Oh…..the school room is clean and dusted, books are back on shelves, and the smell of dry eraser is in the air! Technically Joel and Bethany started their new grade level in June, Grace started today though. They have a new thing on the list of school stuff: languages. Bethany and Grace have French, Joel has Latin. Pretty cool that it comes with our curriculum this year. Joel did history, math, literature and computer. Bethany did math, literature, spelling, grammar and writing. Grace did phonics, math, literature and computer. Hannah stuck circle stickers on paper and drew tiny circles all over the place. She found her new bags of stuff hanging up by her desk. I found a hat rack and some really cute woven bags at the dollar store to hang some of her stuff in. Now she can just sit and play with it at her desk and not have to get up and trash the storage room (that’s my hope anyway.) We re-did the reading area just a bit so it’s a little more roped off from the main area, got some scarves for dance breaks (and some new cd’s), we found some new games at the thrift store for reading (like boggle jr. and a-b-seas) and some math dice (I know I have wayyyy too many dice.) For right now everything is smooth sailing, I do wish there were more hours in a day though, especially on Mondays.

Starting Sep. 8th Mondays are going to be CRAZY! Grace will have soccer from 10-12 while Joel and Bethany do school. Then all the girls leave for dance from 1-4:30, Grace does school after dance and before I go in. Then we go home in time to get Joel and James to CAP at 6:25. Yep, crazy. I once thought it would be easier if everything was on the same day…..

Co-op offerings started today too. So this morning I posted mine: Phonics Phun (3 classes for ages 2-6, we’re going to have phun learning our letter sounds!), Ride the bus and train (to some people that’s a big deal), primary art (color wheel and painting), intermediate art (we’re making edible art drawings; that’s where you draw the fruit take a bite, draw the fruit, etc.), hike by the Platte river, I think that’s it for now. I have one more I’m trying to see about. Anyway it looks like another fun and busy co-op season for us.

We also started a new way to do devotionals today. I have some Bible character cards from when Joel was a toddler. They have Bible people on the front and a story and questions on the back. So, today Hannah picked Solomon. We read about how Solomon was David’s son and heir to the throne (by way of God), how Solomon asked for wisdom and how no other King then or since has been as wise and great. In the Houston museum of fine arts there’s a bold painting that depicts the 2 prostitutes that came before Solomon with the baby they each claimed was theirs. The kids remembered seeing it when I read the story. Solomon is towering over the ladies with a sword in his hand pointed at the squalling baby. One lady looks as if she’s saying, ‘so what?’, the other lady is in distress and falling at his feet begging him to give the baby to the other lady rather than kill it. It’s really an awesome painting about the story (and obviously imprinted itself upon the kid’s minds because they knew exactly what I was talking about.) I’ll have to see if I can find a pic of it online later.

Lastly a friend nominated me for a web blog award and I have to name 7 other people whose blogs I read and find interesting.

So here goes.

Woodstone prairie, Maura a good friend of mine, who reminds me with her blog that some days staying home is the very best thing.

Lapaz farm, I love the Montessori ideas from her blog and her nature studies.

Kelly S, another member of my HS group who goes just about as many places as I do.

Kristi at Soaring mountains academy, who up and moved to Indiana of all places, but we still keep in touch with Tea Tuesday letters and blogs.

Heather at Life as we know it, I like keeping up with her kids too (and she’ll be Grace’s soccer coach in a few weeks.)

I’m going to point back at Kathy, she uses the same curriculum I do and comes up with neat ways to teach some of the same stuff I need to teach. She has yummy recipes too.

I have to put my library; I don’t know what I’d do without it!

So thanks, Kathy, and those are my contributions small as they are. I ‘m not computer savvy enough to figure out how to get that web thing on my blog though!

Lastly here’s James and Joel heading out tonight:

I was thinking of the DNC that’s coming to Denver. We are going out next Monday to take the rail downtown to go to the art museum and just be with all the people who are here for the convention. It’s not much, but the kids and I are going to make a bazillion (ok, maybe not that many) PB&J sandwiches and walk around near the capitol with a sign that says ‘free sandwiches’ (from a republican, no just kidding on that part.) We hope to hand out to the usual homeless crowd (unless they’re all enjoying their free passes to the museum and zoo) and maybe even some of those tent state university starving students. Maybe some protesters too. I’m not saying I agree with them, but it’s just a sandwich and a way for us to say ‘Hey, even though you’re a democrat, God loves you’ (well, maybe just;’Hey God loves you.)

