Day 2: Plymouth and then Boston. Plymouth and the rest of Lexington and Concord.
This day the boys were up at 5:30 AM after keeping each other up until 10:30 the night before. I awoke to squealing from their room at 6:00 and walked in ready to knock some heads together. I opened the door and found them having a pillow fight. Well guess what? For once in my life I actually thought before I reacted and instead of yelling, I picked up a pillow and joined the fight! I know, it’s shocking. It’s so sad that it is shocking, but someday I WILL loosen up and these kinds of wonderful moments won’t be so few and far between. The kids were so stunned they didn’t know what to do with themselves. So naturally, I won.

After back tracking an hour to get to Plimoth Plantation, we found that Levi had a surprise for us. We discovered that rather than use the back seat beverage holder as intended, he had dumped his water bottle into the holder, hoping to…. lap it out??? Who knows. And no, I didn’t start a water fight with him, just in case you’re wondering.

Plimoth Plantation-as the Pilgrims would have known it. This was great. Actors dressed up, spoke and worked just like the Pilgrims.


Gardens

Homes

The Oven

One of the Pilgrims tried to convince us to move to Plimoth Colony and told us all about the land we’d get if we did. As we were leaving Cade said, “So can we move here, Mom?” Mmm, no. Pretty sure, NO. I like my microwave thank you very much.

Plimoth Plantation also has Indian homes as well.



We got to watch them burning out the inside of a tree to make a boat.

Next stop was Plymouth Rock which they have protected in this portico.


Sorry, the lighting was bad. Everything I heard about the rock before we came made it sound pretty uninteresting, but I thought it was plenty big and I loved seeing it.

The Mayflower II

As we drove away from Plymouth, Rock and I were discussing the fact that Plimoth Plantation was not on the actual sight of the first Plymouth Colony, but actually a few miles away and that the people there were just actors. Cade overheard this and yelled with indignation from the back seat , “You mean it was all a fake!!!!”

Next stop was Lexington Green where the ‘shot heard round the world’ was fired.

Where the line of the minutemen stood. Cade decided to memorize this quote from Captain Parker:

I’m a little behind in my blogging thanks to the storm, so here, finally, is our trip to Boston. 

My dream is to see EVERY important history sight on the East Coast and even though that is impossible, we are slowly checking the big ones off our list.  At the end of October we went to Boston.  We spent the month prior to the trip studying all about the American Revolution so the boys would be able to appreciate what they were seeing and understand its significance.   I have to say that I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.  They ate up every detail, every book and every activity we did in preparation for this trip.  They could not get enough!   By the time we left on our trip they really knew their stuff.  They were so excited to see these places from such an important time in our country’s history.  I was thrilled because one of my main goals of homeschooling is to help them understand and love their country,  its founding principles and its founding fathers. Was it an easy trip?  Nope, not with four little kids.  But I think I can say it was worth it.

The Preparations:

As part of our studies we learned about the Boston Tea Party and had our own tea party with homemade scones from the time period, hot chocolate and our own homemade candles.  I did try the real beeswax dipping process, but the instructions I got online must have been bogus because it didn’t work!  We gave up on the dipping and dumped the wax into some Styrofoam cups.  Not as authentic as I’d hoped, but the kids were happy.

Long live the king!!  ( I know, cheesy beyond belief, but so fun!)

Here is the stack of books on the Revolution that we read during our study.

The librarians think I’m a nut.  I suppose I am.  I could fill 2 laundry baskets with the books I get on each trip to the library.  But my boys are reading so voraciously now I cannot keep them in books!

They made a big timeline showing all the events leading up to the Revolution. 

It’s pretty fun, so
Here it is up close:

The French and Indian War

The Boston Massacre

Paul Revere’s Ride

The Battles of Lexington

and Concord (the North Bridge)

The Battle of Bunker Hill- “Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes!”  The boys thought this was the coolest thing ever said.  That, and Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death!”

And..

The Declaration of Independence
Note the biggest signature of John Hancock.  Also something they thought was very cool.  Reagan especially liked the idea of being a big time rebel.  Go figure.

