When you live in this dry climate for very long, you see how it is perfect for drying grapes to make yummy raisins. Nothing against the Sunmaid brand that you can buy at the store, but when you do it yourself, you can dry to the plumpness that you like. And oh, are they good!
The kids and I read a book on raisins, so when we went to the farmers market and saw Thompson grapes, one of the best grapes for raisins, we bought some to dry. We washed our grapes, measured them, spread them out on a baking sheet, slipped it into a pillowcase (keeping the birds from getting to them before we could) and placed it on the flat roof above our patio. A week and a half later we had beautiful raisins, not too dry, just right. The kids made guesses on how much three cups of grapes would produce. It turns out the way we like them, it produced one cup of raisins.
Now what does...
1 cup of raisins + 4 kids =
An empty cup!
Fun Fact: 90% of the world's raisins are grown right here in the Central Valley. So every time you have raisins for a snack, you can think of us!
Another interesting tidbit, the raisins shown above where made from green grapes.
Some of our best Science lessons have been impromptu in the backyard. We do use a curriculum for Science by Answers in Genesis, which I think is wonderful. And probably because of that curriculum, the kids tend to look at their surroundings a bit closer. The past couple of weeks, we have had several backyard Science Lessons.
Spiders:
We got an up close and personal look at a spider with its prey stuck in the web. After looking closely at it, Paige asked Clay to teach us more about spiders. So he had them all sit around him and he gave a "spider talk". The other three were all ears to what he had to teach them and I even learned some things.
Plants:
One of my favorite is spending time in the garden and watching the change in plants. The kids have enjoyed our fruit trees and few veggies that we have planted, grow and produce their fruit. Lots of lessons on the seasons, pollination and harmful and helpful bugs, etc. I am excited because during one of our recent backyard plant observations, I found 5 lemons on my new tree! This will be its first harvest. And my Bird of Paradise plant that I planted about 1 and 1/2 years ago is now blooming! I have 4 planted, 2 were just planted this summer. Only one is blooming, but it happens to be the one located right outside by bedroom sliding glass door.
Backyard Pets:
Monday, I got home from taking "M" to an appointment and Jathan and the kids were excited to show me their two new finds: a grasshopper and a praying mantis. Jathan and the kids had a science lesson while we were gone. They had researched these insects finding where they lived, what they ate and so forth. They even found out that the praying mantis is one of the five types of Kung Fu taught. If you have ever seen the movie Kung Fu Panda, you can guess what the other four types of Kung Fu are. Apparently there was a reason for making the crane, tiger, praying mantis, monkey, and snake the furious five in the movie. If you watch a praying mantis for a while you will see why a type of Kung Fu is named after it. It looks like that is what it is doing. Ok, that is a bit off of the science talk. The kids and Jathan set the praying mantis up in a home, they decided to offer the grasshopper for food, since that is one of the things they read that they ate. After watching for a while to see if it would eat the grasshopper, we left it alone. Jathan even checked on it before we went to bed. I am not sure if the kids were more excited or he was. Still it hadn't eaten. Well this afternoon, the kids found the praying mantis dead and the grasshopper still moving around. So we will see what will happen with their backyard pet.
It is time to finally end this long drawn out series on our cross country trip this summer. I really did not intend for it to take so long, but it did, I haven't been as good about posting as I would like. Oh well, it is what it is, so here is the final destination...
We made it to Indianapolis! After being on the road for about a week and a half, we arrived at Jathan's parent's house. They had a sign and streamers welcoming the grandkids, specifically "M", but they did add the other three to the poster board in smaller letters. It was quite the welcome, none the less.
During our stay in Indy, the kids got a lot of grandparents time, playing outside in the big yard, and riding bikes. "M" learned to ride her bike without training wheels while visiting the grandparents. Paige has been into Monopoly and had heard stories of how much Grandpa liked to play, so that was something on the agenda that they were able to accomplish.
Besides seeing all the family and friends, I was very much looking forward to the kids catching lightening bugs. I had really hyped it up. Around here there aren't any lightening bugs. Growing up it was something I looked forward to every summer. The ritual of getting your jar with holes poked in the lid, getting sprayed down with Off, and then making the mad dash into the yard once you saw the first flicker. Our jars would be full of them. We would put them on our nightstand when we went to bed and watched them light up as we fell asleep. Of course in the morning we would wake up to a jar full of dead bugs, but that was fine with us, we were ready to do it again the next night. I couldn't wait for the kids to experience this. So on one of the last nights in Indiana, we were going to catch lightening bugs. We got the jars, we sprayed the kids, we were out and waiting, and then nothing. Once in a while we saw a flicker, but it was usually too high to catch or across the yard and we couldn't find it once we got to where we thought we saw it. The kids were getting frustrated, I was frustrated and between four kids and three adults, we ended up with 2 lightening bugs that wouldn't light once we put them in the jar. I was crushed, probably more than the kids, but they were pretty disappointed. So that dream didn't quite get fulfilled. As of now our kids do not share my excitement over lightening bugs, but we tried, and that was that.
