Kennedy Space Center

Joshua turned 7 last week. He wanted so badly to go to the Kennedy Space Center, so we planned a trip for last weekend. KSC is about 90 minutes away from our house.

Fortunately for us, Ashley is still with us helping with the kids. It works out so great for us when we have one adult available for each child. We scored a great deal for park admission - it was just about $100 for all 6 of us! Keith got in free (yippee for places that give free admission to active duty military!), and the park is currently doing a special "buy an adult, inspire a child for free".

We had such a great time on the drive out to KSC. There are so many things to see between our house and the Space Coast.

I uploaded pictures all out of order, so I might ramble a bit describing our day. In the above picture, we were touring some real-sized models of the modules on the space station. Megan was asking why it was squishy on the outside. I didn't really have an answer, so I suggested that maybe in case anything hits it, it can stay safe. Little did I know she was going to punch the side of the model to test out that theory. It's even funnier that I caught her doing it in the picture, since I had just asked her to stand by the space station for a picture.

There were so many awesome things in the gift shop. Daniel wanted a "NASA-naut" suit, but I just couldn't justify that purchase. I told him that he can have one if he gets a job at NASA. :)

I have not been to KSC in at least 20 years. I was pleasantly surprised to see that most of the center was indoors and air conditioned. We're still adjusting to summertime in Florida vs. summertime in Alaska!

Daniel was so adorable...he kept asking if we were getting on a space ship and going to the moon.

We took the bus tour out to where the shuttle lifts off from. Joshua was stoked to see the press stands and the "official" count-down clock. There we climbed lots of stairs to see an amazing view of the surrounding grounds.

On the bus trip out to the rocket launch site, Daniel caught a quick nap.

On the bus tour, we learned about all the people behind-the-scenes that help keep the astronauts safe.

My little rovers crawling all over a Mars rover.

Joshua really enjoyed all of the presentations. At the rocket launch pad, there was a simulation of one of the Apollo missions lifting off. Joshua loved it! He cheered and clapped when the rocket lifted off.

One of the things I really liked about KSC is that it was NOT crowded. Last summer when Keith and I went to some of the Disney parks it was so hot and crowded, we couldn't imagine putting the kids through that. At KSC there was very little waiting around, and the kids got to climb through different things at each location.

Even my little Astronaut-Megan enjoyed herself.

The kids running down the ramp pretending to board the space shuttle.

Megan and me outside at the Rocket Garden. This was taken about 2 minutes before a huge downpour came out of nowhere and soaked all of us!

Hey, look! More Coast Guard stuff!

Snoopy was the only cartoon character we saw all day!

There is an awesome children's play area at KSC. Even Daniel took off his shoes and ran in to play. Megan makes friends everywhere we go. She managed to find a couple of little girls to play with.

Hmmm....one of my astronauts seems to be having some trouble seeing over his flight suit!!



That's better, thanks to some behind-the-scenes work from Daddy! Now everyone is ready to work!

The five of us! It was a great family day.

Keith with another Coast Guard poster! He's so funny.

I think my sweetheart might be having a little "aircraft envy".

Daniel's new hat "Failure is not an option".

It was such a great time! We ended up hitting Ron Jon's Surf Shop since we were over on that side of the state. I hung out in the car with some of the tired kids while Keith and Ashley shopped. After a long ride home, we finally got everyone in bed TWO HOURS past bedtime! They were so exhausted, but it was so worth it!

Things are lookin' up!

One day last week I left for work like usual. But then when I reached the end of our street, I noticed two hot air balloons up in the sky. Just a few nights before, we had read about hot air balloons for bedtime stories. The kids were so tickled with the story that we stayed up for an extra 20 minutes watching You Tube videos about hot air balloons. So I just knew that when there were real live hot air balloons up over our house, the kids would be so excited to see them. I circled the block and ran back in the house to call the kids to come out.

