Unbridled Learning

The night before his birthday (which was May 25th), Pam was here in the midst of her moving chaos and we went and got him a new cage for Fred, his cockatiel.  He got Fred from his aunt Donna and uncle Fred a few weeks ago.

The next morning, on his birthday, Will had set up a giant scavenger hunt with tricky clues (in poem form even).

He went to his closet...

Honey's crate...

A little internet research...

To the mailbox...

Into the van...

To William's room... one of his drawers...

To the kitty closet... pee-ew!

On Kevan's giant ScoobyDoo...

Mommy's bookshelf in the office...

Mom and Dad's bedroom...

In the oven!

Finally, on the top bunk in his own bedroom... a l33t new computer!  Best one in the house now.  Whew! That was a lot of work.

That night the grandpas and Nana came over.

The next day Ben and his best bud Parker went to Boomers for a final birthday bash!

He's still a bit too short to drive by himself... good thing Parker's tall!

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We started in early March by building a box.  We decided to try the square-foot gardening method by Mel Bartholomew.

We planted lettuce, spinach, broccoli, carrots, lavender, sugar snap peas, onions and garlic.  And potatoes, though we had to move those to their own container later because they got too big.  THese pictures were taken after 1 week.

These are after two weeks.

We've had snail problems, so we lost all but one broccoli plant, some of the lettuce and spinach, and the catnip we planted never really got going; neither did the lavender.  A couple weeks ago we planted some tomatoes, strawberries and moved the potatoes and those are all doing well.

Here's our first sugar snap pea that we picked.  IT was delicious!

Last week we had a whole (mini) salad made from our garden!  Here it is now after about 8 weeks.

And our first harvest.

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Well, it ended up being me, William, Kevan, Ben, Doug, and Heather who went to Third Day.  We got to do the VIP thing and meet the band.  A cd (Revelation) came with the tickets so that is what they are signing for us.

Then we bought some shirts.

And had some nice seats!  It was a great concert, and Ben's first.

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My nieces and nephew came to visit this week with their Grandma.  It was great seeing them!  We went to Dinosaur Park (Shell Beach).

Check out this dog, lol.

Katie and Mac

Team Kevan

Then we went to the Port San Luis pier.

The mini

Beautiful girls!

Loving sisters

Looking at crabs... or shrimp... or something...

Here, hold this crab.  Are you sure??

We went down to the beach... the kids wanted to play.

Kids on the trampoline

Is team Kevan giving Doug a headache?

A belated birthday present for Kevan from his brothers...

It's a Dwight bobble-head!

At the park with the kids... I forgot my real camera, so these are iphone photos.

Apples to Apples! One of our favorites

A belated birthday present for Kevan from Grandpa Roger.

Property of Colbert Nation sweatshirt, and a Demitri Martin t-shirt.  Woohoo.

Our last day seeing the kids... we went to Montana de Oro.

Ew... an anemone.

A trap-door hole.

Bye!!! Til next time

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Ben made waffles for everyone in the morning, and then we set off for Yosemite.  Beautiful view of Half-Dome.

Cascading Wall? or something like that..

Kids climbing Cascading Falls.

El Capitan

On the way to Bridal Veil Falls. 
Snowball Fight!

Not many trees to climb, but lots of rocks.

We ate lunch in the back of the truck and the kids rode their bikes around.

Visitor Center

Indian Village

Hide and go seek fail

Thousand year old tree

Yosemite Falls

On the way to Tuolomne Grove.  William is after Parker!

Parker gets Kevan while William is about to spear Parker?

Giant Sequoias

There was a lot of whining on that hike - 1 mile downhill in the snow followed by 1 mile uphill in the snow lol.  The kids' shoes are still soaked.

We made it back and headed for the campsite; the kids took long showers to warm up, we ate dinner and made smores by cooking marshmallows over the stove (fires not allowed).  We played a strange version of Buzzword while Kevan tried unsuccessfully to connect his laptop to the internet for like 2 hours. 

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Our campground is great - http://yosemitepinesrv.com/ - the bathrooms are huge, clean, heated, and have very nice showers.  It is about halfway between Sonora, where we were going to the Celtic Faire, and Yosemite where we wanted to go the next day.

We woke up about 8 Saturday morning and made ziploc omelettes for breakfast - each kid had their bag and picked what they wanted with their 3 eggs - cheddar cheese, ham, spinach, broccoli, mushrooms.  Then a little milk and we boiled the bags in a pot of water.  Our stove heats water very slowly, so boiling water takes awhile.

Then we headed to Sonora to the Faire.

We saw the 'Knights of Avalon' jousting match.  The horses were beautiful, and they were ALL rescues (thought you would appreciate that Pam).  Their proceeds go to rescuing and caring for rescued horses.

Kids waiting for it to start (we sat down early, all those seats filled up quick)...

This comedian/juggler was a hit with the boys - Lord Rusty, aka Rusty Balls.  They talked about him all day.

That is a cup of beer he is swinging around his head.

Here's Ben reluctantly holding his torches.  He tried to hand them to him still burning; Ben pushed Parker forward, but he wouldn't go either lol.  So he blew them out and walked down and handed them to Ben.

This guy was showing the boys how to make chain mail.

Parker lifting the chain mail to see how heavy it was - I think it was about 45 pounds.

William got to try it on!

Here they had a trebuchet and a crossbow type thing that shot peanuts at a castle wall.

These Irish wolfhounds were everywhere - they are massive and adorable and very sweet.  They are actually bigger than Great Danes, but the record for biggest dog ever is held by an extra-large Great Dane.

There were parades of entertainers roaming through the fairgrounds, as well as like 6 stages of live music/acts.

Creepy death dancers.

Kevan had to have one of these Tornado Potatoes.  I told him to use his own money because I didn't want to buy everyone a snack - we had just eaten lunch a couple hours before and we were heading back to the car where there were chips and drinks.  So he went to buy it but was a dollar short - they gave it to him anyway.

The gun William's holding is why Kevan was out of money - he bought the gun.  Right after this picture was taken, William pointed the gun at Ben who was brandishing his new wooden sword and I was trying to take a picture when a power-tripping security guard came up and yelled at them.  She told Ben that if someone bumped into him he might accidentally stab William (with a wooden sword? it wasn't pointed at his face!) and then she lit into William telling him, "You're an adult.  You do not point guns at people, I don't care if it is fake or a replica.  If you do it again I will take it away from you."  William had a smirk on his face and I just knew he would say some smart-ass comment but he kept his mouth shut and we moved on.

Here's the kids with their loot.  Ben and Parker got wooden swords.  Doug got a metal sword.  Kevan got a gun replica, and William didn't get anything but he's holding the books I got.  He wanted to find a tabard but we didn't find one anywhere, just $100 kilts. 

On the way back to the campsite we were getting some amazing gas mileage (Dodge Ram 1500 hemi engine 4x4):

The day ended like it began - kids in trees.

Before we left Sonora we had found a Baskin Robbins and picked up an ice cream cake for Kevan to celebrate his birthday.  At night back in the trailer we had spaghetti for dinner, had some cake, played Buzzword, and then went to bed.

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Not at Franklin Hot Springs; however, Ben liked this picture because of Spongebob's face in the background lol.

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She was a girl, but we named her after Indiana Jones because she was quite the explorer.  Again we bottle fed her until she was eating real food and using the cat box, and then took her back to the Humane Society.

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Kevan and Xena

Kevan and Ben

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