Our pastor also said this: when you are feeling burned out, doubting, dry, useless, God can use you. It’s not about you, it’s about Him. He can show up in the midst of your pain when you are trying to help someone else. He can help you when you help others. When you take the opportunity to help others and show them God’s love no matter how you are doing it or how you feel when you do it, He will be there. Jesus’ method of advancing the kingdom of God is through love (that’s why He said ‘and love your neighbor as yourself.’) He can even show up with a PB& J sandwich (you just have to make the sandwich.)

Joel was wet, his list, backpack and tent, sleeping bag and extra clothes were wet. He had 2 funny stories though. One was in the middle of the night another cadet got up to use the bathroom and on the way back he thought Joel’s tent was his. He was trying to open it for a few minutes and then realized it wasn’t his tent. Joel thought it was a bear trying to get in the tent and just stayed quiet. The other is that their cook for the campout was named Lt. Fry (oh, come one, that is funny!) He also said watch out for those MRE’s, the one he opened that said BBQ beef was like a sloppy joe sauce with very minimal beef that I guess you were supposed to put on bread (which he didn’t have.) Oh well, next time we’ll know and hopefully next time they will have better weather and get more done.

We’re supposed to go to the Peach festival, but I doubt it now, they probably cancelled it. I doubt we’ll make 52 today either, it was hailing earlier.

Here are the girls in our re-done reading area in the schoolroom.

The girls’ had GS today and we were heading over to Jungle quest to play. It’s a place that has zip lines, rock walls, and other things to do that you have to wear a harness and attach yourself to ropes. Hannah wasn’t big enough to do it, so she played on the tree house slides and net the whole time. We ate pizza and then suited up.

Bethany did the zip line first and then went on the walking the ropes one.

Grace rode the zip line and was having a little trouble attaching to the rope (because she still doesn’t have her glasses.)

But, she eventually got hooked up and had fun gliding to the end. They had about an hour and a half of zipping and then we were done. Everyone had a good time playing and seeing each other.

We dropped of the girls and got Joel’s stuff in the car, man that pack is heavy. It has all his GSAR stuff, clothes, sleeping bag, food, tent and hammock. Once he gets set up though it won’t weigh that much with just the ground team stuff in it. We headed out in the rain to Nederland and I thought I was making good time (because the e-mail said have him there between 1500-1800.) Then it occurred to me that I was thinking they meant 5:00 - 8:00, but really 1500 is 3 pm! It was already 4:45 which meant that the 6 pm (1800) deadline was rapidly approaching. I couldn’t go very fast though since we drove up to the cloud line and were right in the middle of the clouds and rain. When we finally made it to the turnoff there was no sign for the YMCA. Finally, I found some more lost people and we all followed each other to the campground. The road was dirt and pretty muddy after all the rain today, then we had to maneuver past giant rocks in the road, go uphill, through a giant mud puddle and I’ve never been happier in my life than when I saw we were finally there (of course I had to go back down the hill to leave.) By YMCA they mean a log cabin and a port-a-potty, and I’m sure the log cabin is off limits to cadets since they have tents.

Joel got his pack, signed in, set up his tent (and we covered it in a tarp since his tent didn’t have a rain fly, good thinking Dad!), and then it started to hail.

If it was 50 in Highlands Ranch it was probably 40 here, they are definitely going to get snow tonight if the precipitation continues. No fires either, no one was smart enough to bring dry wood. But, this will be an excellent mission, how many times do you rescue people when it’s sunny and 80? Much better to try to do it in the hail/snow when it’s wet and miserable. Tonight he’s eating cold MRE’s, the same tomorrow. I really hope his boots dry out tonight so he doesn’t have to wear wet shoes tomorrow.

They had a metal stretcher in the check in tent and ISR radios to use. My guess is they will pick the lightest person and strand them somewhere and then have teams go in with the stretcher and rescue them. They are pretty close to a creek too, so they might be able to do a water rescue. I doubt Joel will put up that hammock, but he really wanted it. I felt a little guilty leaving him in the hail while I drove, very slowly, back down the hill to the main road. We don’t have cell phone contact either, but he’s with an entire team of SAR cadets, so if anything goes wrong they have plenty of band-aids to handle it. I made sure they knew he had everything too, they said if you forgot one item from your pack (and we almost did, the coat) you’d be told to go home.

