Mission Everglades

Zoo Miami has opened a new exhibit:

It was a little rainy that day!

We have anticipated the Everglades exhibit for a very long time and were not disappointed!  Some of the animals we have seen often just going to the Everglades and others are more elusive and it was nice to see them up close.

These are river otters.  Zoo Miami has two other otter exhibits - Asian river otters and giant (Amazon) river otters.  They never tire of putting on a show!  The Everglades otter exhibit was designed with a clear tube slide that goes right through their tank.

They also have a crawl through tube in the crocodile tank.

There is a daily black bear feeding:

Hanging bridge over the alligator pond:

Somehow I missed a picture of the adorable burrowing owls.

Frost Art Museum

I knew I would need to get the kids out of the house for the day while they worked on the room Friday.  I didn't really have a good plan as I went to sleep Thursday night, but it came to me when I woke in the night - as if in a dream...  I suddenly remembered we hadn't been to the Frost Art Museum at Florida International University since a few weeks before Natalie was born!  This was an oversight because it is free and because they have an excellent children's area.

The kids were impressed with FIU's campus, I was a little overwhelmed because they have built so much since I worked there (1999-2001).

I'll credit the inspiration to googling Knud Pedersen the night before.

Knud Pederson was a Danish artist and founder of an art lending library where people could borrow (or rather rent very cheaply) works of art for a limited time.  My interest in Mr. Pedersen came from reading a book about his life during World War II called The Boys who Challenged Hitler.  As a young teenager he organized groups of boys to sabotage German military vehicles and sites and steal weapons.  He also spent a while in prison.  Denmark had given in to the the Nazis early on and many of the citizens were not happy about it.  However in the beginning, not much resistance was made.  Knud's Churchill Club's actions and imprisonment inspired his fellow Danes and by the time he was released from prison, Denmark was very much resisting the Nazis.

I got the book thinking it would interest Caleb and I think about half of it will interest him.  (Mostly because they blow more stuff up in the 1st half!)  But I liked the whole thing and highly recommend the book.

So the Frost Museum

There is a room called the Family Room at the museum filled art supplies and creative play toys, it is not big enough for a large school group and no one was there, so we spent an hour or so there before looking at the gallery.  The kids were not that impressed with the actual art gallery!

In short, it was a great way to spend part of our day out and hopefully we won't wait 6 1/2 years before we come back!

Ice Skating

We like to take a field trip on the first day of public school - that's one day you can be sure there won't be many school groups out!  I'm not sure how many schools take field trips to go ice skating, but that is what we did this year.  Although I invited every homeschooling family I could think of, only two could come, but one invited some of their friends, so we had a nice group and it was nice to get to know some families we'd never met before. 

Never mind the prone figure in the background...

The picture I almost forgot to take - just proof they had skates her size!  I don't know why I thought for a second that she would enjoy the ice (she did not!), but the tiny skates sure were cute!

Another great thing about this field trip is that it has been an extra hot summer and being able to really get chilled down was refreshing!

I'm working on back to school pictures:

Our 3rd grader (and I just noticed there is a photo bomb!)

Our 1st grader

She and I both thought the silk flowers were a nice backdrop, we also liked this one!

Our 5th grader will probably get a very appropriate picture when he goes fishing later this week!

Week in Review

Seizing the moment, I am posting a weeks worth of pictures tonight. There has just not been time for blogging lately. There is so much that needs to be done and sometimes it is really hard to know what is most important and whose needs are most urgent.

Here are some highlights from the last week:

On Sunday, we went to Layton, FL to visit a church where the radio station has a temporary antenna.  To me "Layton" doesn't sound like a place in the Keys, but it is - it's on Long Key, which is a small, very sparsely inhabited key.  Most of it is a state park. It is about 15 minutes north of the 7 mile bridge, so we drove down to it.

It was low tide and we saw LOTS of very big fish!

