Explorations

Monday holidays usually provide an easy base for educational activities. Fernando and I try to center the day around the holiday so it has a little more meaning. For example, one labor day a few years ago was spent as follows:
Labor day weekend is a chance for many to relax from the daily grind. Fernando, on the other hand, thought otherwise. He wanted to make the weekend full of labor. Luckily, he kept the kids and myself in mind when he was planning. The weekend kicked off with an early morning hike in the back trails of Black Hills Park. The trail was kind of creepy so I was glad that one could easily run the whole thing without really breaking a sweat. There were plenty of good finds though. Tiago was loving ALL the rocks and dead branches on the trail. Mia loved all the spider webs especially since there was Charlotte from Charlotte's web in everyone. We even found a cool silk worm dangling in the middle of the path. As you might notice from the pictures, the kids were already dawning their Cougar paraphernalia in preparation for the BYU game that night.
After some good neighborhood barbecuing, we headed over to watch the game in HD style on an obliging friend's big screen. Sorry if you missed it because it was awesome.
The weekend also brought a visit from my brother, sister-in-law, and their friend Josh from New York. Mia was so excited. Fernando was equally excited since my brother always was up for some good competition at anything. This weekend's competitions of choice were XBox tennis, how many sit ups in a minute, how many pull ups on a hang board, soccer, and football. Pictures are coming. To add to the fun, we picked some fresh raspberries (which were surprisingly difficult compared to other years we have done it. I think Fernando was glad.) Then used a borrowed ice cream maker to enjoy the fruits of our labor.




For Columbus Day, we focused on exploration. Breakfast was an exploration into English foods like scones and eggs Benedict. Then we watched an episode of Man vs Wild which is a particular family favorite show. Bear showed us how to survive in extreme situations while sustaining life with various bugs and jimmy rigged tools. We were going to explore a trail head in a near by park called OP Schnabel, but naps interferred with that plan. In the end, we finished the day with a trip to Wal-mart to outfit ourselves for an upcoming camping trip. Of course, we needed to have a trial run of our purchases and Fernando even tried to light a fire in our backyard to no avail. After the kids were in bed, Fernando and I watched an interesting show about Columbus and explored our eyelids with an early bedtime. I guess Columbus day can be positive.