So, Joel is in the mountains, in the snow, training to one day be a CAP SAR cadet. You have to be 15 to go on a real mission, so I have 1 year and 2 months until I really have to worry! But, when that day comes and CAP is called on to go search and rescue someone, I know I will be very proud that my son is out there looking for them.

OR – Lakeside amusement park turns 100! Now, 100 is pretty old, Denver turns 100 this year, the capitol building in Denver was finished in 1908 and a little amusement park called Lakeside was born 100 years ago in Lakeside (of course), Colorado. It used to have a covered bathing pool (because people back then didn’t swim, they bathed, I guess.) It had a dancing pavilion, a train, a roller coaster named the Cyclone, a carousel and more. Some people would ride the trolley from downtown to get to Lakeside. I talked to a guy last year who fondly remembered getting on the trolley and arriving here and what a thrill it was. If you want to visit their website, go here, but turn your computer’s sound down (they have an old video of Lakeside from what looks like the 1920’s and it’s pretty loud.) *My pics are all from crappy camera because new camera is getting repaired after getting, ahem, damp in Florida.

Well, now 100 years later some things are gone.

No more speed racers on the lake, no more bathing pool, no more dancing pavilion and some of the really neat rides that I’ve never seen before.

Gone is the giant Ferris wheel, all that’s left is the center and arms of the wheel, but at least they left it for us to look at. But, some things stay (and therefore are 100 years old.) Like the train, the carousel and the Cyclone. The kiddie rides at the front are mostly circa 1970’s (i.e. I rode them.)

They added a new ride this year, the skateboard, which Hannah and Grace thought was fun.

I just love seeing them on the little rides because I remember going on them. Ever been on the canoe ride? Sometimes it gets stuck and you have to give it a shove to get going again.

There is a mini-whip, roller coasters, airplanes (although Joel is right these look more like bombs than airplanes) and more nostalgic rides.

Hannah was big enough this year to ride the big rides, so we all rode the whip, the Matterhorn, Ferris wheel, heart, tilt-a-whirl and scrambler together.

I told the kids we wouldn’t spin if we were all in the tilt-a-whirl together, but they didn’t believe me. Please, I have enough experience to know you need at least 2 people leaning on one side of the ride to make it spin well. Hannah and I rode the Hurricane, it’s a plane that swings around and you control the pitch with a front rudder, she didn’t like that one so much. We rode the carousel, look at these horses (and they have real horse hair for tails, which if that is 100 years old, is a little gross!)

This is the way a carousel should be, with the pipe organ where you can see it and with animals other than horses to ride.

We rode the train around the lake and somebody must have recently fallen off because the driver was adamant that if you fall off, he won’t stop the train to get you. It’s a really nice, slow ride around the lake with the mountains in the background.

Then on the other side of the lake you see the whole park.

The highlight of my trip to the park is the Wild Chipmunk.

I don’t care about 100 year old wood in the Cyclone, I want a ride that’s made of metal and only 60 years old. Imagine the scariest roller coaster ride you’ve ever been on……..now make the car small and shaped like a bullet…..now add springs onto the front and back……..now take away any safety equipment like belts/straps/bars and you have the Wild Chipmunk. It’s a crazy ride. We also rode the starship 2000; you know that one that spins you around while you stand up until you’re glued to the side of the ride? Yeah, I didn’t like that one so much.

It was a great night, no lines, not a lot of people, no waits, nice and cool, perfect. And having the library foot the bill for all the kids – priceless (what it would have cost: $47)

*Old photos of Lakeside and old post card from Lakeside from files at: http://www.lakesideamusementpark.com/

Budding philanthropist makes splash for a tailless dolphin
The Denver Post

A 6-year-old girl from Highlands Ranch made a visit to an aquarium in Clearwater, Fla., on Friday to drop off $45 she had raised for a dolphin that lost its tail two years ago.

Grace Carberry painted marine-life portraits and sold two of them on eBay to raise money for Winter, a 2-year-old dolphin, said Jeni Hatter, a spokeswoman with the Clearwater Marine Aquarium.

“It’s just the thought behind it,” Hatter said. “And to be that young of age and already want to give back like that — that’s amazing. She could have just sold the paintings on eBay and kept the money for herself.”

Hatter said Grace and her family took a vacation to Florida to meet Winter, who has a prosthetic tail.

“We were just floored by the idea behind that,” she said.