Monday meant back to swimming lessons.  I have struggled with finding a workable schedule all summer (and by summer I mean, since we restarted school in March).  I finally decided to make a schedule that would apply to the weeks we had swimming lessons and then we will take a week off and recoup.  My thinking was that maybe we hadn't found a good schedule because I gave up before we got the hang of it.  I thought we'd stick to the schedule religiously for the swim days and see if that helped - and it did seem to be helping.  I put the girls in the 8am class, we'd have breakfast at the park after the lesson, come home, and get into our routine.

And then on Monday afternoon, Natalie's swimming teacher called me to ask if we would switch classes.  So on Tuesday we did swimming at 9 and my beautiful poster is wrong now.

Fortunately, Monday was 7-11 and our neighborhood got at 7-11 in the last year and we all got free Slurpees.

Swim swim swim.  Natalie is doing a 2nd session in level 1, Annalise got moved up to level 3.  Level 3 is a lot more exercise and it took a few days to get into the groove.  They asked Natalie to move because in the 8am class, all the other kids in 1 moved to 2 and she is not ready.  The move to 9 was good for Annalise too because a girl from our church is in the same class and because the 8am level 3s are more advanced too.  (8am turned out to be the hour the park's summer camp took lessons - this was not the schedule in the past, so the classes were bigger and most of them have taken lessons all summer.)

On Tuesday we went to a family of friends' house.  That is, I'm friends with the mom, A and N are both friends with the sisters, C was happy to poke around the little brother's immense car collection and Irene just loves toys of all kinds.  While we were there, a squirrel fell out of a tree and broke its back.  It was the most bizarre thing and very sad.

On Thursday, we got a spontaneous invitation to the park in the morning and had already planned an outing to the marina for the afternoon.

On Friday, we broke ground on the 3rd bedroom.  Or rather, broke floor.  We have been preparing for the addition for a long time.  The paper work was nuts, but we are set to start and Rob has hired a handyman he knows to help him do the work.  It will be in fits and spurts, but there are two gaping holes in the floor, so things are visibly moving forward now.

Of course they made those holes with a jackhammer, so the kids and I made ourselves scarce.

First we went to the zoo - they have been building a new entrance and it opened Friday. 

They are also adding a new Everglades exhibit, but it won't open until the fall.  It looks really cool and I've been eager to see it.  The entrance is pretty and bright, but a little anti-climactic, since we did not plan on seeing any more of the zoo.  By Friday I'd sweat enough.

We had to kill more time than that though, so after we ate packed lunches, we got ice cream at McDonalds.  The girls all wanted cones.

Caleb wanted a McFlurry and was disappointed when I told him he had to get the "snack" size, but he has a history of getting things for free and they happened to mix in the wrong mix-in, so he got two!

Free activities not being in abundance, we ended up at the library where we were happy to soak in the a/c and kept busy enough keeping Irene from pulling books off the shelves.

With our schedule struggles (Next week we have to be out two days), I've been on homeschool blogs and discussion boards looking for ideas.  I found more empathy than ideas!  I guess there are just times when things won't work like you want them to.  But I did find encouragement to list 3 things we are doing well.  So here are 3 things:

1.  We notice little things - weird bugs, butterflies, host plants, differences in types of cichlids, squirrels mysteriously falling from trees....
2.  We fold laundry and we put it away - I am currently folding less laundry than I did before we had kids - I only fold adult clothes and oddly shaped items.  Irene got so interested in the process that she has figured out how to fold a washcloth - really!
3.  We are all learning a little more Spanish - the organic way - we hang out with our Cuban next door neighbor a lot.  Did you know that nene (neh-nay) means little kid?  I did not!

Urban Walmart

A new Walmart opened in our area last week.  It is built right on US 1, which is just hard to imagine if you can't see it, so I took a picture:

The road with all the cars is US 1. 

The front - note that is is right on a busy street.

This is not the only entrance you can also enter from...the parking garage!

I told this kids that this was a field trip - although I did make a few purchases. 

The top of the parking garage.

Just inside the doors there were an elevator and an escalator (and some stairs)

Plenty of room for 2 carts - and the other lady's cart was one of those built for 3 kids.

