Ten on Wednesday

 1.  Last week, the big kids didn't have school on Monday.  My leave request had gotten lost in the email so they had a lot of time on their own. I was surprised to discover M doing a science experiment at the table during one of my check-ins.  We took it up a notch and read the instructions, moved to the stove, and actually managed to successfully grow some crystals by the next day.

 2.  Girl Scouts has returned.  The first meeting was long and a little chaotic, but the troop leader is nice and there is a good group of girls so we're looking forward to a fun year.  M is still attending Girl Scouts at SEAS, but this may be the last year as after this the logistics/missed class time will likely tip the balance towards another troop.  In the meantime, she is having a great time doing crafts, learning core values, and making friends!

 3.  I read somewhere that a great way to reduce fits/improve behavior is to dedicate 20 minutes to playing with your kid on the floor daily.  This seems easy and something we're probably doing anyway, but I am making a conscious effort to make sure E is getting at least that in a super focused, no distractions way. I have have zero clue if it is working, but it is definitely entertaining and fun.  Last week, we spent the better part of an hour with him jumping off this ladder on to his bed.  Per his request I did video most of his attempts so he could watch the replay.

 4.  We took a whirlwind trip to the farm this weekend and it was great weather for it.  The kids spent a lot of time with the chickens and tree house, but also made fun gourd crafts.  M made 3! and the boys each made one of their own design.

 5.  E & Ro are adorable together.  They spent a lot of time with their tools, adventuring, and doing puzzles in the tents.  There was remarkably less fighting and more cooperation.  (Hooray!)

 6.  E specifically requested this photo with the chickens.  He is a big fan.  I got to spend a lot of extra time with him on Friday as he was randomly out of school.  I have no idea what families where both parents have normal jobs do with all these random days off.  I assume daycare or Grandma? In any case, glad I could be here with him.

 7.  M has a new "spelling menu" of activities to work on.  The first option was writing her spelling words in shaving cream and she loved it.  B would not have liked this as sensory play was not his favorite.  M could recall all other instances when she has done things with shaving cream and loves it.  The spelling menu is in addition to her "homework menu", monthly family projects, and daily XtraMath.  She has WAY more homework than Brendan does.  It is annoying.  She does need the extra time with her math facts, but some of the other stuff just feels like busy work.

 8.  M and I love fall mornings outside.  It isn't nearly as cold as her outfit would suggest.  We wandered the gardens, checked on our plants and faeries, and then sat on the porch and talked before she got in a little scooter time.  I adore our yard and it's quite wood.  Perfect for M & me!  (I should mention that Grandma loves to do all these things with her in the mornings too and is usually around a couple days of the week to lead morning adventuring).

9.  B sustained his first (very minor) swimming injury yesterday.  First, you need to know that he and the other boys in Onyx are racing at all times during practice. I don't think this is required, but who am I to say.  There is a staggered start for each length of the pool, but they battle to catch the people ahead of them before they reach the end. Over and over and over, for 45 minutes (with only a couple rests to put on flippers or get instruction).  When every length is a battle it was only a matter of time before someone got kicked in the face and yesterday was that day.  He is totally fine and definitely likes the race to the wall with every lap so kuddos to him.  We did mention watching out for other people's feet/bodies and making sure that they are doing what the coaches want. He is sore daily, but always happy to go and happy when he gets out of the water.  Love this.  (Ps. doesn't waiting at the bus stop with these two look fun?)

10. After heading back from the farm on Saturday, we went straight to "International Night" at OSSM.  It is always hard to leave the farm, but I'm glad we made it back for this event.  It features the food of all the countries where OSSM students and their families have roots.  This year, each table had a host family/theme country.  Yes, there were  some straight "America" tables, but a wide diversity of other countries too. The food is amazing and very authentic and the conversations both with other people and with our kids is great.  This year, there was even a short Irish Stepdance performance on the balcony.  This is probably the biggest event of the fall semester at OSSM and getting larger and better each year. I look forward to enjoying it again next fall.

