Having a great week

Little Brother is on spring break this week, and I've been reminded how nice it is to just go out and have fun with the kids.

Monday we went to the zoo (with half of western Washington, it seemed). Surprisingly, even with a half million people piled into the Woodland Park Zoo, we somehow managed to run into a group of friends when we got there. We were about to join them when I realized that what the kids and I really wanted was to hang out just the three of us. Sometimes it's nice to do stuff like that with a big group, but doing our own thing was just what we needed. No regrets - we had a terrific day.

Tuesday I took the kids with me to our friends' house - Moms were lifting weights, kids were (supposed to be) playing outside and enjoying the sunny morning. We moms had a nice workout, and the kids mostly kept themselves occupied (Little Brother being the exception - he liked hanging out and exercising with the ladies). Afterwards we ran a couple errands, then came back to work in the yard. Big Sister is such a huge help in the garden this year! I can't believe what a difference a year makes. I can delegate tasks to her, and she can complete them with little to no interference/hovering from me. She planted a section of the front walkway with impatiens, while I dug up and transplanted six blueberry bushes to new locations (hopefully they'll produce better than in years past, unless they suffered too much shock). I also cheated and bought some broccoli starts. Slugs got to them before we did last year, so I'm on guard this time - they better watch out.

Today (Wednesday) we've had plans to participate in a tree planting event that's taking place for Arbor Day. We'll be meeting some other girls from Big Sister's girl scout troop there, along with moms and siblings. I'd figured I'd bust out some homeschooling this morning, since the tree planting won't be happening until late afternoon, but then I had another ingenious plan - swimming. I've been wanting to get the kids signed-up for swim lessons so they're ready to jump in the water this summer, but hadn't gotten around to making the necessary calls. This morning I called the community pool and found out they could assess the kids at the family swim if we wanted to come on down. We hopped in the car, went swimsuit shopping, grabbed a quick bite to eat, and headed to the pool. Little Brother had to take care of getting his suit on and showering by himself in the men's locker room, which was a little nerve-racking for me. He took forever in there, and eventually I went and stood outside the entrance to the pool and called for him. Same story when we finished up to head home. Turns out he was enjoying a relaxing shower. Anyway - I did get them signed up. Sister starts tomorrow evening, twice/week, and Brother will start in a few weeks.

Tomorrow's forecast calls for rain, so we're planning to go see the movie "Monsters vs. Aliens". The kids are really looking forward to it. We don't see many movies, so this is a real treat.

Friday we have LEGO club with our homeschool group. It's loud and crazy, but we don't like to miss this monthly gathering to free-build with thousands of LEGOs of all kinds, while hanging with friends. Blocks and buddies - how can you go wrong?

Next week it's back to the usual routine - not bad, just different. Prior to this year, when we didn't have an established routine, our weeks often looked like this one. While it was nice to drop everything and head to the zoo at the drop of a hat, I don't think we appreciated it as much as we have this week, nor did the outings stand out the way they have these past few days. There may be something to saving everything up for a crazy, fun-filled week here and there.

Fieldtrips are our specialty!

Below is an email reply to an inquiry I made a number of months ago. While I appreciated the woman's frank reply, the whole thing just struck me as funny. "We give school tours" ...if you dare.

Roman art from the Louvre was so cool!!!

N. and I had the best time on Saturday! We were just wrapping up two months of learning about the Roman Empire, from its beginnings with King Romulus to its fall in 476 AD, when I learned that this exhibit was opening at the Seattle Art Museum this weekend. Saturday was Family Day, so there were a lot of activities planned for the kids (Roman-themed coloring pages, decorating cloth bags, button making, face painting, a juggler, Roman era costumes to try on), as well as live music and roaming actors and actresses dressed as gladiators and patricians (N. suggests that the women may have been dressed as emperors' wives). Before we left we had downloaded the audio tour from the SAM website, and N. listened to it on the drive over. She was really into it, and I'd hear an excited exclamation once in a while from her, but otherwise she refused to tell me what she was hearing about because, she said, "You'll hear it when you get there!"

While I stood in line to pay, N. went over and decorated a couple of cloth bags, one for each of us. Then we went upstairs to go see some art! After another short line, and exhanging a defective audio tour device, we were raring to go. I'm really glad N. had her own audio - she was riveted during the entire 2+ hours we took to go through the exhibit. They had the art displayed in different themed rooms: first emperors, religion, citizens of Rome, military, entertainment, and death (urns, sarcophaguses, etc). I think my favorite piece, or one I found surprising, was one of the emperor Nero - one might argue that he was one of Rome's worst emperors. This guy spent a lot of time in leisure pursuits, and really seemed more concerned with his own self-interests than those of the empire (if you need examples of this, you can give N. a call and she'd be happy to discuss his downfalls with you). On display was a statue of Nero, with his head placed upon the body of a child (apparently this was a common occurance - placing someone's head on another's body), which gave him almost an angellic appearance. It seems that Nero was really looked over by family and friends as a child, no one cared much for him, and they never anticipated him becoming emperor of Rome someday. Whereas other children in the family had statues of themselves out in the gardens, none had ever been commisioned of poor Nero. So when he was 17 and became emperor, they whipped out this statue - its stature giving some indication of the opinion others had of him at the time. I also really enjoyed the relief panels ("frieze"), though most showed animal sacrifice, which became slightly disturbing after a while. N. liked "everything", and I couldn't have been more proud of her while we were there - she was attentive, poised, and thoughtful. Really a pleasure to be with.



After going through the exhibit, N. and I both agreed that there is more about the Roman Empire we would like to learn. In particular, we'd both like to study Emperor Trajan - the history curriculum we're using never made any mention of him, but he sounds like a pretty important guy to get to know. Overall, I think our knowledge of the era was likely above that of most people who there, and having that background definitely lead to a better understanding of the art, and its significance. That's not to say that you shouldn't pop on over to the SAM to check it out if you don't know anything about ancient Rome! There's definitely lots of good background information presented to help bring you up to speed, plus the art is just impressive to look at anyway. It's also likely to get you thinking, which is never a bad thing!

The boys went on a nice, long bike ride over in Duvall. A. mentioned that highlights of their trip included a father and son passing them on horses, and spending time playing on the riverbank. This was all followed up by a stop at DQ - bike rides are always made even better when ice cream is involved!

Serpentarium visit

Our visit to the Reptile Zoo...