So then it was off to Boston.  I had carefully planned out what we would see each day in what order so as to stay true to the history timeline.  Of course those plans went out the window pretty early on.  Between traffic, sight closing times and the occasional “I have to go to the bathroom but mom and dad can’t find a bathroom in suburban Connecticut” our well laid plans had to be totally changed just about every day.  Here’s what it looked like:

Day 1: Drive to Plymouth, then go to the hotel.  Drive to Lexington, then  the hotel.  (Plymouth was 5 hours away and when we realized we weren’t going to make it before it closed we had to head change course and then only had time for Lexington)

We managed to get to the Minute Man National Park in time to pick up these awesome souvenirs and walk along the path that Paul Revere took on his midnight ride. 

He’ll grow into it.

Shooting the Redcoats on the Battle road as they ran away from the Colonists.  (Reagan’s favorite part of the whole war)

 
More along the battle road, path of Paul Revere’s ride
They were very excited to be retracing Revere’s steps.  Of course I was more excited than all of them put together, but that’s beside the point.

They were dutifully respectful when we found this grave marker for two British soldiers.

Ok, really this was their first reaction:
 

Reenacting Paul Revere’s arrest right where it happened!!!  I’m sorry, this was just so cool to me.  I know some of you are just snoring, but I can’t tell you how exciting it was for me to see these places!  In his journal Reagan titled this one, “Paul Reveagan”

And then it was too dark to do anything else, so we found a Mexican restaurant to celebrate Reagan’s real 9th birthday.
I don’t know which he was more excited about, the gun or the sombrero.

Stay tuned for part II!

An earthquake and a hurricane were not enough. Nature had more fun planned for us lowly Easterners; a very early snowstorm on full leafy trees. Not a happy combo.

We managed to get our pumpkins carved just a few days before the storm hit.

I’ve talked myself out of buying those fancy pumpkin carving kits for years now and I finally gave in this year and it was the fastest, easiest and safest pumpkin carving EVER! I highly recommend them.

Here are the finished products of this year’s pumpkin fest

We also managed to get our pumpkin cookies decorated…

Little miss snitching a cookie. She took a bite before I could put the camera down.

We lit our jack-o-lanterns for ONE night and the next day it snowed 6 inches…..
took down tons of branches from most trees in our area, and knocked out power to 3 million people on the East Coast. It looked like a war zone and sounded like one too as all the tree limbs snapped and trees toppled. There were power lines down everywhere, branches and trees fell all over the roads. I wish I had gotten some pictures. The night of the storm Rock went out to do some work and couldn’t even get home there was so much debris on the roads. He had to walk the last 1/2 mile home. Thus began our 5 days without power. We were ready for a power outage back in August with the hurricane but the cold made things pretty miserable after a while.

On the first day without power, Levi snuck upstairs with the cocoa container and failed to get it back down the stairs full.

When this happened I was upset, but reasonably calm, thinking, “Hey, the vacuum will take care of this!” I then walked all the way over to the closet, hauled the vacuum up the stairs and was about to plug it into the outlet before I remembered, “DUH! WE HAVE NO POWER!” Then I was no longer reasonably calm. I still don’t think we’ve gotten it all out of the carpet.
That night when it got dark, Liberty was a little tentative about all the dark rooms. She would walk over to the dinning room and just stand in the entry way and peer into the darkness. You could see the wheels turning in her head. “Hmm, I know something is different here… can’t put my finger on it, though.” But after a day or so she was very comfortable just toddling into a room even if there was no light.

On the second day of no power we had pancakes and eggs on our Coleman stove for breakfast. Yummy! They canceled church so rather than listening to the kids run wild in the house all day we piled them in the warm car and drove all the way south of Trenton (1.5 hours away) to buy the first generator we could find. We decided that after 3 major windstorms in just 10 years we finally needed to invest in one.
Here we are piled into the van all cozy warm with our DVD player and generator.

