I'm baaack

Well vacation is over and I am still finding myself tired. It's funny I went to Germany twice a few yrs back and the time difference didn't bother me one bit. Everyone was a bit astounded I could get acclimated so quickly. This time we only had a two hour change and here it is two days after coming home and I am finding myself tired in the morning. And I'm one of those absurd morning people. Guess my age is catching up to me, lol.

We had such a great time. We did almost everything on our list. The only thing we didn't get to do was to eat at "Lady and Sons". My little chef ,colin, would have loved it but we went there at lunch time and they were booked till 9:15 that evening. We were going to try again but opted to head over to Hilton Head Island instead.

I tell you vacation is the best starting point for ideas on the next school year, Everyone should do it. We went to so many places and we spent quite a bit of time with Chris's side of the family. My mind just went crazy for the things we could study based on this trip. I estimate it could potentially take half the yr if not the whole yr.

Favorites among our family were the Dolphin tour and the beach. My personal ones were the historical places like Ft. Sumnter, Ft. Pulaski, Charles towne landing and old historical savannah. The historical part of savannah just about had me in tears. It is beautiful and to think about the pride of workmanship that went into building and how long it took back then is just amazing. It reminded me so much of Germany with it's old buildings that you just can't help but be in awe of. I have never been that into history, all those boring history teachers in school killed it for me. It was just never that interesting but being there and seeing it gives me a different perspective and I apreciate what people did then and want to learn about them too. I guess being a hs'er is getting me to like some subjects I didn't before. The dolphin tour was really cool. After learning where we could find dolphin's I was a bit upset at the "tour". Did you know that to find dolphin's just find a shrimp boat, when they discard the unwanted stuff they caught the seagulls and dolphins swarm the boat getting their fill for the day.

We spent a good bit of time at the beach and the boys literally went in when we got there and came out when we had to leave. They are definetly beach babies. The thought that kept going through me was you can read about the beach and it's diverse ecosystem but there is nothing like acutally being there and experiencing it, and it sticks so much better. So even hanging out at the beach was very educational. We found shells, conk shells, sea snails, jelly fish, horseshoe crabs, hermit crabs and even a sand dollar.

I have a gazillion pictures and we had them all put on disk but for some reason when I downloaded them they duplicated and got all wierd. So I have a few fuzzy versions and like 5 copies of the nice one. It is taking forever for me to go through them and erase the ones I don't need so it will be easier for me to make a slideshow, that I hope to share soon.

Oh one more thing, my boys love the junior ranger program and did it at Ft. Sumnter. I learned that if you are not able to actually go to the park itself you can still participate in the junior ranger program. They have a web junior ranger program. I love this program and how lovely to find that we can go to the parks virtually. It will be a wonderful addition to our homeschool. We have done junior rangers for some yrs now but somehow I never saw they did it online, perhaps its a recent venture. Sometimes the best things seem to escape me somehow. http://64.78.32.69/webrangers/
After playing around a bit on the webrangers page it isn't designed as I thought. You don't go to each park you do activites based on people, history, parks, animals, nature, science and puzzles. You may learn about a few parks at once. It is still really neat plus as I learned at the Great Sand Dunes some parks have great curriculums if you visit the parks sites.
http://www.nps.gov/

Vanessa