A walk through the maze and her arms were itching enough to scratch away and need some medicine to help it stop. Oy!!
Of course she had to have the Cinderella pumpkin! K is doing well adjusting to school though she does not like going to school 'every single day!' and has days where she melts down because she wants more time to play with her sister and do stuff with us, but we are pushing through at least until January. :-) Also, she recently started complaining that it is 'boring', which when I interrogated her turned out to simply be in English, which we expected. I had hoped the computer programs they use in Math and English, which let them move at their own pace, would alleviate that, but since they still have group instruction time, that is what she is referring to. We have spoken to her teacher and she is looking into ways to challenge her more in English. A long vacation in Hawaii should help!
Saturday we went to the Salmon Festival at the National Fish Hatchery near here. We had done all our research and knew the entire life cycle of salmon so it was really neat to see the stages 'in person'.
Are those rain jackets? Why yes! We had our first rain of the year! It only amounted to about a quarter of an inch but we were just happy to have water! Praying for that El Nino year they are predicting.
The girls got to make t-shirts from Fish and Game. There were booths all over the place and the girls had almost as much fun getting free stuff as exploring the facility.
We even witnessed smoking salmon the Native American way.
And dissected salmon.
So when we got home, this is what K was all upset about...(picture a distraught little face almost crying), "Mom, why do they steal the eggs from the females?" I'm not gonna lie, I was a little disturbed by the process too. Even though we knew that even in the wild, salmon die after they lay their eggs, for some reason it was hard to watch them harvest the eggs.
Though, at the same time, it was fascinating. The eggs are collected in the bins below where they are taken and fertilized and then carried through a whole lot of steps from birth to release back into the wild.
It was much more palatable to watch the salmon jumping in the stream.
And work their way up the ladder. We just didn't think about their fate.
By far their favorite tent was the bug tent. They had several bugs and you could magnify them from the top, bottom or side, whichever side you wanted to see.
It was a good day had by all and when we were done, we went and bought new rain boots. Elsa and Anna are on our shoes now too. Never imagined we would be the people who wear out boots but as it turns out, if the boot fits, wear it.
Monday had us back at the pumpkin patch...this time with Em's school. This is Em's little buddy.
I know it's dark but this is the home school crew.
Pig races.
Em's IEP went really well. We were able to get (in writing) everything that we hope to have this year, including an occupational therapy evaluation for her fine motor skills. We have a new magnifier at our house that she can use to enlarge her books and literally in one week she has advanced leaps and bounds in her reading. Rather than struggling with each letter, she looks at whole words and reads them in a flash. It is amazing! Smarty pants gets to show off what she really knows now, not what she cannot see.
In sad news, her latest evaluations show that her visual acuity (ability to see clearly) is back to the same place it was before her last surgery. Her weak eye is wandering more and more and patching doesn't seem to be doing too much, though we keep trying.
Goof ball is showing you what she usually does while waiting for me to attempt to get my colors right.
There's the crew. These are the guys I teach science to on Mondays. I do three classes back-to-back with kids grouped based on learning ability and it really is a lot of fun.
Well, we head out to Hawaii for three weeks! Yippee! Vacation!!! My brother will move in another year so it is also likely our last trip to Hawaii. M and my brother are going to backpack along the Napali Coast Trail to celebrate his 40th birthday and, well, nothing else is planned. Strange for me, but this is what happens when you have been somewhere before and you know you have plenty of time to figure it out once you get there. :-) God Bless!!
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