Thanks to the generator we now had one small, warm, lit room, a working sump pump, freezer and fridge for the rest of the outage. Our house was still freezing, though, and we spent the next five days in our long underwear.

On day 3 I slipped on the basement stairs and hurt my tailbone pretty bad. Rock took pity on me and stayed home from work to help with the kids. And Halloween was postponed! since no one had power. The kids were very bummed about that. We did eventually get to go trick or treating a week late. I’ll post some pictures here soon of those.

On day 4 I attempted to homeschool and gave up after about an hour because we were all cold and none of us were really in the mood. Telling them that Abraham Lincoln learned to read without electricity didn’t seem to inspire them much and I was still in a lot of pain anyway. If it hadn’t hurt to sit I would have just read them stories all day long-they would have loved that. That afternoon my sainted visiting teacher, who had finally gotten power back, took all 4 kids to her house for a while to play.

On day 5 I was beginning to lose my mind. It really wasn’t that bad so I’m not sure why it was so hard mentally and emotionally, but it was. We were all going stir crazy I guess. The neighborhood rumble of generators was deafening, I was tired of being cold and I just wanted a light switch to work! Oh, and I wanted to be able to sleep through the night instead of being waked up every single night by one child or another because their flashlight batteries had died and they were in the pitch black. It is VERY cold at night in a house with no power and getting out of bed twice a night was getting very old! They had finally been told that on pain of death did they wake me up. They were to just close their eyes and think happy thoughts! Note to self: Buy WAY more D batteries than you think you need next time!

Just as I was separating the laundry to do at a friend’s house the lights miraculously came on. It was a miracle. Electricity IS a miracle. We use miraculous inventions every day and we take these little miracles for granted! I have now been thoroughly chastened for my ingratitude! I was almost in tears I was so relieved! I started jumping up and down and clapping and cheering and Libby thought I had lost my mind. I was so thrilled that to celebrate I made everyone’s favorite chicken noodle casserole and homemade bread-in the OVEN! Nothing has ever tasted so good. And we are all, even Levi, STILL thanking Heavenly Father for the electricity.

This last week Reagan turned the big 9.  Just one more year of single digits!  Yikes! 

Reagan has become very interested in wilderness survival and would love to live outside if he could.  He loves to fish, wants to live in a tree and cook his own food by fire.  To his extreme frustration, we are not ready to turn him lose in the great outdoors alone quiet yet.  But we decided to help him along his path to independence by getting him a compass and this…

Cade and Grandpa have something in common.  They both love birds of prey.  So we’ve been saving our trip to the Raptor Trust, a refuge for injured raptors, for when Grandpa came to visit.  I don’t know who was more excited, Grandpa or Cade.  Actually we all were amazed at the beauty and majesty of these amazing birds.

The Bald Eagle


These birds were HUGE!  I forget how truly massive they are.


Cade finally gets to see a Peregrine Falcon


The Golden Eagle 

The cages prevented many good pictures, but we saw Red Tailed Hawks, Snowy Owls, Great Horned Owls, Vultures and many other kinds of birds at very close range.  The Raptor Trust really is a very special place.  Nowhere else can you get that close to these majestic birds.

One last peek at the Bald Eagle before it was time to go.
 

We really packed in as much as we could with G&G.  We also went to see George Washington’s winter headquarters in Morristown, NJ. 



Washington’s Office

Washington’s room

For those of you who have been to Mount Vernon, this isn’t very exciting, I’m sure.  But we aren’t going to Mount Vernon till the Spring, so this was very cool! 

We also spent lots of good quality time at home with G&G


”What’s that in your ear, Liberty?”

Oooh, look what Grandpa found!

And one last fun one Grandma took of Liberty playing with Dad.

Happiness is being thrown in the air-this was taken just after.

Come back and see us soon, Grandma and Grandpa!

This last week we had more fun visitors.  Grandma and Grandpa Hymas came for 4 days.  We had the perfect Fall festival while they were here. 
In one glorious Fall day we picked apples, went to the pumpkin patch, played in the leaves and made pumpkin cookies. 

