Since the first time Darren took a business trip, when James was but a wee thing and the trip was perhaps 3 days, paper chains have been used to mark the passage of times too long to measure here. And we are passing one of those times now. Everyday, “I can’t waaait to see Auntie Megan.”

“Count the rings.”

“7 days.”

“Umm, I think you’ve torn off too many rings. “

“There’s only 7 rings left. We go in 7 days.”

“It doesn’t work like that. You can’t just tear off as many rings as you like and then we go.”

“Ummph.”

It was easier at the wee one age.

In the meantime, school books have been put aside in favor of finding leaves and using them for area and perimeter, doing coordinate graphing Thanksgiving pictures in the (futile) hope that it will douse his zeal for Battleship (James, no one wants to play with you if you keep looking at our ships!), building a model pilgrim house and a wetu (“we already did this” “Damn you and your good memory, that was years ago, we didn’t even live here.”), art projects, getting through, counting down, tearing rings from a chain.

We’ve been a bit busy here. Here’s the last week’s Halloween bonanza:

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The non-pumpkin patch field trip photos are from the San Diego Wild Animal Park, which wasn’t really the cool part. The Roots & Shoots leaders had arranged a tour of the Beckman Center, attached too, works with the San Diego Zoo/Wild Animal Park, does research and the like, and it was amazing. James, hates not very fond of zoos (because “al you get to do is look at animals) would have been quite happy if he could have been left alone to pipette all afternoon.

But, what we have been really busy with . . .

Kitty

Yes, James got his cat, well kitten, brought home by the allergic Darren, so my hands are clean of the dastardly deed. Arrow is quite in love and there is a distinct possibility that Kitty by die of cold due to dog slobber. Penny seemed only to realize tonight that we owned a cat (over a week later) and decided it was not worth her bother to get inside. If Kitty and Penny never meet face to face, it should be well. And since Penny is 19 and rarely graces us with her presence inside and Kitty has limited roaming access (i.e. he’s supposed to stay in James’ room, but is moved from room to room under supervision).

Next week, Mary Poppins and maybe, some rest?

After try #3, we finally got James’ H1N1 shot today. This was our 3rd visit (ever) to the County Health clinic. Hopefully, it was our last, if his normal Dr. gets the vaccine in for his 2nd shot in a month. The first time, I was too late to get it (hours wise) and I asked if there was anything special I needed to know. No, just the hours. The second time, I was told the were only giving out 20 shots a day and I should have gotten there at 7:30 (1/2 an hour before they opened). I may have been a wee bit unpleasant, something about not mentioning that six days earlier when I was there. This time, I had an early morning Dr.’s appointment, so Darren took him down, got there just before 8, I went to my Dr.’s appointment. As it turned out, they got the regular shot in (previously it was just the mist) so they had a larger supply (luckily, because they were #22). Three hours later, James walked out vaccinated. 3 hours for 22 people to be vaccinated! And yes, it was 1 person per number, not one family. This does not bode well for public health care (of which I am a supporter, but seriously).

I (by I, I mean Darren) sent out  the books this Monday. No notes or anything, for which I apologize, but I really wanted to get them in the mail.

My camera is back. The lens’, a fancy one, motor broke. We discussed whether to replace the lens with a cheaper one or repair it (yes, the repair was that expensive). We decided to repair the lens and buy a lens hood for it. Apparently, a lens hood protects against damage (and all this time, I thought they were just for filtering light). I’ve always kept a filter on it, but I’m upping the protection now.

My printer and my washing machine are staging protests. Apparently, this is the breaking time in my house. I know how to fix the washing machine (aren’t I handy?), but I’ve requested a new printer for my birthday and I’m wishing on many stars that our current one lasts that long. I have a friend whose printer died and so she’s writing things by hand. I shudder at the thought.

Topsy Techie and Firefly Mom have been participating in dueling field trips. Now, I have no beautiful pictures for you, partly because, try not to fall out of your chair, my beloved DSLR is in the shop. I have been using the iPhone camera and it leaves much to be desired (do you hear that Apple, add a DSLR app, will ya? There’s no app for that). So, I have for field trip #1 some decidedly on the bad side of so-so pictures and for field trip #2 some I’m not even posting, why did I bother, what is that? pictures.

