2009 Vacation: Day 9.5

See, I told you it was a lazy day:



We didn't do much of anything. Jen had to go to the grocery store to pick up a few things while I sat down with the oldest four and leveled up their D&D characters (8th level! Wow!).



Just before lunch, we converted the kitchen table over to a fort for a toddler war (which was a logical extension of the toddler stick fight from the day before).



After lunch, we soaked for a while in the hot tub:



And, for reasons I don't really understand, soaking in a hot tub is exhausting work. So then half of us (including me) fell asleep.


Then we decided to watch the sun set... through a telescope!



It was very pretty:



And then after dinner we had our second tooth lost on this vacation! What the what! This is unprecedented!



In the evening, we all settled down and watched the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The oldest kids and I enjoyed it. Jen went to bed early.

Kiki: Drawing Stories

I writed a story about Marney with a sky on a giant trampoline that's very squishy.  And she jumped and jumped and jumped until she got up to the sky.  Then she jumped off the trampoline.

I writed a picture about the snow and the snowflakes and Ava catching the snow.  Ava runs and runs around to catch the snow and then she jumps up and catches one of the snowflakes.

A picture of Momma sleeping and then she went down her ladder and went to her jumpy bed and then went to a jumpier bed and she jumped and jumped and jumped.  Then she climbed up her rope to get out of the room.  She didn't want to take the long way because there was stairs so she took the short way by climbing up the line.  In the room there were four beds and four pillows, one fan and one door and four girls which would be Momma.

2009 Vacation: Day 9

Change of plans and it's now a lazy day. We spent some time in the hot tub, some time leveling up D&D characters and Jen went to the grocery store. I took a nap. Tonight we're going to watch the remake of the Omen.

I'll probably have some pictures to post, but won't get to them until tonight or tomorrow.

Marney: My Alone Nana Day

My alone Nana day is coming soon and here is what I am going to do: jogging, Claires, HEB, bookstore and I am going to have a midnight snack.  And some of the kids, who are Lucy and George, are going to play with me.
I am excited because it in only in a few days.

Connor: D&D

Tonight we completed a whole book of adventures in D and D.  As Aust Sianodel, an elven duskblade, me and the rest of the team took down someone who worships the evil goddess of disease.  I knocked her down with one hit.  Then after we killed her she turned into some undead person. We took her down, but it wasn't easy. She just wouldn't die.  Before we fought her we fought a vampire who was doing experiments on some dude.  This kind of vampire was the kind you see in a really old movie.  This type of vampire called a Nosferatu which looked like something out of the movie of the same name.

Mommio: Poe Unit Study

While on our fabulous vacation in North Carolina I have had some down time to work on things related to homeschooling, primarily planning our next unit study that we will start mid-January on Edgar Allan Poe.  I decided that I will share my plans with the other toes by posting them on the blog, and it will help me with future planning to have it here too.  I have picked a Poe unit for several reasons.  First of all, our last two literature unit studies (Shakespeare and The Iliad/Odyssey) were such a huge success that I thought we should get back to another lit. based project. Secondly, the kids are all very involved in horror movies, books and games right now so I thought it would catch their interest.  And last of all, Poe was always one of my favorites to read and study and Connor has also developed quite an interest in his work...even reading it to us on car trips.  In preparation for this unit I read this book about Poe's life:

I also loaded up my kindle with this volume of Poe works, which I have glanced over a few times and intend to read some of the ones I am not familiar with later on:

I found this great study guide for middle school students to study Poe in the classroom and I am basing our unit on this study:

We will start off with a brief biography lesson on Poe for a few days using what I have read as well as this photo biography that I found:

After the introduction we will start reading various works by Poe.  The titles we will focus on for the unit are: The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death, Ligeia, Hop-Frog, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Purloined Letter, The Raven, Eldorado, Annabel Lee and The Bells.  We might also read/listen to other works but those are the ones we will study in depth by using various activities that the kids will enjoy.  Some of them include making our own book of horror tales, making our own Poe anthology (like we did with The Iliad/Odyssey), doing some readers theater, etc.  I will read some of the works to the kids out of these two books I found that are done for children with some really cool illustrations:

We will also listen to some of the works on this audio collection:

And, as I always try to do, I got this graphic novel form of Poe's work for the kids to read themselves just for fun:

I think it will be another really great study that the kids will get very excited about and I can't wait to start!