First, we learned about how pumpkins grow….

Then we headed to the pumpkin patch.

Couldn’t you just eat her up! 

”Oooh, what IS that thing?”

”Maybe I will touch it…”

”Um, could I have some help here?”

”Maybe I’ll just eat it!”

Right as we were trying to take a family picture in the patch, Reagan found this caterpillar and all thought of standing still and posing nice and sweet for mom’s picture went out the window!  We took him home and he survived a night in the car (he was forgotten there overnight) and he is now happily crawling around his new jar home.  Reagan has a thing for finding caterpillars….every time he keeps one it makes a chrysalis and I insist that it’s dead and he insists that it’s not and 3 weeks later we have a moth or butterfly. 

Our family picture never did turn out.  Oh well.

“I don’t know about this you guys…”

Next was leaf jumping…


Yes, those are snow shovels and brooms that you see.

She wasn’t very happy with me…


She started to warm up though, and we even got a smile eventually.

And to end our perfect Fall day….pumpkin cookies with Grandma!

Thanks for making our Pumpkin Day so special, G & G!

We had a fun treat last week when Monica and Mike (Rock’s sister and her husband) came to stay with us while they toured New York City. 
Saturday and Sunday we all watched conference together and they were very patient with our loud kids.
 

Liberty loves to be read to now and Monica was always willing.

The boys are always willing to have a new wrestling challenge and Mike was the biggest they’ve encountered so far.  He was hard to take down!

We finally made it to the Empire State Building while they were here. 

On the train ride into the city





We only had to stand in a short line for ESB standards, but it still took a while of weaving back and forth around the building.  But Liberty had a good time…




The view from the top!  Looking Uptown.  You can see Central Park in the background.

Wall to Wall buildings for as far as the eye can see.
 
For Dad

Looking Downtown

The Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor

Was it worth it?  Mmm, not so much.  The top of the Rockefeller Center is better.  Then you get to SEE the Empire State building AND a perfect view of Central park.  So when you come visit us, go to 30 Rock!!

Everyone else stayed in the city and I took all 4 kids home on the train by myself.  I bribed them with Krispy Kremes and a movie and we actually did ok!  As I walked onto the train people stared and gawked at us like we were a freak show.  And one wide eyed woman even said to me, “Wow, that’s a lot of kids.”  lol.  I wanted to say, “Oh this is nothing, I have 10 more at home!” 

Many homeschoolers recommend a school schedule of (about) 4 weeks on and 1 week “off” and we are trying that. I want to do more unschooling during those off weeks. No structure, just let the boys follow their curiosities. Last week was our first “off” week and they decided they wanted to decorate our house to the hilt for Halloween. So that’s what we did! Most of our decorations were made by the kids.
We turned our dinning room into a bat cave,

our living room into a gigantic spider web,


our kitchen grew a pumpkin patch,

we have ghosts hanging and hiding throughout the house,

and skeletons to scare you when you come visit.


We learned all the major bones in the body as we put our skeleton together and also learned about bats and spiders, of course.

We also fit in a spelling test….

Pudding Spelling!



Libby, can you spell MESS?

The boys discovered simple machines too…

Four weeks into school, here’s how we’re doing!

Cade is my independent learner. He learns quickly and easily and doesn’t put up a fight. He wants me to tell him what to do and then get out of his way so he can work on his own. He goes well above and beyond on most things. He wants to finish the whole spelling book as fast as he can, do all the hard math problems and last week he started writing his own “math” book to teach Reagan negative numbers. He revels in difficult things and doesn’t worry too much about his mistakes because he knows he can just keep trying. His lessons go pretty darn quick and his work does too. This week he learned the 11th and 12th Article of Faith. The kid is a master at memorization. In math I started him in Saxon 2 and that lasted for about 2 days and I skipped him up to 3. He still needs more challenge than he’s getting so he’ll be doing lots of Kahn Academy I think! Also this week he taught himself all the songs Reagan has been learning to play in piano.

