Hiking at Lynn Canyon

2 hours round trip hike and then a visit to the ecology center on the way back to the car.

Hovercraft Project

The first step was to gather recycling. I gave them some general ideas and sent them scouring. (Fortunately the recycling truck hadn't come by yet!)

Lots of trial and error finding the way to cut the plastic.

And testing them with a race!

Gabe's didn't get any further than this :(

Afterwards we compared everyone's designs to decide what worked best and they spent some time making modifications trying the blower dryer to move them and even the shop vacuum.

First Day of School

Lily swimming (Brr!) with her new friends

John, enjoying his sandwich between running around and digging in the sand.

Ahh, the beach!

We enjoyed the sun and sand at TLA's annual "Hit the Beach" first day of school.  The weather was gorgeous and my nose got one last sunburn.  No pictures of Gabe because he was too busy running around with new friends.  I was really proud of him.  No clinging to me, no waiting around saying he was bored.  He participated in the games (organized by Richard!) and made friends with no prodding from either of us.  We have worried about his shyness in the past but I think we can put that aside for now.
We started slowly with academic work just easing into math and language arts.  We've done a few day trips that could be considered field trips, including a fun day at Fort Langley which I'll post pictures of.  We started, as is my new tradition, with Who Am I? worksheets from Life as Mom.  It makes a great cover for the school work from the year that I want to save and is so fun to look back on.  Last year John said he wanted to grow up to be a man.  Hilarious.