In N Out, Up and Down

Today was Smunch's class's field trip to supplement their "Producers and Consumers" unit . So, where did they go?Well, In-N-Out Burger, of course!

Truth be told, I'd never set foot in an In-N-Out Burger before. Likely as not, I'll never set foot in one again (unless Mam does this same field trip). It's not exactly the kind of food I "approve" of. But it was a super cute field trip.

They all got In-N-Out hats. They got to see the 50-pound bags of potatoes, boxes of tomatoes, boxes of soda syrup. Then they got to cut their own french fries (as Smunch is doing in the above photo, courtesy of my cell phone). That was a big highlight!

After that, they got to order whatever they wanted from the menu. It was 10am, so the sight of a bunch of 8-year-olds with burger and fries was pretty funny. Smunch only ate a few fries. he was more excited about getting lemonade from the soda machine.

I'm fine with that.

First Graders at Filoli

Filoli is a somewhat local estate, famous primarily for its mansion and surrounding gardens. That alone made several moms in Smunch's class interested in chaperoning the field trip this week. Of course, we didn't get to go in the house...or the gardens...but who knew it was also a beautiful open space?So instead of some fancy kind of tour, we took a two-mile hike through a bunch of neat little microclimates/ecological zones. Just enough stuff to keep a bunch of first graders interested. We didn't get to see the manicured gardens, but there were plenty of flowers out in the meadow.And there were some beautiful, majestic oaks to marvel at.The docent introduced the kids to the trees, poison oak, thistles and hemlock as I snapped away with my camera.We headed from the meadow into the creekside riparian habitat and up the hill...The kids looked for water skaters... and got to visit with a banana slug. So many fantastic photos to take along the way...Smunch was happy. All that letterboxing probably paid off. Even though it was a pretty long hike, I didn't hear him whine once. With so much to see and so many places to stop and look at things, most of the kids were pretty happy. Just glad to be outside for a change. It's the time of year for irises in the forests around here. They were lovely, but so were the little pink flowers and the woodland violets.Although our docent and hike guide referred to this guy as "some kind of caterpillar", I'd beg to differ. This little fella is a yellow-spotted millipede. And these are some of the coolest little pink mushrooms/fungi I've ever seen. They looked just like Mam had spilled some of her treasures out there in the woods. There were stories from other groups who saw newts or snakes or got to visit the gardens with their docent, but all-in-all, I think we had a really successful trip. No one came home with poison oak or a new pet banana slug. Everyone had a fun time getting out and walking around. What more could you ask for?

A Day on the Farm

Unlike most of the classes at Mam's school, her "Innovative" class gets to go on a few field trips this year. Of course, it's a preschool, so that means that a whole bunch of parents have to go...to drive and herd cats. Last week, they went to a local working farm.

I'd been to this farm before, but I'd never been on one of their tours. Our tour guide, Erin, was everything you could possibly ask for in a tour guide for a bunch of preschoolers at an organic farm...cute, perky, granola-y, fun. The kids got to try several things from the garden - lettuce, apple, rhubarb, flowers - they each picked out a pumpkin to take home, went in with the goats and sheep, got to check for eggs and feed the chickens and got to scratch the back of a very appreciative pig.Although this trip messed with our daily schedule, since it was in the morning and Mam's class is usually in the afternoon, it was tons of fun. Who knew?

Preschoolers in the Dairy Department

On Thursday, Mam's "innovative" preschool class took a field trip. The rest of the kids at school are never lucky enough to go on field trips, so this was a big deal. They got to go for a behind-the-scenes tour of the grocery store across the street. But first, the kids got to play in Mam's favorite area, the "far yard".
Here's Mam with her partner, Aeryn. How cool is that spelling? Of course, she'll be spelling it a lot, so hopefully she thinks it's cool too.I wonder how much the janitorial staff likes it when the tour guides ask all the kids to feel the cold freezer doors with their grubby little fingers.Mam enjoyed the dairy section where so many of her favorite foods reside. The kids got a demonstration of the box crusher in the back and the freight elevator. The guy in the seafood area even let them all touch one of the live lobsters.The kids got lots of treats on the way. Mam ate three (three!) mini sausages. Are you kidding? That's meat, you know! They got grapes in the produce department, cheese in the deli department and brownies at the bakery. I can't say I get really excited about the grocery story, but it was fun to see the kids all excited about it.