On Monday, we went to one of James’ most beloved places – Legoland. And honestly, I didn’t take pictures of most of it. Want to see what it looks like? Here’s a link. If you happen to live in Southern California, or if you’re visiting in the non-summer season and are a homeschooler, sign up here for a coupon for you and 5 of your family members to get in for $21 each ($25 if you wish to go to the aquarium) plus $12 parking. You can download an educational guide and attend classes, depending on the age of your child (an honest moment, we have never gotten there early enough for the classes but I’m sure they are great). Legoland is really best for the under 10 crowd and is not at all set up for a mom and two toddlers (no rides can be ridden by three people, even if two of them are small).

What I did take pictures of is the aquarium; we hadn’t been before, although I think it’s been open for about a year. It’s a small aquarium, but for $4 a person, it was well worth it. James was given a card that had multiple choice scratch offs on it, about 10 questions to find the answers through the aquarium. It would be, and was, fun exactly once.

There were lots of bubbles like this one:

You would think they made good photo opportunities. I can’t really comment (see above about my real camera), but there was glare. They were fun though, a quite interactive aquarium, without lots of touching (some, but not a lot). Keep in mind, it’s very small. If you are paying whatever extravagant price they normally charge, I’m quite certain it’s not worth it. I feel this way about Legoland in general. It’s outrageously expensive to get in if you don’t have some sort of discount (I just checked  – $65 for an adult, $55 for a child  without the aquarium - Yikes!).

O.k., field trip #2, another favorite place, and one that we will likely get to at least once more before the end of the year Discovery Science Center . My mom gave us passes for Christmas last year (we had passes two years ago as well). The best part about this science center is every month they have new exhibits, so every time we go, we’re seeing something new. We went Friday night for a member event (Halloween based, Spooky Science/ Dia de los Muertos) and James won first place in the costume contest. Yes, I know Ami, you want a picture. I am determined to get something decent on or before Halloween. The only problem with the museum is how busy it is. I always feel lucky when we get there and have some space. I rarely go in the summer – craziness! Except for summer, I’ve tried to go once a month when we have the passes, so we can catch the changing of the exhibits. I plan to go in early December to see the Gingerbread one, a favorite and call it a year well spent. Thanks, mom!

Next week, we have two more field trips planned, neither ones we have done before. Hopefully, I’ll get some good pictures. Stay tuned!

One of the topics James wanted to study about this year was the solar system, light and magnifying things. I used as the basis for our studying George’s Secret Key to the Universe  by Lucy and Stephen Hawking (interesting that amazon has Stephen Hawking as the first author but the book has him as the second. These things are important. She is his daughter, for those who are curious). Regardless, it’s a wonderful book, written at I would say, about a 5th grade level, assuming a middle schoolish science understanding. James is an advanced science student; he could not have tackled it solo (reading wise he could have and has requested the second book. I plan to let him read it on his own) and gotten the full science information out of it, guided it was perfect. It’s definitely not for all second  graders (no objectionable content at all, just for understanding).

O.k., that aside, topics  pulled out are roughly in this order:

Moon: Activities – Look through with binoculars or telescope, watch for a month, model with an orange or ball why we never see the dark side, look at video of landing

Stars: look at video of birth and death of a star, learn constellations, stars, myths. We’re using these books: The Stars and Find the Constellations  by H.A. Rey.

Comets: make a comet out of dry ice

The Solar System: Walk a scale model of the solar system (takes a lot of space – 1/2 a mile), comparisons of different planets, look at photos on-line of different planets (the ones at JPL of mars can be seen in 3-d if you have the glasses), look at planets with binoculars/telescopes.

What is needed for life on a planet?/Earth

Neutron Stars

Black holes: This site is fun http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/modules.html . This book is particularly good: Icarus at the Edge of Time . The weird thing is that, so far as I can tell, it only comes in a board book (large sized) edition and I can’t imagine that age range getting much, anything other than “ohh, pretty pictures” out of it. Odd.

Now, there is a lot of other science information in the book, information on temperature, physics, particles, matter, and we discussed it as it came up. These are the topics I gave special, extra attention to. In addition, James and his dad have been watching The Universe for sometime and added recently Roving Mars. We also spent some time on the history of astronomy.

James read Along Came Galileo made a galileoscope, which, honestly, except for the first day, we haven’t made much use of yet (we’ll get there). We also read Nicholas Copernicus: The Earth is a Planet and Maria’s Comet (I wasn’t that impressed, but lots of people like it). We used Dk’s The Universe as a reference. What I would like is a book about the Aztecs and astronomy, preferably a picture book, anyone have anything? Obviously our study had a western bent and while we’ve read books referencing in particular the Aztec calendar and how precise their astronomical measurements were, we didn’t really touch that in our astronomy study.