Daddio: Lucy Dog

Who would have thought that we would see Lucy Dog on Hatteras Island, North Carolina?  But we did.

We thought Nana would appreciate this.

2009 Vacation: Day 8

We left early this morning-- 8:15 am-- with the plan that we'd drive south on the barrier islands until we couldn't drive anymore, and then slowly work our way back up visiting the different museums and letterboxes along the way. The initial drive took us 65 miles south to the Village of Hatteras on Hatteras Island. There all roads dead end and if you want to go further (to Okracoke Island) you have to take drive onto a boat. So that's where we stopped.

I've mentioned this before, but this area is experiencing some very uncharacteristically cold weather. While driving south, I took pictures of where the ocean meets the sound, and how everything is in constant turmoil between the salt water and frozen chunks of ice churned up by the waves:



At the very end of Hatteras Island was the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. This is a great, quaint museum that's very tiny, but it's under construction and will soon be three times bigger than it is now. The museum is dedicated to the shipwrecks off of North Carolina's coasts and to Billy Mitchell's bombing tests which were done off the coast of Okracoke and Hatteras (to prove to the military that planes could be used to sink ships effectively).

But before we went in, there was a letterbox for us to find, and the directions started at this placard in the parking lot of the Graveyard of the Atlantic parking lot:



We found it! Marney is holding the letterbox we found (the box in my hand is our letterboxing supplies):



We filled out our information on the letterbox's journal and put our stamp in it:



And then we stamped our book with the letterbox's stamp. Pretty sweet.



This letterbox was particularly special because it had a Hitchhiker letterbox in it! A hitchhiker is a letterbox that you put in other letterboxes. When you find it you take it with you, sign off on it and then you leave it in a different letterbox. This Hitchhiker was especially cool because it was called The Battle of the Bands: Judas Priest. We took it with us. Fortunately, we had another hitchhiker we found in Texas, so we left it in the letterbox in the parking lot of the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum.



Here's a shot of seven of eight sitting on a bench outside the museum. Nothing special going on here, just a cute shot. Did I mention is was around 25 degrees, and 5 degrees with windchill?



The museum was cool even if it was small. They found the recently (2002) rediscovered lenses of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Here's how stupid I was- I never even thought about the fact that lighthouses would use lenses to make the light more easily viewable.



There were plenty of displays that the kids liked, here they are looking at all the different types of nautical knots. We committed ourselves after looking at this to teach ourselves how to tie some really cool knots when we get home.



Here's everyone looking at another display. I've included this because I think it's the only picture that included Jen that was taken all day.



A giant bell. The bell was cool, but it sucked that they wouldn't let us ring it. Look... I get it, right? I understand why you don't want people ringing the bell. But we were the first visitors that even came to this isolated museum since December 24-- couldn't they just let us ring the bell? Apparently not.



This was the coolest thing I saw all day that no one else cared about. Do you realize what you're looking at here? This is an actual Enigma Machine recovered from a German U-Boat. These were the code encrypting/decrypting devices used in World War II. A real life Enigma Machine. That is so cool, I can't even begin to tell you.



After the museum we stopped to find another letterbox in area shown in the following picture. Unfortunately, the area where it was hidden had recently been washed away and the letterbox was gone.



But it was worth it to go looking anyways because we found this cool, tiny graveyard! These are the graves of Capt. Stephen D. Barnett and his wife Rebecca. They died in 1833 and 1859 respectively.



