Golf, Orchestra & Honey Bees!

Last Saturday was absolutely gorgeous!  Warm weather and bright blue skies.  We took advantage with some bike riding, including Noah's inaugural ride on the road and the rail trail.  We went a significant distance including up the hills back to our house and he was a trooper... we will see if he asks to do it again;)  We were also able to take the whole family to the driving range.  Watching the kids carry their clubs, get their gloves on and swinging wildly at the balls was a bit emotional... when I finally stopped crying it was a really special time and I knew that my dad was there in spirit (and maybe grateful that he wasn't there in person to try and teach all four kids to golf in one place). 

On Sunday we took in another Portland Symphony Orchestra's Family Discovery Concerts. They do such a fantastic job exposing kids to the orchestra at these events.  The kids all tried out lots of different instruments.  Audrey's favorite was the violin and kept going back to the same lady 4 or 5 times.  Ben is destined to be a brass instrument player... in retrospect this is pretty obvious.  He sat down at the french horn and, once he figured out what to do with his mouth, he played it impressively loud... the volunteers were taken aback... this same scenario was repeated at the tuba.  He now tells everyone who will listen that he is going to play the french horn when he gets bigger.

To continue the excitement, on Monday our bees arrived. Gabe has been taking a beekeeping class through adult ed at the high school this spring and was excited to get started.  In true homeschooling form, we are now fully immersed in bee biology and socialization.  The kids are telling complete strangers (to them) lots of minuscule facts about bees so we know they are retaining something;)  We (I use the term "we" here loosely) still haven't located the queen in either hive, but they appear to be healthy and thriving... stay tuned!   

Spring Fun & the Fiddlehead Festival

We have adjusted back to East coast time and are starting to tackle some of the spring projects/chores.   The chickens have started laying their eggs in bizarre places, so it is like a treasure hunt each day to find them all.  Noah collected several boxes from our recycling and made a drill to drill to the center of the earth for his siblings. They were so excited and spent more of the afternoon decorating and playing in their own "cars".

One of our spring projects this year is to clear out our raspberry bushes so we can actually harvest them this year.  But, part of the clearing process it digging up the invasive vine that has strangled out many plants and trees over the years.  This, we hope, is the origination point, but it is the size of a tree root and not easy to remove.

James has started playing T-ball and is slowly getting the hang of how the game works.  He hasn't decided yet if he likes it;)  The warmer weather has mostly arrived and the kids are spending more and more time outside as we wind the school year down.  They mostly play well together and have some pretty elaborate storylines.  In this instance they are playing knights.  For the record, Audrey is not as distraught as she looks in the picture...  I believe that she is crying here because Noah was standing where she wanted to stand, or something equally as worthy of this type of hysterical reaction.  In the lower pictures Audrey is pouring water down her pants and into her boots as a way to "wash" her pants... the three year old psyche may be the end of us... ;)

Last weekend my mom came for a visit and was able to attend the Fiddlehead Festival with us.  We also put her to work and got some yard work done along with burning our massive brush pile... Dad would have been proud:)

Visiting Seattle- Part 3

Last night James said, "We never spend too much time at the house. Do you ever think that we do too much exploring?" Hahaha, I think that he may be getting vacation fatigue... we are counting most of these days as school days, so we also may be making them learn too much at each stop;)

Wednesday we went to Pike's Place Market. The bustling market dates back to the early 1900s.  They really do throw the fish around, but now days it is purely for entertainment purposes as they use the same fish for that purpose all day.  There is an incredible array of flowers, fresh produce and fresh seafood.  Ben went to look at a huge monkfish and when he did the man behind the counter pulled the string it was tied to so the fish appeared alive and scared him to death;)

We had arranged for a child-centric tour through the market and surrounding area. With Penny as our guide, we sipped fermented pickle brine, gazed at ostrich eggs, chewed on kumquats, moscato grapes & blood oranges. She showed us the giant shoe museum with with world's tallest man. The kids all rode the metal pig and drew their names in chalk on the garden pig.  We were glad to have Penny navigate for us since the market is a busy area with hundreds of different shops, vendors and wares.  She also introduced us to the Seattle Art Museum and train station.

After our tour we were left to our own devices, so we walked around in circles for an embarrassing amount of time before finding our way to the candy shop, the Indian booth with good samosas and the mini donuts.  Gabe's personal highlight was the raw oyster bar.  On the drive home we passed a driving range... we turned around making sure not to pass up that opportunity;)

Thursday was our last full day in Seattle and was supposed to be the nicest weather of the trip so we headed for Mount Rainier.  We were hopefully optimistic that the clouds would part and the fog would lift so that we could see the mountains, but it ultimately wasn't meant to be.  We did get to see the Eastern 1/3 of Rainier for about 3 minutes.  The trip was still very worthwhile!  We took two separate short hikes to see gorgeous waterfalls.  One Trail was snow covered, so just Gabe and Noah trekked to view the bottom.  On the way out we were able to take another short hike to see parts of an old growth forest with some unbelievably impressive trees.  The kids got to fill out the park workbooks and become Junior Park Rangers for Mount Rainier National Park.  The ranger was fantastic, made them take an oath and everything to which the others in the visitor center started applauding, so the kids felt extra special:)

Our flight home was uneventful, except for leaving our entire case of DVDs in the rental car... We made it to Portland Maine on Friday night and on Saturday morning Gabe went to his two day Maine AAP conference (we really like to pack things close together).  The kids and I headed for home on Saturday, happy to sleep in our own beds!