The Remax balloon got pretty close to us. At one point the kids were waving to the people in the basket and the people were waving to the kids.

The Leslie's pool supply balloon stayed off in the distance.

The kids were very excited. I ended up being just a little late for work, but it was worth it.

On another note, Keith will be doing some temporary work at the Orlando Coast Guard recruiter's office for the next 6 weeks. Which leaves us in a pinch for child care. Grandpa suggested Keith's niece, Ashley was needing a job, so we called her up and offered her the job. She'll be staying in Megan's room for the next 3 weeks. Megan will bunk in Daniel's room, since he has bunk beds in his room. I'm excited to have a 17 year old girl in the house. And even more excited to have the first 3 weeks of childcare taken care of in a way that provides the LEAST disruption to the kids' schedules. Now to figure out those last 3 weeks - anyone else wanna come to Florida to live with us temporarily? :)

Dinner with the Broadway family

My friend, Amber, and her family are visiting Orlando this week. We decided to meet up at a Bennigan's close to their hotel. The kids and I hit some traffic on the way out there and arrived a couple of minutes late.

With a table full of 2 six-year-olds, 1 five-year-old, and 2 three-year-olds, we attracted over the balloon sculpting guy. I totally loved how Amber's littlest, Logan, wanted a balloon creation of one of their dogs at home, but then Logan was all upset because the balloon sculptor did not make the balloon look exactly like their real dog.

Joshua and Chase could easily be best buds. The talked Legos and PBS kids shows, and all sorts of important six-year-old boy business. They both have seriously long eyelashes, too.

Amber and Daniel. Amber won Daniel over when she gave him a piece of breaded zucchini.

Megan was thrilled to have her gigantic balloon flower. I asked her if it smelled good and she responded very matter-of-fact with "umm, Mom, it smells like a balloon".

I was trying to get a picture of how sad Chase looked. Joshua gave his balloon to Chase when Chase's balloon got broken. Chase was teary and hugged Joshua and called him a "nice boy". It was too sweet.

Dinner was great. All the kids behaved very well. Especially considering Amber's kids had been in the car all day driving from Louisiana. Seriously, her boys are troopers!!

It was so fun to chat a mile-a-minute, eat good food, let the kids play and just enjoy each other's company! I wish they lived closer to us so we could do this more often!

Cleaning up the Beginners Room at church

Last Friday, I was off work for the holiday, so I invited the kids, Grandma and Grandpa and the Dutton family to clean up the Sabbath School classroom to prepare for the new school year. We had some scrubbing to do, and some re-arranging of the room to do, and some re-decorating to do. Tonia Dutton and I are coordinating the classroom activities this year. I'm so excited to be working with someone that is so organized and has so many great ideas! Megan and Daniel went to work scrubbing all of the kiddie-chairs. It was sweet to listen to them singing and cleaning!

Joshua cleaned all the big surfaces.

The kids lasted cleaning for about an hour, then went to playing. They all had a great time, and we got tons of work done in the room. Grandma and Grandpa had the hardest task: resurfacing the already existing "temple" in the room with a smooth surface for the kids to "paint". I'll need to get more pictures next week of the temple, it looks great!

A Keith of all trades

I've had a couple of people ask me how I managed to get my husband involved in homeschooling. Actually, it's his desire to homeschool next year. He'll be doing the majority of the teaching. I'm helping to organize and make sure we are hitting all of the objectives for the year, but he will be the one actually doing the hands-on teaching. And I know he'll be fabulous at it!

Homeschooling Dad isn't the only hat he wears. The man is also quite handy...he put up a new ceiling fan in our bedroom.
The old fan. Sheesh...I guess I shoulda done a little dusting before taking a picture! :)

The handy-man at work.

The handy-boy assisting.