So, we are continuing in our astronomy study, at this point the more hands on, viewing portion will begin. It’s a topic that we’ve cycled around to a couple of times, because James loves it, so there’s certainly much more you can do on some of the more basic topics (I actually added in some from memory that we didn’t actually do because we’ve done them before). This time around, he really got interested in black holes and has taken off in that direction for the moment. He certainly knows more about them than I did when I was 20  his age. In addition to the second of the George series (George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt), I’ve ordered him The Time and Space of Uncle Albert. It’s also the first of a series; we’ll see how he likes it.

A brief apology to those of you who won books;  have not yet sent them (some of you – Mom #1) haven’t yet gotten me your addresses). I absolutely, positively, certainly will pack them up this weekend. Pinky promise.

It seems that the older James gets, the busier we get. Exponentially. Knowing a small amount about math, this is likely to either cause a completely destruction of the universe or will have to stop at some point. Any preferences out there?

Amazingly, still compared to others, our schedule is not that full. How is it possible that the universe has not ended yet?

So, in the past couple of weeks, we have seen two plays (If you give a Mouse a Cookie and The Velveteen Rabbit, both very different and good), James has Roots and Shoots, which started with a bang (meeting during the week and weekend field trips,  but is settling into weekly meetings), basketball, and an art class, not to mention friends over, surviving the flu, a football game, and, oh yes, school.

We’ve been studying astronomy; it’s been going quite well and will be it’s own post, hopefully sometime next week.

We have four field trips planned in the next couple of weeks, and of course, the much anticipated, Halloween.

In crazy story of the week, a local school has decided that the kindergarten students are not ” socially and emotionally developed” enough for . . . recess (kids are getting hurt, not seriously, kid stuff), so they now return to their classroom after lunch. This is not a full day kindergarten. A friend of mine has two kids at the school, neither kindergarteners, but one, reasonable, mother, has started a campaign to attempt to reverse this decision. Because, you know, 5 year olds aren’t ready to play, but they are ready to sit.

1. Sew. Right now, that means finish James Halloween costume (a scary tree), hem multiple pants, and make some dog toys. A treasure bag from James. I plan to that today, time or no.

2. Read. Whatever. Just read.

3. Go outside. It’s actually cool here.

4. Change the garden. It’s time.

5. Plant a hillside.

6. Decide with Darren: Christmas cards or not?

7. Buy dry ice (we needed it for an experiment 4 days ago).

8. Breathe.

9. Curl up in bed and watch some movie I could care less about just to make James happy.

10. Find out what Penny has in front of her right now. I think I’ll make time for that right now.

What do you wish you had time for?

Wendy at Athena Academy posed this question the other day: “When it comes to life, apart from academics, what are you teaching?” It seemed too big a question to answer in a comment, so I half promised a post. One post to sum up a life philosophy. No problem.

1. Value yourself and others. Treat kindly, but don’t be a doormat.

2. Be confident. Think for yourself, even when it drives me up the wall.

3. Use humor. And joy.

4. Curiosity and creativity are good. But it’s o.k. to be angry. And sad. Frustrated. Confused. Scared. It’s life.

5.  Find a balance, physical, mental, play, work, giving, receiving, that works for you.

if you have chosen the right path. Everyone has those days, right? Help me out here and play along.

It all started innocently enough. James was missing his art class, a very informal affair, moms, kids, supplies, a park, because of his cough (the park means a great deal of playing in addition to art). So, I decided to do a brief art lesson along with the normal coloring, painting, projects, we normal do. Nothing fancy, five minutes on the different kinds of lines. Simple. Easy. And here is where it all went wrong.

“In the first box, draw a diagonal line, then vertical, then horizontal.”

“Oops, you confused horizontal and vertical. No big deal. I’ll get you another paper.”

“Why did you draw a circle? O.k. wait for me to give you instructions before drawing. No big deal. I’ll get you another paper.”

“Umm. You confused horizontal and vertical again. Here you go.”

“O.k. Now, draw another line parallel to each of those lines. You remember what parallel is? Right, o.k.”

“Now, shade in between those lines (which he does, in classic James style, in rainbow colors).”

“O.k., now add dotted lines.”

“Why are there rainbow circles all over your paper?”

