Sometimes we do eat back there and enjoy the view!
Dinner on the Deck
Apr 30th, 2018 by ECM
Mission Santa Barbara
Apr 27th, 2018 by ECM
This week a bunch of our friends headed up to Santa Barbara to tour the mission, burial site of Karana, the girl from Island of the Blue Dolphins. I’ve never seen so many children geeked out in a cemetery before. We visited the huerta where Zia worked in the fictional Blue Dolphins sequel, and we saw artifacts belonging to Father Sanchez and Captain Nidever, too. It’s fun to do California state history with friends who are reading the same books that we are!
A Very Susie Birthday
Apr 20th, 2018 by ECM
Grandma joined us for morning PE! And Susie ran 1.25 miles–super speedy now that she’s 7!
Then she whizzed around Bluffs Park in her new roller blades!
New sunglasses=photo shoot, of course.
Chocolate souffle cake per her request!
Susie Q at Seven
Apr 19th, 2018 by ECM
Our little Q is not so little anymore!
She started her day with presents, and she was so excited about her new Mercy Watson book that she insisted on reading it aloud to us while eating her cinnamon rolls. Fortunately, her siblings took pity on her and took over reading so she could actually swallow her breakfast.
And she and Janie had to put on a little fashion show.
That face pretty much sums up the essence of Susie. She has personality enough for a dozen. She can be super sweet and cuddly and still climbs into bed with me every morning with her blankie. She can be standoffish and impatient, which is why she has the top bunk while her sisters share the double bed on the bottom bunk. She can be sloppy if she doesn’t care about something, but she can be extremely methodical and neat if she puts her mind to it. She is fearless and creative. She is extremely stubborn and high-strung. She is all about routines (and really gets upset if we do things out of order) but also craves variety in books and meals. I had to set up an official breakfast rotation just so that her breakfast options could vary enough. She’s sometimes picky (cheese pizza only on family movie nights) but also is our most adventurous eater when she’s the one helping me try out a new dish.
Susie’s reading has just taken off this spring. She can always be found with a book and a flashlight in bed, and she’s the one with the biggest stacks of books at the library. Current favorite series: Nate the Great, Mercy Watson, Billy and Blaze, American Girl. I just love having another little bookworm in our family!
Science+Geography
Apr 17th, 2018 by ECM
Playing Library…in the Library
Apr 11th, 2018 by ECM
This afternoon the girls decided that they needed to organize our cluttered kid shelves in the library, and before I knew it, they had set up a whole library station in the library. Susie is the librarian while Lizzie checks out books!
Huntington Library and Gardens
Apr 7th, 2018 by ECM
Over Spring Break, we met up with some friends to visit the Huntington! We never made it into any of the libraries or museum buildings, but the botanical gardens were beautiful! We brought along our nature journals and our trusty prismacolors and did the real Charlotte Mason thing for once. We’ll definitely be back again soon.
Kern County Pioneer Village
Apr 6th, 2018 by ECM
After all the Northern California adventures, we drove back inland and stopped in Bakersfield for one last field trip. The Kern County Pioneer Village is full of over 100 historical buildings, sortof like a low-budget Greenfield Village. It was good to show the kids more of the agricultural heart of the state.
train depot waiting room
shoe shine. Don’t know what the girls are doing with their poses.
Not posed.
As if the Railroad Museum weren’t enough, the kids got to climb up into this old engine and pull the whistle. Repeatedly.
Perfect sunny weather for our last day on the road!
Sutter’s Fort and the Capitol
Apr 5th, 2018 by ECM
The rains held off enough for us to head over to Sutter’s Fort the next morning.
Sutter’s Fort was one of the first European outposts in the area.
Most memorable for the girls is that Sutter’s Fort sent out the rescue party that rescued the remaining members of the Donner Party. We read Patty Reed’s Doll (a great child-friendly look at the Oregon Trail and western pioneers that avoided any mention of cannibalism by focusing on the doll belonging to a girl in one of the families who all survived), so this was a must-stop. Patty Reed was so grateful for the help the Sutter’s For folks gave her family that she asked to have her doll donated to the museum when she died. It was like if the doll in Hitty: Her First Hundred Years was a real doll, and you could just go see her!
That’s a coyote pelt.
Working the grain mill!
Then we headed over to the Capitol building for a tour.
See, I was there, too.
The inside of the dome is actually about 100 feet shorter than the outside of the dome. We learned all sorts of fun facts on our tour!
By the front door, which doesn’t lead anywhere because they ran out of money for the staircase.
Senate=red color scheme to match the British House of Lords. Who knew?
Assembly=green color scheme in the British House of Commons. Just think about how much bad legislation happens in this room…
Old Sacramento, Cheese Skirts, and the California Railroad Museum
Apr 4th, 2018 by ECM
Our next stop was Sacramento. They’ve preserved much of their historical downtown as a place for museums and tourist trap shopping. We skipped the tourist traps and looked into the Sacramento history museum, historical schoolhouse and Wells Fargo offices, and the California State Railroad museum.
Besides a Gold Rush exhibit, the Sacramento history museum mostly had displays on the farming of the region and the inventions farmers developed to better harvest their crops.
This photo is notable because 1) this is the original facade of the first Sacramento Bee newspaper office, 2) Derek was published in the Sacramento Bee during election season! and 3) his stance here with the kids reminds me of pictures of him (in the same jacket) standing next to me on Honours spring break field trips 16 years ago.
The kids love one room schoolhouses. I don’t know what it is. It’s not like Charis Classical Academy isn’t its own one room schoolhouse or anything…
The Wells Fargo office is a working branch where you can do real banking but also a mini-museum with Gold Rush and Pony Express era activities.
For lunch, Derek found a great burger dive, home of the cheese skirt.
The cheese is as big as a plate. (The onion rings were pretty good, too.) Pretty sure we skipped dinner this night.
And the kids loved the CA state railroad museum! It would be fun to go back there.
There were displays on how they built the first transcontinental railroad…
There were tons of train cars and engines!
In the mail car, kids can pretend to sort mail, just like in Seven Little Postmen!