Vacation 2016: Little Sahara State Park

Location: Little Sahara State Park, near Waynoka, OK

Date: 8/2/2016

Fun Facts: Little Sahara is not a desert, it was created by sand deposits from Cimarron River; It is famous for dune buggy riding...which we didn't do, of course. 

This park was only tentatively on our agenda, but the existence of the state parks passport system and an extra hour or two of time put it on the radar.  The park ranger here was slightly less excited to see us, but did have a live rattle snake rattling away from the front desk... he also gave us the passport stickers we were missing from Gloss Mountain State Park.  He was less good at directions so we drove around some rather run down picnic/camp areas for awhile before seeking out more help in finding the overlook. 

Here we are walking up the winding, beautiful path to the overlook complete with nearly stormy Oklahoma sky. 

Panorama from the outlook --- yes, the dunes are strangely far away and kind of small looking --- it is weird. No idea why the outlook is so far from the thing we're looking towards.  Brent and I think this may be a situation where grass/forest is taking over the dunes.

Can you see them? 

Ok, here is a more zoomed in view.  There were a bunch of telescopes where you can see all the tracks on the dunes from the dune buggies.  The dunes are 25 to 75 feet tall for reference. 

This was the last stop on the trip and the kids were a bit punchy.  They were having a great time in their own way though. 

The telescopes intended for those in wheelchairs are also the perfect height for 4 year olds!

We observed, discussed, and pondered if dune buggy riding is something we might do if the park were open longer.  We did get to watch some other people on dune buggies. I am told there are 1600 acres of dunes... apparently not in sight?

So, we made our own sand fun. M create this sand cake with shiny rocks and sticks for candles (hint, her birthday is this week). 

E joined in the fun.  The sand was delightfully soft. 

 There were lots of beautiful wildflowers  - most of them seemed to be yellow.  It also smelled distinctly of sage.

And then we were off for a 2.25 hour drive home through the land of oil wells and wind mills.  The drive happens to be about the length of Hamilton so we listened to that one more time and everyone was happy, if tired. 

Vacation 2016: Alabaster Caverns State Park

Location: Alabaster Caverns State Park, near Freedom, OK

Date: 8/2/2016

Fun Facts - 330 stairs on the 3/4 mile long tour, only one of 3 caves with black alabaster, no stalagmites/tights so you can touch everything, my grandpa visited on his senior class trip and ran through it in the dark.  This last fact is insane after having walked through with lights and having had the lights turned off only briefly. 

Price: Tours are free for those under age 6,  $7 for kids 6-12, $10 for those 13-61, $8 for those over 62

This is our only photo as cameras/phones are not allowed in the cave to keep tours moving along and safe.  The tour guide did begin the tour with showing E a few sleeping bats, which was adorable. 

Photo via of Travel OK

The kids' two requests for vacation were lots of swimming and caves.  Done.  The caves were perfect for kids. The tour is 45 minutes and happens ever hour.  It moves a long with not that much talking and you can touch everything *(rare for caves).  There are cool lights, hand rails, and lots of slippery floors.  They loved it and so did we. 

Photo via Travel OK

 These are called George and Martha Washington's bath tubs.  Our Hamilton obsessed kids thought that was great.  The bath tubs were created by swirling water.  The caves really reinforce the power of water and time.

Photo via Travel OK

You can see some of the water coming through here.  There were lots of cool shapes and facts about Selenite/alabaster.  We bought a piece of selenite as our lone souvenir of vacation and the kids love handling it. I am so glad we made the trip. The caves were an awesome experience and the kids are now full of interesting mineral facts and excited about more cave exploring in the future.  This was B's favorite stop of the trip. 

Here is a video about the caves from Travel OK

Here is the historic Waynoka train depot where we stopped for lunch when we sadly discovered the German restaurant I'd been hoping to try is closed on Tuesdays.... 

Vacation 2016: Boiling Springs State Park

This year, our summer vacation was a roughly 3.5 day tour of northwest Oklahoma.  This is part of our system of having vacation in Oklahoma one year and out of Oklahoma the next.  Due to random technology issues, I'm going to blog by site we visited rather than in chronological order.