“Right. Dotted line. Of course those are dotted lines. Just like I asked. Awesome. Beautiful. Yeah, we’re done. I love it. Halloween decoration? I’d love to.”

Note to self: dashed lines.

And, the winners are:

Chelle: Pooh Book (stiff competition there)

Laurie: Newberry: Life and Times of a Maine Clam

Topsy: Canterbury Tales

Runners Up (i.e. you didn’t ask for these books, but nobody else did either, so I’ll send them to you if you like):

Mom #1: McBroom and the Big Wind

Bobbi: Sprout and the Helicopter

If I don’t have your address, e-mail my at holly . dong @ mail . com so I can send you your fabulous prize. Or, your prize. However you see it.

I have a love/hate relationship with technology. I may have mentioned this 1000 before. I am still waiting for the promised land, that one magical piece of technology that will actually save me time instead of sucking it up, black hole like. I own an inordinate amount of gadgets and doo dads, on my constant quest towards nirvana (Darren is partially responsible for this, being in tech, bringing some home free from conferences, others from work, and simply indulging me in others). Here’s a review/update on a couple:

My kindle (mentioned before in this post): I still love my kindle, however, it has failed me. The battery has died. Darren has mentioned that this is a problem (perhaps resolved in the newer models? something to google) and bought backup batteries (that’s love). However, in my ineptitude and fear, I haven’t been able to install it. There’s all sorts of warnings: “Do this wrong and your Kindle will explode.” O.k., that’s not quite what it says, but close enough that my Tech Guy has another chore added to his list.

I also find myself quite annoyed when a book I want to read is not available on the kindle. I would say, 1 out of 5. Abnormally annoyed. On the one hand, not everything can be available yet. On the other hand, it’s not inexpensive, and I want what I want. I work around it unless it’s a book club book. And, if it’s a book club book, there’s a whole group of us attempting to get it from the library at the same time. Given our library system, chances our, I’m going to end up buying it.

James is nearly to the point where his books will be available. Well, some his level are, but they aren’t ones he’s interested in. He’s nearly to the point where it makes sense to get his books on the kindle. His read alouds often can be gotten on the kindle. If there are pictures, I skip it. Pictures are better on paper.

iTouch/iPhone: Yes, I’ve already upgraded to an iPhone. This is one piece of technology I have lusted after for quite a while (well, not the phone, but the touch). Interestingly, Darren thought I would not use it much. Once he realized that I not only used it, but knew where it was, but kept it with me and charged, he thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to upgrade to the phone once my old contract was up. I am notorious for not keeping my phone charged or with me.

I know people have said this everywhere, but these devices are amazing. It’s like carrying a computer with you. And, reasonably intuitive. Having said that, I’m still trying to set it up to get my maximum use. So, some apps I like:

General use:

Calendar, mail – both sync with google (which more and more takes over my life) effortlessly, something I could never get my other phone to do

Shopper – obvious, right, grocery shopping

Clock – useful for school too

Weight Loss: (for those of you following along, I’ve loss nearly 45 lbs)

Weight watchers (they just added their own app, but you have to be a member to use most of it)

Couch to 5K (yes, I’ve started running jogging, really, really slowly, for short periods of time) w/ white noise

Total time wasters that I highly recommend you stay away from:

Crayon physics deluxe

Bejeweled 2

For school:

Hubble

Pop Math

Things I haven’t used or haven’t used to their full potential:

Notebook

iTreadmill (maybe once I’m running a little faster )

Postino

Things I’m disappointed in:

Knit co. Lite – I can’t figure out how to get more than one project on, maybe because I got the lite version?

This is the biggie – Docs2Go. I can’t edit excel files, and only now realize how many of the files I wanted to edit were excel. I’m thinking of dropping it, converting all the files to google docs, and doing it on-line.

Podcasts:

Spare the Rock – Kid’s rock

Creative mom

This American Life

Science Friday

All Songs Considered (sometimes gets an explicit rating)

Tips from the Top Floor (photography, often over my head, but I try )

Well, this got longer than I expected. I am still trying to work out how to work seamlessly from the iPhone to the computer to keep my homeschooling records efficiently and make my monthly reports to my ES a breeze. I think google docs is going to be my easiest solution. Any other suggestions?

From the hospital wing I am running, James is mostly better, although still worn. Since he doesn’t get sick often, I am unaccustomed to such a long bounce back time. Darren’s recovering well from surgery, frustrated that he hasn’t started physical therapy yet. I believe his next appointment is next Friday.