Inside it looks pretty typical for a Walmart - it's a little close.  Kind of a Small-mart.  It seemed to have a slightly smaller version of everything you'd typically find in a Walmart - even a mini-fabrics department.  Personally, it was a little too crowded for my comfort.

But the cart escalator was totally cool!

Dress Like a Pirate - Get Free Doughnuts

Because of VBS, we missed Chick-fil-a's Dress Like a Cow day this year. I am still a little disappointed at that!  I had planned on going, but that day was so busy I forgot until the next day and then it was too late!    Fortunately, today made up for it slightly.   To humor Caleb I signed up for email updates from Krispy Kreme and discovered that today they were handing out a dozen doughnuts to anyone dressed like a pirate.

Like Annalise's peg leg?

Well I didn't make them dress up alone!

The tricorn hats are really easy to make. Maybe I'll make a blog post out of it if I find another reason to make one! 

The booty - 48 doughnuts!

Thanks to our efforts most of our street had doughnuts this morning!

Feeding the Parakeets

School started this week in Miami-Dade county, so I thought it would be a good week to plan some field trips.  Everywhere we went, it was us and a bunch of foreign tourists!  It was great! 

We took the whole week off school (we've been doing school all summer - minus VBS and Caleb's hospital stay and my parents' and Brian's visit - but really we've accomplished a lot!)  Honestly it was me who needed a break - because even the days we didn't "do school" this summer, I did a lot and I was ready for a break.

We ended up going to the zoo twice because a planned beach trip didn't work out - it is kind of a shame that we are so near the ocean (less than 2 miles) and it is so hard to get there (and hour drive + paying to park).

The first day we went to the zoo, we went really late - about 3pm and there was a family leaving as we went in who gave us 3 tickets to feed the parrots.  I had never let the kids feed the parrots because it cost $3 each - which I thought was exorbitant.  The sign says "includes bird food and admission" but it turns out that they will let you in for free, the $3 is just for the seed - I guess it pays to ask!  For $3 they give you a very small cup of birdseed.  However, I really think the "worth it" factor depends on who is doing the parrot feeding!

When you go in the birdcage - the parakeets fly onto your hand (or back or head).  Most of them just nibble at the food, but a few of them bit me.

Natalie did not want to touch the birds and was very annoyed at them trying to land on her (or near her), so I ended up using her cup.

Annalise could not get them to eat from her hand on our first trip - but she got that figured out!

Guess who wants a parakeet now!

Rosella Parrot

I left kind of wanting one of these - they politely took one seed and ate it slowly.  Plus I thought they were so beautiful!

The kids were overwhelmed by how much fun they had -  Caleb said it was one of the most fun things he'd ever done - and I'd say an experience like that would be worth $3, which is why, I paid for them to go back today (with a stern warning not to expect it every time we go!).  They made their seed last about half an hour (another "worth it" factor), whereas I saw littler kids who lost all their seed in 2 minutes (a "not worth it" factor to me!). 

If you count from last Saturday we also went to Deering Estate, Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park, Pinecrest Gardens, and Miami Children's Museum.  We have been busy!

Water Birds

We have been pretty spoiled getting to have Rob's parents less than an hour away for a whole month.  They are getting ready to head back to the frozen north, but we spent a very nice morning in the Everglades with them yesterday.  There were tons of birds out and plenty of alligators, plus it was in the 60s!

I like water birds.  I think I like them more than birds like blue jays and mocking birds.  I really don't know why I like them.  In addition to these I've posted we saw the great blue heron, the little blue heron, a white heron, a purple gallinule, and some moorhens.

Comorant - note the hooked beak - their trademark.

The birds were really comfortable with all the tourists!

Anhinga - a bird I just don't see how you can't like.  I've never seen one so close so I didn't know their beaks were so sharp.

Baby anhingas :)  awe!!

Roseate Spoonbill!!!  I've never seen one at this location before yesterday.

Terrible picture, but you can see the spooned bill. 

And they weren't cute...but there were some non-water birds showing off their feathers too.  I wasn't interested in taking their picture!