriting workbook). Books of the Day are a couple of novels, a couple of books about sharks, and this LEGO Shakespeare.

And here's the rest of our week!



TUESDAY: Will is finishing up her Math Mammoth unit this week and moving to the next, and although Syd is reviewing multiplication and division algorithms, she didn't correctly reproduce the algorithm to multiply multi-digit numbers during our chalk in the driveway activity, so I've paused her for some more review drills before she continues.

The lesson on sharks in aquariums, however, went AMAZINGLY well! The kids both dove in and put a ton of effort into researching aquariums that have sharks. Will even found an aquarium that I didn't know about, close enough that we can actually make a day trip to visit it this winter--how's that for a successful research project?

We've also learned that we need to save all of our money so that we can go swim with whale sharks at the Georgia Aquarium.

Spanish vocab on this day was all animals--easy-peasy, after last week's Bill Martin, Jr. books in Spanish!

WEDNESDAY: Our From Colonies to Country chapters this week cover the ordinary people from the American Revolution, the soldiers and citizens. On this day, I want the kids to put themselves in the place of an average citizen and take a stand on the Revolution. If either kid really gets into the idea, we can copy out the letters on nice paper, age them, and even send them to someone--California grandparents, perhaps? Either way, it will be excellent practice writing a persuasive essay.

The multi-level Girl Scout badge, I Promised a Girl Scout I Would Vote, is a terrific civics unit, and I recommend it to you even if you don't have a Girl Scout. On this day, the kids will complete the activity that asks them to research and identify every one of their elected representatives, from the president of the United States all the way down to the mayor. I'm requiring that the kids fill out this form in their best handwriting, so that we can take it with us on Thursday to our volunteer gig taking voter registrations!

In a little bit, though, we're going to grab our swim gear and inner tubes and head off for an afternoon at the lakeshore, where we're going to take sand samples for Thursday's geology activity and practice how to be shark safe in the water for today's sharks unit. Next week, we begin our dissection of the dogfish shark!

THURSDAY: When a kid completes her Math Mammoth unit, she gets a day off of math and a small celebration of her choice. On this day, Will wants ice cream!

Before Pony Club but perhaps after ice cream, we'll be manning a voter registration table at our local food pantry, helping people get registered, checking their registrations, and helping them sign up for absentee voting, if they wish. The kids aren't super excited about it, but it's just one hour once a week for the rest of September, and it's going to be a valuable experience in real-life civic responsibility.

I do not actually know who Thaddeus Koscuisko was, except that he was a guy in the American Revolution and his house has a Junior Ranger badge, which the kids will earn when we're in Philadelphia. I guess the kids can tell me what he did that was so great!

We are now studying sedimentary rocks, and on this day, we'll be examining sand from a few different places, to study how it can be sorted and categorized based on the rounding of the grains. We just have a couple more weeks with this particular text, and then we'll move into some ones that are more Syd-friendly for review.

FRIDAY: In order to make the similarities and differences between the British and American soldiers clearer, the kids will be exploring this website, although I think this comic really illustrates everything that you need to know. I SUPER want to make these cute clothespin dolls, so I might make that a family craft project on another day.

Have you added your kids to my 2016 Children's Pen Pal Exchange? If not, you should totally do it--the deadline is Friday! On this day, Will is going to write her introductory letter for the exchange, while Syd continues to work on her Making Friends badge--she's completing it mostly independently, although she's going to get together with a friend to plan the party that she wants to be the culmination of her badge work.

The kids are going to be doing another infographic for their shark lesson on this day, both as a review of infographic composition and as a science/geography study of one threatened shark species. This is the last review activity for our sharks MOOC, which was one of the most successful things that we've done in our homeschool. After our road trip, we're absolutely going to be doing another animal science-themed MOOC.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: We are 100% back in the swing of children's extracurriculars, so there's Pony Club and ballet to transport the young ones to and from, and otherwise... I'm hoping for the farmer's market. Some yardwork. For Matt and the kids to put a few more boards on the tree house. Maybe a good movie at the drive-in? Maybe another afternoon at the lakeshore?

What are YOU up to this week?

Join the 2016 Children's Pen Pal Exchange!

I'm pretty excited to be organizing a children's pen pal exchange! The inspiration is an activity in Will's Finding Common Ground Cadette Girl Scout badge: the badge asks her to get to know someone different from her, but the suggested activities seemed a little shallow to me, mostly involved with interviewing someone and then moving on with your life.

