Category: Out and About

We spent the day with Nana and Pompo and later in the evening went to my parents house for dinner and a visit.

After dinner the girls, Brienna and Bryndee stopped by to say “hi”.

Beautiful cousins!
Brienna (18), Bryndee (14) and Isabel (8).

Isabel and Brienna dancing in the front room.

Maybe it’s a hoedown?!
Whatever they are doing, they are fun!

We made it out of the hotel early enough to arrive in Utah not to late tonight, unless we run into something.

Just stopped for some lunch in Twin Falls.

Cruising down the highway in Idaho.

Even though we are just passing through, we are enjoying all the sunshine!
This is going to be a much needed sunny holiday.

We have reached our state destination!
Now we have eight more hours of driving before we see FAMILY!!

Nana’s homemade tortilla’s a bit of heaven in your mouth!

Happy girl!

After packing the truck this morning and then spending over an hour looking for my truck keys, we left the house later than what we had originally planned to do. We were on the road just after 10 a.m..

Utah here we come!!

We haven’t had a Thanksgiving with family since 2000 and Isabel has never had a Thanksgiving with family. We are hoping and praying that this one, this one will be special…

Heading south and she’s ready for a snack.
She spent the day playing her video game, chatting with the Lula’s and keeping Daisy calm.

We made it to Cabbage Hill or Dead Man’s Pass around 5 p.m.
and got to see the sunset at the top of the hill…

Beautiful!

We made it to Boise around 9 p.m. and after a quick bite to eat, these 2 were fast asleep in no time.

Tomorrow is more driving…

We had planned on going to Winter Jam on Sunday night but I came down with a very nasty dry cough and we didn’t think it would be good for me to be out in the cold weather so we headed to another movie theater in town to see…

K.C. Saving Christmas.
We all enjoyed this one too.

This weekend we headed south to Portland, Oregon to the Woodworking Show at the Expo Center.

Area that we covered and our tickets.
(which state that we went on day 3 when we actually went on day 2)

Laser cut out of Aztec calendar. So much detail in tiny piece of wood!
Isabel thought this was so cool since we’ve been talking about them in school.

Later that night we went to see…

Big Hero 6.
We all enjoyed it.

Today Isabel went to her second homeschool science class at the Nature Center.

She didn’t give me a lot of information about what they did in class. She did tell me that there is another Isabelle in class now, so Isabel has to go by Izzy.

Field study paper from their walk.
Isabel said they didn’t get far along the trail again this time but she had fun.

This weekend we headed to the Foss Waterway for an evening of fun peering over the pier. We spent the evening look at marine animals that live in the Puget Sound waterway.

Isabel and I before the class started.

Before heading down to the pier, we watched a live feed from off the pier with a scuba diver. That was awesome!

Out on the pier, we took scoops over the edge to collect and observe anything that we could catch.

Isabel loved this! We all tried it but the only one with any luck was Isabel. She caught some type of marine worm (can’t remember the name).

Isabel and this little girl started to work together to catch things off the pier.
This little girl was great at catching things!

The Foss Waterway building was built in 1900 and was part of a much larger building than what it is today. It was built as a wheat warehouse to transfer wheat from train (tracks on other side) to boats. Now the building is used to educate families and students about maritime heritage and other community events.

We had so much fun, wish the learning didn’t have to end.
Now it’s time to head back to the classroom for observation, study, cookies and cocoa.

Looking under the microscope…

at baby shrimp.

We also looked at plankton under the microscope as well.

In the classroom they had tanks filled with marine animals from Puget Sound. However these animals have been in the tanks for years and are healthy and thriving. Unlike the starfish, that are struggling to survive in the water along our coast all the way down to California. There is a strange disease that is affecting them and killing starfish off.

Observing some of the starfish in the tanks.

Another tank filled with mussels, sea anemone, sponges and other marine life.

These lucky starfish have been living in the tank for a few years.

Can you spot the crabs?
I missed most of them in the tank until the teacher pointed them out!

We had a new bird visit our feeder out back.

It’s a black-capped chickadee.
The song it sings is very pretty and different, that is how we knew we had a new bird at the feeder!