Christopher Sanchez, The Denver Post

But anyway it’s good to be home. Maisy was ecstatic to be picked up, I’m sure she was lonely staying inside for 9 days. The cats were thankful to be let out of the basement (and Sampson didn’t throw up at all!) The bird was fine (until later, he just up and died when we got back from Wal-mart. I suspect the bird food, it’s a new box and since the other bird died a few weeks ago and now this one died, I’m pretty suspicious that the food is tainted.) We ordered Grace new glasses (she broke her other ones on Friday) and our insurance actually paid $100 towards them. They are sponge bob (although the only thing sponge bob about them is the name sponge bob on the ear piece.) I think they will look great on her. We’re trying to find a copy of the Denver post for Sat/Sun to see which one had Grace’s pic in it, doing laundry and putting things back to normal. Joel has a SAREX camp this Friday and will be gone all weekend so we need to gather his stuff for that, I have co-ops coming up and need to prepare, and we need to go to Lakeside this week before our tix expire; back to the crazy Colorado adventure for sure!

First off the outside is shaped like a fry box and when you walk in, oh my gosh. You are greeted by a gourmet kitchen that serves, gasp, real food and not just Mcd’s fare. You see 500 gallon fish tanks, a waterfall, an animatronic moon guy playing piano, a Chuck E Cheese style puppet show, gift shop and then up stairs – a giant tree house play land and video games.

I ordered a Belgian waffle, everyone else ordered regular Mcd fare. For lunch you could have a gourmet pizza, pannini sandwiches, shrimp scampi, fish baked all kinds of ways and the desserts looked awesome. We ate breakfast and played some games, got some prizes and then left.

I bet this place gets crazy at lunch time.

Next to Kelly springs park. The park has a small, greenish clear river flowing out of an underground aquifer.

You can go to the headwaters and see it coming out of a small rock cave and jump in with your tube (purchased outside of the park.) Then you float down for about a mile over rocks and through sea grass.

Don’t worry about turtles, alligators and mosquitoes. We only saw one turtle and this time of year the female alligators are nest sitting, so they won’t bother you. We had fun floating down and walking back up on the boardwalk through scrub brush, oak trees and vines.

We saw a raccoon family on one trip back up and I banged my toe on a rock coming down one trip…water shoes would have been nice. It was nice tubing along under the shade trees, drifting over sand and rocks and floating by the sea grass waving under the water. The water ranged from 8 feet at the entrance to 2-3 feet and sometimes only 1 foot (which is where I banged my toe) along the river. The greenish glow of the water was probably due more to the sea grass that anything else, in some sections it went from the bank to the middle of the stream. It didn’t seem like we were there for that long, but suddenly it was 3 hours later. This park gets full fast on the weekends, if you’re not there by 11 am you’ll have to wait until someone leaves a few hours later. There are lots of springs and aquifers in the area to check out, but I’m glad we went here.

After returning our tubes to the rental shop we went next door to the Plush Pony grill. Tip of the day – rent your tubes next door here for $3 and then when you are done tubing you can stop into the Plush pony for a bite to eat. They have hamburgers and Chicago dogs off the grill and about 12 ice cream flavors (cotton candy was really good.) But, the best thing there is the handmade Italian ices. Mine was mango and it was the best I’ve ever had. We left the grill full of ice cream and ice and went back to the hotel early. I had to have everything packed tonight because our flight in the morning is at 8:45am. I gave the girls a bath and braided their hair and let them sleep in the clothes for tomorrow. Then we packed everything up and I shoved as much as I could into the big suitcase (which was a mistake, it was overweight by 12 lbs and at the airport we had to redistribute the clothes.)

So, if I had another week I’d see: St. Augustine ( the oldest North American settlement, settled by the Spanish in the early 1500’s), Warbird museum, Seminole Indian museum (the Seminoles in the area have mounds at different places, one was at Cape Canaveral called turtle mound, but it was on the other side from where we were), the Keys, the Treasure museum, I’d buy more candy from Davidson of Dundee, and I’d make it to the college to see the F.L.Wright buildings and to Wordspring. But, we did go do and see a lot this trip, so I’m happy with what we learned and saw. We asked the kids what was their favorite thing on the trip was: Joel – Epcot, Bethany – Clearwater Aquarium, Grace – seeing Winter, Hannah seeing Mr. Otter. James like Hollywood studios, Epcot and swimming in Kelly springs. My favorite place was the Bok tower sanctuary and swimming at Cape Canaveral.

Tomorrow is flight, land, pick up Maisy, clean up after the cats, do laundry and get back to the Colorado adventure.