Friday Update

Well, another week has gone by since I posted last. We had the Cub Scout Campout last weekend and started back up with school activities on Monday. Now, I don't know what happened to our school schedule, but our progress has slowed down considerably! Monday and Tuesday we had school pretty much the entire day. :( First of all, we got started late. My fault as well as the kids not getting ready. That is the major factor. But I've also cut down on some subjects (cutting in half the number of days we cover particular subject). But I'm not seeing any of the benefits of that just yet.


Anyway, we got better by Wednesday. We had to because that was our last day of book work for this week!

Thursday was a big day. We got up at 6am, hit the road by 7am, and got to SeaWorld for Home School Day by 9am. Now keep in mind that it has been raining a lot lately. So the whole day was drizzly with some dry spells punctuating the day. We followed the self-guided tour and walked a LOT! We saw the dolphins, the Coral Reef Aquarium (with lots of wonderful coral reef dwelling creatures like jellies, butterfly fish, eagle rays, eels, lobsters), sharks, sea lions, seals, Asian otters, puffins, murres, a variety of penguins, alligators, red-eared slider turtles, Japanese koi, flamingos, killer whales, and a walrus!

After lunch, we watched two presentations. One was at the Shamu Theater and featured the Shamu Family of three killer whales. As always . . . awesome! The second presentation was at the Sea Star Theater where we saw the walrus, three sea lions, and an Asian otter. The Transformer wanted to sit in the front row at the Sea Star Theater with some friends. He got to see one of the sea lions perched on the railing directly in front of him!


My two favorite parts of this field trip were (1) the per person ticket price of $8 and (2) the rain starting to come down heavily immediately AFTER the final presentation when everyone was clearing the park!



Although we were already tired from this outing, I had decided to go check out the Witte Museum for a brief time while we were in San Antonio. They have an HEB Science Treehouse, and I wanted to get an idea of what the museum was like--if it was worth it to drive down to San Antonio just to go to the museum. We are members of the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, so we have free admittance to the Witte Museum under their partnership program.



Well, the Witte Museum is primarily south Texas history. We walked through certain areas, but I had given us a time limit of one hour in order to get home in time for dinner and Cub Scouts. We had to walk through a courtyard to get to the Treehouse and saw some log cabins off to one side there. The rain was coming down pretty steadily so I didn't want to explore them yet.

At the Treehouse, the kids had a great time. There was hardly anyone there (it was about 2pm) so they had free run of the place. It has four stories total with an outdoor area on the top level. Also, the Treehouse is named for the faux treehouse that is attached to the building and is two stories. Each level had something that held either both or one of the kids to it for some time. We ended up spending one and a half hours there before we could all feel good about leaving.

It is definitely worth another trip, but I'm not sure I want to drive 1.5 hours to get there and another 1.5 hours to drive back. On our next trip to S.A., though, I will definitely want to take the kids there again.

We got home around 5pm, had dinner, and headed out to the Cub Scouts pack meeting at 6:30pm. It lasted less than an hour, and we headed home. I was exhausted.

This morning, we met up with the Austin Home School Nature Explorers Club and hiked St. Edwards Park. The sky lit up with the sun around 11am, and it got hot! The hike was easier than last week's and muddy in places. The creek was high and looked so fresh and clean! The sound of the water falling over the rocks was just musical. We stopped at an open area on an incline and sat down to listen to Ms. Carrie read a story about a box turtle. Then the kids drew in their nature notebooks--some more than others. In the meantime, my son found a frog and was showing it off to everyone. It was tiny. Okay, I admit, it might have been a toad. It was hard to tell. It was brown and looked dry (like mud had dried on it). With the boys handling it and with it trying to escape, it was hard to focus on the hind leg length and to see if it had warts. And it was tiny.

Our return trip home was uneventful. But I realized how t-i-r-e-d I was and decided to take a nap. The kids were gracious enough to allow that, so our Park Day plans were necessarily cancelled. Now I need to get them in gear to go to their KinderGym class at the YMCA. They are supposed to have a routine that includes a jump, roll, and balance prepared for the teacher. They just came up with it now. :)

Off we go!



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We just got back from KinderGym. I've posted some video of each of my children doing his or her "routine."