That's not really getting to know someone. I want my kid to learn how to REALLY get to know someone, because it is absolutely a skill. Think about it: in order to truly get to know someone, you have to be able to connect with them, to let them in by sharing things about yourself, not just asking them things about themselves. You have to find out not just facts and background, but what their sense of humor is like, what their spirit is. Do they have a dry sense of humor? Do they prefer to talk about books or about people? Do they like to travel? Do they tell jokes? Do they tell stories? 

That's the kind of getting to know someone that I think that kids should be practicing, and what better way to try it out than with a pen pal exchange?

My goals for this project (at least for my own children!) are to give our kids an opportunity to practice the art of letter writing, to experience the fun of sending and receiving letters, and, most of all, to make connections with other children. If you think that your kids might like that, too, then read on and see if you might light to register to be part of this year's exchange.

As part of the pen pal exchange, your child can expect to receive an introductory letter from every child in his/her small group (I’ll be passing out the names and contact info of the children in your child’s small group to each of the participants in that group; please respect this information as private, to be used only for this year’s pen pal exchange). In exchange, your child is expected to write an introductory letter that you can photocopy and mail to each of the other children in the group.

Within two weeks of the receipt of these introductory letters, your child will be expected to:

1.       Reply to the child whose name I have assigned to you. This requirement is to make sure that all the children in the group receive at least one response.
2.       Reply to at least one other letter of your child’s choosing. Your child can, of course, respond to as many of the letters as he/she likes.

Soon after that, your child should receive their own responses! There are no requirements beyond this initial introduction and response, but it’s my hope that the children will want to continue to correspond with their pen pals.

Here is the time frame of the exchange:

Sept. 10-11: I will send you the contact information of the children in your small group.

Sept. 12-18: Your child should compose their introductory letter and mail it to each of the children in their small group.

Sept. 19-Oct. 3: Your child should receive introductory letters from each of the other children in their group soon. Within two weeks of receipt of these letters, your child should respond to both their assigned partner and at least one other child of their choosing (more if they like!).

If you would like to participate, please send the following information to my email address (pumpkin.bear@rocketmail.com) by Sept.  9:

•     Your child’s first and last name
•      Your child’s age
•      three things about your child that could connect him/her to a pen pal: hobbies, interests, pets, circumstances, etc.
•      three things that your child would like to have in a pen pal: similar age, gender, specific interests, location, etc.

Please send a separate response for each of your children; it will help me keep them organized!

I’ll do my best to put children into small groups that will start them along the path to connecting with each other, and then the rest is up to them!

Cruise to Alaska Day 07: Haines

Thank goodness, my photos did not all get deleted! Yay for computer repair shops!

On a side note, if you have an online backup service that you're very happy with, please let me know.

Now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming--I have some eagles and mountains to show you!

Our day in Haines began with, yes, indeed, another breakfast so large that it required a second plate:

And then it was off to adventures!

We actually tendered from the ship on this morning, since the tide was high and the dock was too low.

Tendering is also cool because we also get to ride in a lifeboat! The maximum capacity for tendering in this vessel was 50 fewer people than its maximum capacity as a lifeboat, which means that in case of emergency we'd be packed in, as Will puts it, "like tuna in a Tupperware."

Haines was a VERY sleepy little town, and we did not find many humans other than those from our cruise ship when we went out and about to explore.

Our bus driver, however, did point out this totem pole to us. It's a modern creation, and includes something very relevant both to us and, it seems, to Haines.

It's a tourist! See him getting off of a boat, with a camera around his neck, and his blue jeans and his shirt with "ALASKA" on it? That's basically me, although my shirt had a squid on it.

Our organized excursion was a raft float through an eagle preserve with Chilkat Guides. We were required to wear not only life jackets, but also those knee-high boots. Doesn't Matt look cute?

Remember how I'm kind of afraid of the water? Wonder why all of our excursions took place on the water? Me, too! I thought that I was about to die most of the time, but the fact that I didn't was probably good for me.

And we. Saw. EAGLES!!!!!!11!!!!!!!

And pretty scenery.

Sometimes with eagles.

I was the first one to spot this eagle's nest.

We didn't visit the Hammer Museum, but we nevertheless heard all about it, as people were STILL talking about this decade-old trademark dispute.  We also didn't buy the autographed books that our tour guide had written and was selling, but they're weird enough that I'm going to inter-library loan them. And we visited this really cool handmade knife shop, but I did not buy Will a souvenir, because I am mean and I had just bought her a big dagger for her birthday.