Cake Just Because

Ezra baked a yellow layer cake today. From scratch. Mostly by himself. Just because.

He doesn't like frosting, so we frosted only half.

Red Lollipop

Ezra and I went out and enjoyed some time together yesterday while Esperanza was in school. We decided to hang out at a little beach area on the Columbia River for a couple of hours after we did our work at home and before we had to pick up Esperanza. It was a beautiful place to enjoy the sun, sand and water! We skipped rocks in the water, watched the planes take off from the airport across the river, picked up broken pieces of glass littered along the beach, waded in the water, soaked in the sun rays and Ezra taught me that clam shells resemble butt cheeks. 

Then we went to a park where we played on the equipment and Ezra climbed up a beautiful old maple tree. After that we went and got a cinnamon roll from a local bakery before picking Esperanza up from school.

This kid may want to go to school one day too, but for now, he chooses this.

Oh ya, he enjoyed a red lollipop too.

Esperanza's First Day of Public School

Esperanza's first day of public school - ever!

10 years old - 5th grade. 

Everyone always asks homeschoolers "what about socialization?"

This last year of homeschooling brought some reflection to that question. Esperanza needs socializing. She needs more than I do. More than I can provide her with given our small homeschooling community. Even though we were never home, always out...socializing, it still didn't come close to fulfilling her social needs. 

Around October of last year, Esperanza decided she would go to school for 5th grade. So here we are, on the first day of 5th grade. And here's to socializing! Go make lots of friends my flower. Socialize. Everything else will fall into place.

Summer Roadtrip 2018 - Museum of the Rockies

One of the last fun stops along our big road trip was a dinosaur museum.

We may have missed out on some great dinosaur fossils the day we tried to go to the Dickenson Dinosaur Museum in North Dakota, but the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana made up for it - big time! Big Mike was the full size T-Rex skeleton on display there and though some of the bones were reconstructed, most of it was real. They had a huge collection of Triceratops as well and numerous other dinosaur skeletons. It was amazing! 

We walked through a few other sections of the museum, watched a planetarium show and bought a few things in the gift shop before loading back up in the motorhome, getting back on highway 90 and driving west towards home.

Summer 2018 Roadtrip - Michigan

We left my aunts house mid day on August 7 and drove into Michigan. We wanted to travel a different route home and though going up and around Michigan would add time to our drive, we really wanted to see that part of the country, so we headed north. We didn't pass by much on that first days drive that we wanted to see more of. The bottom half of the state seemed pretty run down. Detroit was/is a mess. Dirty, falling apart and ugly. There were a few big old and beautiful churches we saw just off the freeway, but we drove straight through. We stayed the night at a shitty Thousand Trails RV park in Saint Clair. It was disappointing since we have had really great experiences at all the previous Thousand Trails places we had been to. We ate at dinner at a crappy restaurant and couldn't wait to get out of that area.
Early the next morning, we unhooked and took off. We drove through Flint, MI, stopped to get coffee and drove north towards The Mackinac Bridge.
We stopped for lunch in Saint Ignace, just over the bridge. After lunch, we strolled along the walkway along the water, walked out to the lighthouse, the kids got soaked playing in the splash pad play area and Ezra skipped rocks into Lake Huron.