Letterboxing

About a month ago, I was eavesdropping on an after-school conversation between two of the other moms with kids in Smuch's class. One of them was describing an activity that her family sometimes does, called letterboxing. It sounded interesting and since we've got a lot of time to kill this week and because I really needed to get out of the house yesterday, I thought we'd give it a try.

In a nutshell, people who do letterboxing have hidden packages all over the country...all over the world, really. Then they post clues to finding the packages on the letterboxing website. Each package minimally contains a rubber stamp and a notebook. If you're just starting out, like we are, you go online, check for clues to letterboxes in your area and then set out with your own stamp and notebook to find them. When and if you find the letterbox, you stamp your own notebook with the stamp in the letterbox...


and then put your own stamp, name, and date in the letterbox notebook.


Yesterday was cold and windy, so when I took the kids out to a local park, we followed the instructions, walking and walking. Naturally, the kids refused to wear their sweaters, so we were all freezing. In the end, I'm pretty sure we found the location, but the letterbox wasn't there anymore. We got our three freezing butts back to the car as fast as we could.

When we got home, I did a little better job with doing my homework on the letterboxes and selected two possible series of boxes we could go in search for. Both of them had updates relatively recently, so I figured our chances were pretty good. We set out again after lunch, to look for a series of three letterboxes at a nearby (very busy) open space preserve. Still cold. Still windy, but at least I got them to wear their coats! The first letterbox, again was MIA, but the second was our very first success. The kids were so excited. We did our stamping and put it back carefully. The third, missing again.

It turned out that Daddy was a little disappointed that we went letterboxing without him, so we set out on a mission to find the other series (of five boxes) today...back to the same park where our first failure occured. Our trip started out like this - in an empty, overgrown, overflow parking lot for the nearby amphitheatre. And off we went.






It took a while to get to the location in the first clue, but we got there. It wasn't exactly obvious, but with a little effort, we found it!





These boxes were only put out there about a month ago, so I thought we had a pretty good shot at finding a few, but we found them all! These folks found some pretty good hiding places too.


On the whole, we bit off a bit more than we could chew with this one. It involved about five miles of walking, I figure. We ended up stopping for lunch after box #3 and the whole trip took more than three hours. I'm not sure how Daddy's shoulders are going to be feeling by tomorrow.


There's nothing exactly mystical or meaningful behind searching for letterboxes, but it's a great way to motivate the kids to get out in the great outdoors. They've walked an awful lot in the past two days and they say they're up for more tomorrow!

Bowled Over

The day after the day after Christmas (no, that's not a typo. I mean two days after Christmas), at a loss for something to do, we decided to try out the new, swanky bowling alley at one of the local malls. Did you ever think you'd see "bowling alley" and "swanky" in the same sentence? Neither did I. This one is called Strike and it's part hip, new bowling alley, part night club. You know this because the place is so poorly lit, all the bowling pins glow under black light and no one under 21 is allowed in after 9pm.

But it was the middle of the afternoon, so we didn't have much concern about that. Turns out, we should have been concerned, but more about the astronomical price of bowling than the clientele. Actually, the hooker-esque Santa dresses on the female employees were pretty suspect too. Very short, very low cut, fishnet stockings. Between that and their fabulous "holiday pricing", we should have turned around and high-tailed it out of there, but the kids were so excited to be there and we're suckers...even at $35/hr and $5 for each pair of shoes we had to borrow and that'd be...uh...four. Right. No pro bowlers around here.

Each lane even has its own waiter to bring you doubtlessly overpriced food while you play. Besides, if you have to eat, it'll take you longer to play. Cha-ching!

Honestly, the kids' enthusiasm almost made this very expensive little venture worthwhile. And the place has some really cool features, like retractable bumpers on the lanes that you can program to come up only for certain players (like the kids) and a portable "chute" that the kids can roll the ball down to get it moving in the lane. They loved that. And Mam jumped up and down like an insane whirling dervish every time she knocked even a single pin down.