Location: Boiling Springs State Park, near Woodward, OK
Date: 8/2/2016
Highlights - beautiful forrest, crystal clear streams, oldest Burr Oak Tree in OK

Ok, so, spoiler alert, that video is the extent of the "Boiling Springs" --- that said, do not let that dissuade you from visiting as this is a completely lovely, beautiful park with so much more to offer.

 Boiling Springs was the 3rd of the 5 State Parks we visited, but the first time the staff explained the awesome State Park Passport system.  Our kids are very excited to visit them more parks, get their passports stamps, and achieve the various medallions.  Check it out!  The staff at this park seemed over joyed to see us and is even mailing us stamps from the state parks we had already visited.  SO cool. Also, note the cool stone work. Almost all the parks we visited were built by the Civilian Conservation Corp or WPA.  That was a heck of a program and decades later the work has held up/been maintained beautifully.

 The first, short trail at this park lead to this "River" B seems skceptical.  M is still clutching her passport.  We talked about animal footprints near the bank and why this water is clearer than in some other places we have visited.

 Here is E walking back from the stream.  He spent most of the time in this park clutching the trail map.  He doesn't know how to read maps, but liked to think he was navigating.  We also tried to spur some of the hiking along by pushing him to be the leader and go a bit faster than he was at the back of the pack.

 The colors are really off in these photos, but it was gorgeous.  This was mostly the kind of forest/wood with few under story plants, but just lovely

 The streams were all completely crystal clear and spring fed into sand streams.  There were zillions of tiny frogs all over.  Everyone wanted Ro to be there as he would have adored it.  Just so many frogs and these interesting bugs with blue bodies and black wings.

 This was the lead pack, waiting for Mr. E to take the path at his own pace.

 It doesn't really fit in the photo, but this is the allegedly 300 year old Burr Oak that is 18ft around.  Allegedly the oldest Burr Oak in Oklahoma. This trail was 2 miles long and the kids just did amazingly great.

 So many trees, so many photo ops.  M and I really lead the pack on the way back as there was a little bit of Pokemon hunting happening too.  Interestingly the GPS in the pokemon app seemed to work better in most of these places than our map aps or the paper hand out maps, hmmm.

I am a sucker for a beautiful walk in a quiet wood.  It was a lovely cloudy day and a perfect day for a walk in the woods.  Oklahoma remains full of delightful surprises!

4th Lake Fun 2016

 We spent a lovely two days at the lake last weekend with my siblings, their families, my mom and the occasional uncle or cousin.  There was a lot of this - hanging out on the dock, swimming, kayaking, chatting, fishing, and eating.

 B kayaked by himself for the first time.  He loved it!  Thanks to Able & Kari for bringing the kayaks. We all loved them and they are perfect for the lake set up!  Hooray!

 Uncle Zach led most of the fishing endeavors.  He is a great teacher and came prepared with lots of crickets.

 This was M's biggest fishing catch of the day.  it is a great place to fish as you pretty much catch something quickly with every catch.  We release them back too after looking them over carefully.

 Grandma brought a bunch of new floates, which the little boys particularly enjoyed.

 There were a few minor injuries like splinters and stickers, but we fixed them all right up.

 Audra led the making of these awesome family shirts while I was away in San Francisco.  Each has its own hashtag and they made for very cute pictures!

 It took a couple tries, but here are my awesome kids.

 There was a now traditional fish fry, led mostly by Able & Kari with help from Zach.  It was SO So delicious. I had the left overs for the next several meals.

 Swimming at dusk is awesome. The kids stayed up late for the fireworks before bedding down in the new bunk beds that had been made that day by the Uncles.

 We had amazing fireworks and lots of great glow necklaces too.  Two uncles and two of my cousins joined us for the fun.

 Of course there were sparklers and smaller fountains but lots of big fountains too.

The Korenaks and my crew stayed at the lake.  Audra got very little sleep but most of the rest of us got some combination of sleep.  The next day, Audra and I swam laps of the lake in the morning and we all did more of the above (fish, kayak, eat, swim, dive, cannon ball, etc...) until it was time to pack up around 4pm.  A great time was had by all!