Resurrecting the blog to share this new language Emmet created last night. Mainly for future anthropologists and linguists to pore over these kanji-like symbols to discern their origins and true meaning.
It's been a while since we posted here, but thought we would share this video of Asa in his kindergarten class. He was very nervous about presenting to the whole class, his teacher, and the camera, but overcame it to share his story.
The video is too big to embed in the page but here is the link to Asa telling everyone "All About Me":
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q5kSihyD_hReLbI9053qkXP1OiagFaW1/view?usp=sharing
Update: A few days later he shared a science experiment with the class. A newly confident presenter! 16 minute video of homemade lava lamp experiment here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BHYlc5jqqMDDGuO_Iz7Pn-mLULU12qqq/view?usp=sharing
Our next adventure was an all-boys camping trip to Tofino. I scored an amazing campsite at Pacific Rim national park which is right on the ocean beach near Tofino. Beth had too much work to go, so I took the three boys solo to go camping for SEVEN DAYS STRAIGHT.
A few moments:
The loaded car, the ferry ride, and the first night of hot dogs!
First evening on Long Beach: the kids were thrilled to be on the huge beach.
Hot chocolate: a camping breakfast staple
Family portraits: it's getting harder to fit everyone in the frame!
Chesterman's Beach: the daily Tofino outfit was a swimsuit on the bottom and a winter jacket on top for the wind. We explored many windy but beautiful beaches!
Wickaninnish Beach and South Beach: lots of tidepooling, big waves, and me scrambling to get us all off a rocky peninsula before the rising tide turned it into an island and cut us off from shore.
Biking on the beach: Long Beach is 10 miles long and we were right in the middle of it. The hard sand near the water was very bikeable and we rode for a couple miles exploring the beach.
Boat trip to hike on Meares Island: There were some truly amazing HUGE old growth trees here -- the biggest trees I've seen in my life. The boys looked like dwarves next to these things.
And to cap everything off, Obie lost a molar while eating an ice cream cone!!
Quite the eventful trip. The boys held it together amazingly well and were troopers. We stayed up until 10pm every night (watching the sun set on the beach at 9:30), explored a new beach every day, hiked and biked and boated. We did it all. Beth had a peaceful child-free week (of straight work....sigh), and there was a happy family reunion when we returned. I managed to come back with the same number of boys I left with, and everyone was mostly happy the whole time we were there. It was surprisingly manageable...guess the kids are growing up!!??
A few photos from our summer so far: As soon as school ended in June, we headed out to Lake Kelowna in the Okanagan for a Canada Day week vacation with some friends. Little did we know that this was the heat dome week, and the temperature got up to 113 degrees! Still, we had AC in our hotel room, and a nice breeze on the lake, so we were all good. We swam in the pool and at the beach every day, we dressed up and went out to a fancy dinner one night, and we rented a boat to go cruising on the lake. We did see smoke from two wildfires when we were on the boat though! Yikes! Luckily the fires were eventually contained, the temperatures finally started to cool down, and we all made it back in one piece. And so the summer begins...