While we were looking for that letterbox, Jen and the other kids played at this play area which looked relatively new. It was cool because the substrate was shredded tires.



We got back in the car and went in search of our third letterbox for the day. We ended up winding through some beach houses on a tiny public beach access path to get there. There was this pier that was falling apart. I know it would be incredibly unsafe, but I would love to get out on that pier.



Hey! We found this one too! We left a second hitchhiker (not the Judas Priest one) that we brought from Texas in this one too.



To get to our next letterbox, we had to first stop at the Billy Mitchell airstrip. Surprisingly, there's no security here and we were able to just walk out on to the tarmac and look at the planes. We got some shots with them, but this is the best one. Remember this plane.



We drove a little farther and found our trail for our letterbox. Seriously, though, did I mention that it was cold?



We found it! I declared it lost, but then (as often happens), Jen took the directions and looked around. She points to a tree trunk and commands, "Look there." Mmmmm-hmmmmm.  Of course, the kids look there and there's the letterbox.



Whatever. You know what's more awesome than me being humiliated for my stupidity? A toddler stick fight.

TODDLER STICK FIGHT!



Here we are stamping up the journals of this last letterbox.



Next we drove to the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. On the way, we drove back past the Billy Mitchell airstrip and people were getting that same red plane ready for flight.

When we got to the lighthouse, we sat Van Go and ate lunch.



Here's the lighthouse with 9 of 10 standing in front.



The lighthouse displays and stuff were really, really lame. It was especially disappointing because it was a national park set-up, not some weak state park or something. The main "visitor's center" was nothing more than a stupid souvenir shop.



They had a display in the Lightkeeper's House, but it was tiny and really weak. So weak that I didn't include any pictures of it. Here's a shot of all the kids at the base of the lighthouse. While I was taking this picture, that red plane was circling us overhead.



Here I am holding the lighthouse in my hand. PSYCH! Just kidding, man! It's all a trick of perspective! God, I can't believe you fell for that!



After the lighthouse, there was a series of letterboxes (6 of them) that you had to hike into Buxton Woods to find, which is in the same area as the lighthouse. But when we followed the instructions on how to get to the entry to the woods (for all six letterboxes) you have to cross private property on a dirt road... with giant sings that say "PRIVATE PROPERTY" and "NO TRESPASSING." So we abandoned those. But I was pretty irritated because you should never leave instructions for a letterbox that require you to trespass, that's one of the big no-nos. Bad form, man. Bad form.

All the same, the day was getting long and we'd only finished half the things we wanted, so we decided to go home and we'll come back on Wednesday and finish the rest of the places we wanted to visit, including the life-saving station at Chicamacomico (which is the Algonquin word for sinking sands)-- which is important because you need to try to say it. It's so much fun to say. We repeated that over and over and over on the ride home. Chicamacomico. Ha!



We got home at 3pm, which is enough time for everyone to calm down before playing D&D tonight. Just to tie up all the loose letterboxing ends, here's a shot of the other stamps we got today.



Tomorrow: Fort Raleigh!

2009 Vacation: Day 7.5

While the rest of us eat hot dogs and oven-baked fries for dinner, when it's your birthday you get McDonalds! At 5pm, Marney and I went to McDonalds and got her 2 crispy chicken snack wraps, a large fry and a large coke. She was in heaven.



Then it was time for cupcakes and ice cream!



Once again, she refused to tell anyone her wish, for fear that it wouldn't come true.



Everyone had a good time and ate cupcakes and chocolate ice cream.



Marney originally wanted to play games tonight (specifically- Yahtzee and Poo!), but then asked if she and Ava could have alone time to watch the Hannah Montana marathon this evening. We reluctantly agreed, so everyone else just kind of did whatever they wanted. I watched football (desperately hoping for some teams to lose so Houston could get into the playoffs) while Gabe played solitaire.



That's it for today- tomorrow we go in search of lighthouses.