Watch out! Julia and Ben are now practicing ninjas! We recently discovered a class offered at a local gym that offers the kids a chance to try out all kinds of equipment along the lines of what you'd find on the show American Ninja Warriors. There are rope walls, balancing boards, lots of different equipment to hang and swing from, climbing equipment, jumping platforms, etc. And they basically get to show up and try it all out.
The instructor helps them a bit if they're not sure how to use a piece of equipment and they ask but otherwise he just lets them explore and use their imaginations and muscles. We've only gone a couple of times so far but it has been a huge hit with these two!
Here's Ben climbing the rope ramp. The first week he barely made it above the incline at the bottom. His second week he made it all the way to the top and rang the bell. Four times! Of course, I didn't get a video of one of those times but this one shows you the idea!
And while Ben was conquering the rope ramp, Julia was mastering a jump to a swinging driftwood bar. And she made it!
I'm pretty sure this class will be in our regular schedule next year!
Which egg replacer works best? This is the question Julia and Ben set out to answer in the science fair project this year.
They tested four options (applesauce, commercially-made egg replacer, aquafaba (the liquid leftover from cooking chickpeas), and ground flax seed) in their baked good of choice: traditional Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies. All in all they ended up baking 8 batches of cookies, 4 for our initial taste taste with families members and 4 to bring to the fair because they decided it wasn't fair to display a project about chocolate chip cookies without offering people some!
They hypothesized that the egg replacer would work the best as it is specifically made for that purpose.
The actual results varied. Our first taste test had a clear winner - the aquafaba. In those batches the cookies were significantly different from batch to batch. But the second time around, the cookies from all four replacers were similar and the egg replacer won by a couple of votes. We think the difference between the two experiments was the outside temperature - the first time it was a moderate 60-something degrees. The second? Around 90.
Either way, we now know our top 2 replacers and we all got to eat a lot of chocolate chip cookies. So no complaints here!
The kids presented the project at the ENRICHri Science Fair which Andrew helped run. He did a fabulous job turning the fair into an interactive event with activities, experiments, and demonstrations to give the kids a hands-on experiment.
Ben was quite thrilled with an experiment to build a boat out of aluminum foil and see how many pennies it can hold before it sinks. His design was very simple. It was so simple, in fact, that the adults standing around were all thinking that it would sink with the first penny. But we all watched in amazement as he kept adding coins.
A few people asked me if we had already done the experiment at home, but we hadn't and when asked Ben just said that he thought about it and decided that if there were more room for the pennies and they were spread out, it could hold more. It ended up holding about 200! It would have held more but towards the end he was piling all the coins in the center rather than spreading them out and the middle finally sank. He was ecstatic with his result and the rest of us were very impressed with his engineering mindset!
A little peek at the progress Ben has made in his swim lessons this year. His freestyle form has come a long way!! He also loves backstroke, can tread water for 1-2 minutes, and is mastering diving. We have another fish!
The clubhouse got a little makeover this year! The kids and I decided that they needed a cozy spot outside to hole up and play. But the clubhouse had been taken over with winter storage of hoses, outdoor furniture, and spider webs. So we put our gloves on, got out the brooms, and got to work.
And after some emptying out, cleaning up, and raiding the basement for supplies we ended up with this:
The next morning it was already being used as a Pokemon game room. Should be some fun summer times!
We finished out this school year with the 16th century and reading about Elizabethan England and Shakespeare. And one of our books, The Shakespeare Stealer, mentioned a game we had never heard of, Nineholes.
Of course, Benjamin, being our resident gamer, immediately picked up on it and asked what it was and how it was played. We looked it up and it's a really fun variation on tic-tac-toe. Actually, more fun, if you ask me.
From there we also learned a few other variations. including the Tapatan, a game from Philippines, and Len Choa, a game from Thailand! Ask Ben about them next time you see him!
Julia's second violin recital was this past weekend. She played May Song and Song of the Wind and had a very special guest accompany her, Dad. They were great! But of course, she hasn't stopped talking about how he was the one who messed up! (In his defense, he had a very damaged finger!)
Still can't really believe this happened (based on Andrew's prior opinion about pets) but we dogsat Fozzie and Lola for a few days last week!
This was in the car when we were bringing them to our house. You'll note Andrew's wary but "I'll go along" expression. It turns out we all really enjoyed having them around! Even Andrew. Even after they slept in our bed for two nights. Go figure!
Our drive from Novato to Mendocino took a little over 3 hours along twisty mountain roads. Julia ended up a little carsick but thankfully that was towards the very end of the journey and was forgotten as soon as we pulled into our hotel.
The hotel itself was like a little slice of paradise on the Pacific Coast. It was nestled among gorgeous gardens overflowing with spring flowers and had the most comfortable sheets I have ever slept in and a beautiful indoor salt water pool. And they left delicious, vegan, chocolate chip cookies in our room each day! It was also only 2 minutes from the seaside town of Mendocino and a short 15 minute drive to Fort Bragg, home of Glass Beach.
It was close to dinner time when we arrived so we headed to a local pizza place for dinner and then back to the hotel for a quick swim before bed.
relaxing on the deck
view from the deck
ready for a swim
Julia's heaven
Then the day Julia had been waiting for finally arrived! First item of business on Saturday morning was to find Glass Beach! And we did, though not quite as easily as we had planned. When we arrived we tried following a couple of different paths to different areas of the beach but none were quite what we expected. There were people down below the cliffs, quite a few abalone fishermen and some folks beachcombing but we couldn't figure out how they got there. Until we watched for awhile and we realized that we had to ignore the tall fence standing between us and the cliffs and brave the climb. It turns out that the staircase that led visitors down to the main portion of the beach was destroyed during heavy rains a couple of months ago. So the only way to access the portion of Glass Beach that is truly covered in glass was a trip down the cliffs. It wasn't too bad and once we reached the bottom we were so glad that we had done it! We were ankle deep in sea glass.
glass beach
beachcombing
She made it!!
Julia declared that it exceeded her expectations! And we were all a little stunned by it actually. We spent quite a while searching the beach and finding unusual pieces. The next day we returned and even saw a few seals frolicking in the cove.
just a little excited!
From Glass Beach we headed back to the hotel for breakfast (also vegan and I was the only one in the family who enjoyed it - oh well) and then to Mendocino for some browsing and a picnic lunch.
not a bad view!
the cherry chomper
After fortifying ourselves we made our way to Russian Gulch State Park to hike through another redwood forest to a waterfall.
we loved these redwoods growing out the stumps of the previous tree
our destination!
3 miles down, 3 miles to go!
his Pikachu hat turned pouch held Benjamin treats (aka gummy bears) to keep the motivation up
We survived the hike! It ended up being a bit more strenuous than we expected and we were all ready for a dip in the pool when we returned.
The next day was Mother's day and we enjoyed breakfast at a local Wizard of Oz themed diner before heading back to Glass Beach for a last look, taking a final swim, and then heading back through the mountains to the city and our flight home the next day. We were all a little sad for the vacation to be over. Julia especially did not want to return home and declared that she is going to live in the city of San Francisco later in life!