Reagan is a more dependent learner.
In fact you could just take everything I just said about Cade and plug in the opposite. He would like me to sit with him to do all his work, even work he can do without me. The first words out of his mouth are often, “I can’t!” even though he is perfectly capable of doing most things. But he’s a perfectionist first born, so failure scares him. He looks for ways to do as little work as possible if it involves writing. There’s often some point at which he is scowling during every lesson. But he forgets and forgives pretty easily and within a few minutes bounces back. Everything is drama with Reagan. And nothing is ever easy. He LOVES science and history and would do those all day long if he could. He has fallen in love with reading and books on tape and actually looks forward to quiet time for the first time in his life because it means he gets to do one of those two things (or play with LEGO’s, still his biggest love). He is a mover. If he can move during any lesson, all the better. I still make him sit still for some things (just so he doesn’t forget how!) but for the most part I let him wiggle and squirm and run and jump as long as he can answer my questions. I’m trying to find as many ways as I can to make the lessons physical in nature. It is hard for me to let go of the control factor of having them sit still all the time, but that is left over from my school teacher days and when it’s just him and I in a math lesson, who cares!

Levi is learning his letters and numbers. When the big boys are doing their independent work, I work with Levi. He also likes to learn the poems the big boys are learning and if you ask him to, he’ll recite “Six ‘Wittle’ Fishies” for you. He still adores Libby and runs in to see her when I get her up from sleeping like it’s been weeks since he’s seen her. And she always gets a big smile on her face when he comes in. It warms my heart and their little “reunions” are often my favorite part of the day. He always prefers playing with Liberty to playing by himself, though much of the time now his play causes her to shriek more.

Liberty learned to walk this week. I know I said that a few weeks ago, but it wasn’t until this week that it clicked. Now she gets up and toddles wherever she can. If she falls, she just sticks that bum back in the air and hoists herself back up to standing and keeps going. She loves to put on shoes and coats or clothes of any kind. She even pulls down the dish towel and tries to drape it over herself. She’s very much a girl. And I finally can pull her hair back in a way that she doesn’t pull out constantly! Liberty just yesterday for the first time sat in my lap without moving for a whole reading of “Goodnight Moon”.

Four weeks into school and I’m not ready to throw in the towel!  Hurray for us!  We’ve had lots of ups and downs, and I won’t say it’s been easy, but I didn’t sign up for easy, so that’s ok!   The first two weeks were great and things seemed to flow pretty well.  Then last week everything came to a screeching halt-literally.  Liberty was teething and screeched all day every day.  It was Very hard to do school with all the hollering… hers and mine!  And this week she just decided she wanted more attention and screeched about that instead.   She has always been content to crawl around and explore and has been a happy independent baby.  But now that she sees others getting lots of attention I think she decided she wanted her share.  We had a really rough week because her noise made it impossible for me to concentrate while working with the others and I was grouchier with them which made them grouchier with each other.  Unfortunately it’s true-If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy (and no one can learn anything either!) 

This week we finally figured out the right timing for her and the boys.  While I do a subject with one, the other boy plays with Liberty.  She had a blast crawling all over the house, something she doesn’t usually get to do.  But with a brother trailing behind her she can climb the big stairs and play in some of the bedrooms upstairs.  She loved the freedom and was happy as a clam.  And the big brother got one on one time with Libby which is hard to come by with other brothers vying for her attention.  Everybody wins!  We also do quiet time later so as to do more of our joint subjects like history and science while she’s napping.  

This week’s field trip: Apple Picking!

We learned all about how apples grow and then we headed to the orchard.  We had a big rainstorm the night before and as we drove to the orchard, I told the boys there would probably be a lot of puddles.  Reagan’s response was, “Cool!” and then Cade said, “Coool!” and then Levi said, “Cooool!”.  (I hadn’t really meant it to be good news, but boys will be boys I guess. ) 




We went home and had apples and apple dip and apple cider for lunch!  Yummy!  The boys decided they want to make this a yearly tradition and I agree!