a place to play

 "In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. " John Muir
Before we left for Yosemite, the kids and I read a couple of books about how Yosemite became a national park and all of the hard work put in by a man named John Muir.  Without his love for God's earth, and desire to save it, Yosemite might not still be the same beautiful place here for us to enjoy.  I found myself spending so much of the trip reminding the kids that every step we took in this place was a gift from God.

 We started the trail to go see the lower Yosemite falls, and began a series of snowball fights which would last for the next two hours!  I think Bill had the biggest one of all!

It's funny because you can't see where this picture ends, because it just blends in the white background!

 This picture makes me so happy.

 While the kids and dads were throwing snow, I just kept taking more pictures.  I had never seen anything like this before in my life and I found myself just continually being in awe of God's creation.

 Needless to say that the waterfall was amazing!  You could hear it from a long distance away and the spray from it hit us all the in face but no one seemed to mind!

 Dylan didn't seem to notice or care that is sweatshirt was soaking wet from making so many snowballs!  My kids kept talking about the "Arthur" episode in which D.W. takes home her snowball and puts it in the freezer.  I knew they were trying to come up with a way to keep their snow...

 Those who know me well know that I am always cold!  Thanks to Joy I had a super warm ski jacket and snow boots.  I never once felt cold and I was so thankful!

 Can you tell they are having fun?  They carried around these snowballs and even named them!  Bill kept telling them not to get attached to the snowballs because we weren't going to be taking them home!

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in..."  John Muir
That was what was so awesome about this trip. We had time to play and time to reflect and pray together. 
More snow pictures to come!

snow, snow, snow!!

 I'm a Southern California girl who has never spent much time in the snow.  My kids have never seen snow, other than a little pile in a parking lot at Bob's Big Boy in Apple Valley several years ago. Needless to say, they were pretty excited when we drove in the entrance to Yosemite and saw SNOW! Not just a little pile either.  Snow everywhere!

 Their first impulse was to run out into it and plop down to make snow angels!  It only took 10 seconds for Luke to throw the first snowball.  I was so thankful that Joy gave us lots of jackets, scarves, gloves, hats, socks and boots for all the kids. It made such a difference for them not to have cold feet.  They were able to run, jump around, throw snow, and climb up the trail to see the Bridalveil fall.

 Caleb didn't like the snow very much.  We didn't have snow boots for him and he didn't like the way it felt on his legs so Bill carried him up the trail and back. 

 

By the end of the trail, I finally caught Caleb smiling!  His hair looks wet because the snow was falling off the branches of the trees and hitting us on the head as we came back.  The fun was just beginning! More snow pictures to come soon!

A Capitol idea!

 Thanks to Madison and her talented Academic Decathlon team winning the San Bernardino County Championship we had a wonderful reason to take the kids to Sacramento for the first time.  It was an awesome experience watching her compete in the super quiz portion of the tournament, in which we saw her get 9 out of 10 questions correct (her personal best!).  Sadly, in my rushing around I left my camera in the hotel room on the night of the event. 
An interesting side note, the hotel that Madison was staying in was also hosting the Minnesota Timberwolves.  I walked in and said to my mom, "Hey, that's Kevin Love!"  My mom didn't believe me at first until he stood up, then we both knew it HAD to be him!  I know most of you won't know who Kevin Love is, but he is a former UCLA basketball player who now plays in the NBA.  I felt too silly to go and ask for his autograph so I just let him walk by, and no one else seemed to even know who he was! 
The following Monday morning we met up at the Capitol building for our own personal tour since we had a group of 10 of more.  What a fun and interesting hour.  Our tour guide was so enthusiastic and full of interesting facts for the kids.  They are still talking about some of the things that he told them. Today, Luke wrote a spelling sentence, "The people had to rebuild the capitol building"  based on the story that he heard!

 We were happy to have my mom along for the trip! She rode up to Sacramento with me and the kids while Dylan and Bill had to stay behind for a basketball tournament.  She was sweet enough to pay for them to come up on a plane on Sunday night to meet us in Sacramento.  Dylan got to ride on an airplane for the first time, and it was fun to hear him explain his perspective of everything.  He was so excited to sit next to the window, and see the inside of a cloud, which he discovered was really nothing exactly.  He couldn't believe how small everything looked from up there.

 Here is our tour guide explaining all of the intricacies inside the capitol building.  He spent a long time explaining what all of the different things on the state seal meant.

 The tour guide said that the rotunda is the most photographed part of the building.  Here you can see everyone taking their own shot.

He also showed us the one "error" in the floor that the designer put in as his own personal signature.  Can you find the mistake?

 The state senate wasn't in session so they let us in to have a look and take pictures.  The state representatives were actually in session when we were there, so the kids got to see government in action!  Although, they didn't see much of anything except for people sitting there talking as documents were being passed out. :)

 Throughout the building were portraits of our past governors.  I had to stop and take a picture of our personal favorite, Ronald Reagan. 

 Lori wanted her picture next to Jerry Brown which caused an amusing conversation about WHY she would want to have her picture taken with Jerry Brown!  Just so you know, Lori is not a democrat! :)

My little pirate!  In the next few posts will you notice that my little Lukey has one glass darkened and the other is clear.  Long story short:  the eye specialist recommended that we take out the lens in his left eye glass in order to force him to use the right eye more, and make it stronger.  We didn't have time to order another lens with the photo-gray in it, so all of the outdoor pictures will look like this.  It didn't bother him until we got home and he saw all of the pictures.  He said it was okay to still post them.  He has had such a great attitude about this whole process.

By the Shores of Silver Lake

 I have one more blog post before I start our vacation pictures!  The day before we left on our trip, our homeschool group met to do activities based on By the Shores of Silver Lake.  This particular book starts with two very sad events, as Jack, their dog, dies and Mary goes blind.  The first few chapters were very hard for me to read out loud, but my kids are used to me crying through books!  All of us were impressed with how well Mary handled her blindness, and it was a great lesson for all of us on contentment and gratefulness.

 In this book, the family hears that there is a school for blind children and Laura wants more than anything for her sister to be able to have that experience.  Of course it costs money, and Laura determines that she will be a teacher someday (even though the thought of it sounds awful to her) so that she can earn enough money to send her there.  Gracie and I started researching braille and learned many interesting facts about Louis Braille and the start of the system that changed the world for so many people. Gracie did her oral presentation on braille and I set up words in braille around the house for the kids to find and decipher.  One interesting side note, we were really disappointed to find that our local library had hardly any books in braille.  We managed to find only one.

 After the kids went around trying to figure out the words written in braille, they were able to use my dot pens to print out the letter symbols for their names.

 Laurie was patient and willing to try to teach our kids how to make button strings like Mary and Laura worked on in our last book.  This proved to be a very challenging task for many of the smaller ones, but Laurie kept undoing their mistakes!

 Grammy came and kept Caleb busy with plenty of board games!

 Winona really had a knack for doing the button string.  It doesn't surprise me one bit, because she is such a creative and artistic girl!

 Kim Medina did an activity where the kids had to guess different objects simply by their sense of touch.  Mary did such a great job in the book of contributing to chores even though she lost her sight.  The family also discovered that her sense of hearing was better than everyone else, when she could hear the Boast family coming in the snow outside long before anyone else could hear them!

Here Grammy and Caleb are looking at the intricate lap book that Abby made.  It was so fun to look at and remember details from the book that I had already forgotten!