Smunch was similarly thrilled...especially since he kicked all our butts with an astonishing 168 score. So, he had bumpers and a chute. So what?

We'll be going back to our regular, dirty ol' bowling alley next time around. I'm still blown away that we paid $50 to bowl for 45 minutes. We won't go back and I won't recommend Strike to anyone else, but it was fun.

Butterflies on the Beach

I'd been looking for an opportunity to go to Santa Cruz and see the monarch butterflies this year. The migrate to a particular eucalyptus grove there every winter and I'd never taken the kids. So, the Sunday before Christmas, Daddy and I packed the kids in the car and headed South.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, but it was cold and it hadn't really warmed up enough for the butterflies to get going when we got there...and apparently they leave around the end of December these days, when they used to stay until February. So, there weren't all that many. No long bunches of butterflies looking like dead leaves dripping off the trees. Just a bunch of orange and black butterflies fluttering around...but only a couple hours after we arrived.The kids were thrilled just to look at the chilly little butterflies that couldn't get off the ground.

Fortunately, the place is also right on the beach, so we went down to the beach for a while, where the kids were happy to play in the sun and the sand, collecting shells, making sand castles and generally running amok. I, on the other hand, wandered up and down the beach looking for interesting photos to take. I ended up with a couple of pretty cool ones. Too many to bore you with here, but here's a small sample:





After a while on the beach, we set off over the rocks to the tide pools. The tide was still going out, but there were some interesting pools already, mostly with lots of sea anemones. The kids were pretty excited to have a sea anemone "suck" on their fingers. There were a few missteps and sodden socks and shoes, but nothing quite compared to my looking over the rock ledge at the field of mussels clinging to the rocks, only to hear Daddy yell "Wave!" I had enough time to turn my back and make a feeble attempt to protect the camera. The camera survived. My clothes were a different story.

You can't tell just how drenched I was - from heels to hair - in this photo, a rare one of me with the kids. I usually spend all the time taking the photos, but I'd handed the camera over to Daddy after my little mishap.

Thankfully, I keep the ol' mommymobile in a terrible mess, which means there are almost always some spare clothes in there somewhere. I had to live with my wet jeans, but I found a new sweater and we headed back to see the butterflies, which were now flying around, before making our trek home. Unfortunately, you can't really take decent photos of butterflies flying around in the sky! All in all, a very blog-worthy day, if just for the photos!

First Field Trip

Last week...or was it the week before? I'm really behind here. Anyway, Smunch got to go on his very first field trip without Mommy. The kindergarten class went to a local farm where they got to sample persimmons and mint plant, touch a sheep and pick out a pumpkin to take back to school with them for an as yet undisclosed project. Smunch had an awesome time and came back really excited. His favorite part?



If it hadn't been for everyone else getting off at the farm, I'm guessing he might have stayed on the bus the whole time...just because it was fun. And the seats were "so soft!" And yeah, I was surprised they didn't take a plain ol' school bus too.

Still, he had lots of exciting things to say about the farm too and he was very pleased with his pumpkin. Here he is with his group from the trip, his classmates, Reilly and Carter, who are twins and no bigger than my little guy. I'm always thankful for just how many children of smaller stature (is that the PC term?) are in his class. He fits right in!

If life was a beach...

our family would always be as happy and relaxed as we are when we visit Torrey Pines State Beach with AK and her family. I don't know why we always leave beach-going to the last day of our trip. We all have such a good time that I usually wind up wishing we could do it again...rather than packing everyone back up in the car and driving a bazillion hours back home.

Smunch loved playing in the water and the sand, but got a little nervous about the waves. He mostly just puttered around in the surf, but was happy that way.

In characteristic fashion, Mam was completely fearless, asking over and over to go back in the water and play in the waves with Daddy. But she also had a grand time playing with her cousin in the sand.



Spencer, by the way, easily takes after his younger cousin, with no fear whatsoever about the water. And he had a grand time crawling around in the surf with his uncle.



As a highlight of our trip to the beach, we were visited by a pod of bottle-nosed dolphins who swam by, maybe 50 yards off the shore. I missed the one that jumped out of the water, but we had a great view of them out there. So cool to see something out in the ocean that you normally just see at Sea World...especially on a trip where you didn't even got to Sea World!