Organizing homeschool stuff - 1st grade

Keith and I have been reviewing all of our homeschool materials this week. We have a system pretty much in place, and are just about ready to start for the new school year. School will start August 3rd for us. Reason being that it is just so bloomin' hot in August, it's not like we'll be spending tons of time outside. We might as well get school up and running, so when the weather turns a little cooler, we'll be able to enjoy visiting different things around Florida.

Our subjects are divided as:
* Language Arts and Literature: we'll be doing units based on poetry, Aesop's fables, folk tales from different countries, tongue twisters, common phrases "when it rains it pours". Then there's the normal word/sentence/paragraph structure stuff: punctuation, prefix, suffix, contractions, spelling words, nouns, verbs, etc.

* History and Geography: we're starting off in the Ice Age, cave men, using pictures to communicate - which will bridge into hieroglyphics and Egypt, pharoahs, pyramids. After the Egyptian Unit, we'll move into Central America: Mayans, Aztecs, Incans. Then European explorers and the founding of America. The 13 colonies, Boston Tea Party, Declaration of Independence. Then American Explorers, and other biographies. On the Geography days, we're learning about each of the 7 continents and each of the 50 states.

*Arts and Music: we're starting with a unit on colors - warm vs. cool, primary vs. secondary. Then moving into lines, shapes, patterns and textures. We'll be studying some famous artwork as well as creating our own artwork to reflect the technique we are studying. Who's up for some Jackson Pollack style painting? :) The Music days will begin with learning about the classification of instruments: woods, strings, etc. Then we'll be making our own instruments. We'll be studying and able to identify some classical composers. And finish up the school year with studying some patriotic songs and old hymns - who wrote them, what they mean and memorizing them.

* Math: Well, there's really not much to go into with 1st Grade Math. This is the one area that we will be strictly following the flow of a work-book. I had considered purchasing Math-U-See, but I had a hard time flipping my brain around to use it correctly, and I find that Joshua is like me, he does a lot of math in his head. I remember when he was 4 years old he would tell people he was "2 plus 1 plus 1". We have a couple of workbooks from Learning Horizons that we'll be using.

* Science: We have a goal of doing one science experiment each week. Science will be a series of Unit Studies and I'm considering having Joshua do his Science lap-book style. We are starting with Animal Habitats, Dinosaurs, The Ocean, The Human Body and each of the Systems, Matter: Solid, Liquid, Gas; Measurements: How long, how much , how hot; Electricity; Astronomy: The Solar System, Constellations; Earth; stories about different scientists

* Bible: Each of the kids' Bible lessons will line up with their Sabbath School's quarterly guide to facilitate them working harder to memorize their Bible verse.

We have quite a few fun things mixed in here and there. I still have to work on Megan's Kindergarten curriculum. For simplicity's sake, she'll be doing significantly less work than Joshua. Her main focus will be counting, practicing writing, learning to read, enjoying artwork projects and being read to.

What a great weekend!

It's been a great weekend. Friday evening we had a fantastic thunderstorm right around dinner time. We've been getting evening showers that come with little notice. As soon as we have one or two rain drops plop down, it's time to run inside because the sky is going to open up and pour buckets of rain! When it's not raining, the sunshine is fantastic! Keith and I joke that we keep the kids outside as much as possible to make up for all of the Vitamin D we missed out on living in Alaska for 5 years. Keith taught Joshua how to ride his bike with no training wheels. Joshua is lightening fast now! Keith is now working on the other kids. His technique is to remove both the training wheels and the pedals, to have the bike function more as a balance bike first. Then once the kids get good at balancing, he'll put the pedals back on.

This one is of Megan at the front door with her bike. She's hot and sweaty and wanted to come in side.

Here's a shot of Daniel in his Sabbath School classroom. His shirt was perfect for last month's lesson of Joseph and the coat of many colors. This next coming month is my turn to teach and I'm quite nervous. I'm sure it will be tons of fun, I love the 3 year old age group. This week we're going to go scrub down the classroom and get it decorated for next month's lesson. Next month is Joash the boy king.