During our time in Indy, we were able to connect with several friends from both Lafayette and Indy. Thank you Jared, Becca, Dave, Whitney, Brad and Carrie for taking the time to come over to visit us. Thank you also to Anissa for hosting us for a play date and Chris and Heather for having us over for dinner. It was so good to see familiar faces during our time there.
Believe it or not, I didn't get any pictures of the kids with their grandparents. I spent most of my time taking video, so the time is recorded, but not to put on the blog. Oh well. I am also finding it hard to figure out what to put on the blog, because most of the pictures have "M" in them. I started to try to crop her out, but I hate doing that. So anyway here are a few pics of our visit with friends.
Eventually our time in Indiana had to come to an end. We were thankful for the time we had with family, but it was nice to get back home.
This time we didn't have any plans to stop and see anyone on our way, so we made reservations in NM for a night of rest. We left Tuesday night and arrived at our motel in NM on Wednesday afternoon. It was a long time in the car, but we made the most of it with books on CD and just enjoying the landscape once we could see it in the morning. We stopped in Texas at one of their rest areas and got a kick out of seeing their Texas shaped BBQ's. It was a pretty stop and I got a good picture of the girls. After I had them stand a little ways in the grass to get a good shot, Jathan pointed out the sign that said to stay off the grass because of rattlesnakes. Yikes!
The kids decided that "Cars" was the theme of our travels. They loved all the Route 66 signs, so when we got to our motel in NM, they were thrilled when they discovered we were actually staying on Route 66. We even got to have dinner at one of the original diners.
On Thursday, we headed out again. After a bit of time in the car, we stopped at the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. It was a nice little park to stop for a time to stretch our legs and see a few sights.
After that stop we started for our last long leg of the trip and arrived home early Friday morning. Oh it was so good to get to our house and get to sleep a few hours in our beds.
We had a great time traveling, but the old saying is definitely true...
Not too exciting of a title, but atleast I am posting, right?
Sunday night we headed to the mountains for our first camping adventure as a family of six. The kids were more than excited, I really didn't think Sunday afternoon was going to come quick enough for them.
Friday, Clay and I set up the tent in our backyard to see if our tent would hold the six of us. After reconfiguring a few times, we decided that it would work. It is technically a 5 man tent, but 4 of the "men" are little people, so we thought it would be fine. Once the tent was up and sleeping assignments were given, the kids were dying to start out on our adventure. Paige had all her belongings packed and ready that night.
Finally Sunday came, the sky was filled with clouds. If you aren't familiar with California, clouds are a rarity and when it happens it gets everyone talking and everyone wondering why on earth you would go camping when these clouds are in the sky. But being Indiana folk and knowing that our tent has weathered a few storms in the past, we decided to go ahead and head out. We checked in at the park entrance where the park ranger showed us the weather forecast which consisted of 90% chance thundershowers. Oh well, the kids are most excited about the tent anyway, so we will just spend most of our time in it.
Well, we were able to spend the whole afternoon outside of our tent. We went on a hike, started our fire, roasted hot dogs, and the kids played flashlight war with each other. It turned out to be a wonderful evening. No rain yet.
We got tucked in our beds, all snug. (actually snug is an understatement). The kids fell asleep pretty fast. After a while of Jathan and I not falling a sleep we decided that our 5 man tent was not intended for a family of six, and we were going to have to reconsider that the next time went camping. But it was fun lying there and thinking through our other camping trips. Nine years prior in the same month, our Sunday School class from Clarks Summit, PA went camping in Eastern PA. Then, it was just the two of us in that same tent. (Unless you count Paige, I was pregnant with her) We had plenty of room then. But there was certainly a contentment that came over me as I listened to the breathing of my four beautiful children sleeping. We are truly blessed.
Early in the morning the thunderstorms hit, lots of lightening, thunder and rain, but our trusty tent kept us dry. All the next morning we were in fog and it was a bit cold, but it didn't matter to us. We were together, in the outdoors. The fog kept us from looking up to the higher mountains, instead we focused more on the up close. The kids discovered a tree where a wood pecker was keeping it's winter stock of acorns. We found a mouse in a hole and enjoyed watching it nervously eat seeds around it's hole. We watched the leaves fall from the trees as the wind blew. Despite little sleep, it was a wonderful time, looking at the beauty of God's creation both the massive and the small.
Hi, my name is Melissa. My husband, Jathan, and I have 4 beautiful children, 2 by birth and 2 by adoption. Jathan is a pastor and I am a stay at home, homeschooling mom.
You will find me writing about my kids, my husband, God, adoption, homeschooling, our travels, life events and everything in between.
