yosemite sam

after spending two hours on line and trying to get through on the phone I finally managed to book a campsite for yosemite for our vacation. It was one of the most frustrating experiences I have had in a long time. Everytime I would get through to the accept transaction step the site would time me out even though I had not spent more than 10 minutes on the site. The site was so slow to load as well. I was so frazzled that sam kept bringing me chocolates to help!! It was worth it in the end though because now we have a reservation. Sam is very excited about going and keen to get rock climbing and hiking. They also have stables there and is equally excited about the prospect of going on a trail ride. Must try and get him a few riding lessons before we go so that he knows how to sit on a horse and isn't too sore.
Booking the site was the focus of our day really. We also went for a walk, played hot wheels, did laundry and played dino park again. Somehow I am always relagated to the ticket taker. not sure I fancy visiting the park though as the bus is usually driven by playmobil cats and dinos are allowed to roam free. he has certainly started being more imaginative in his play in the last few months-even if it does involve feeding his playmobil horses to his fluffy t-rex!! in fact he amused himself all the way home on the train last night by setting up museum and bringing it to life. I then had to solve the mystery ( I think we watch too much scooby doo)

It was back to normals this week and sam seemed as keen as I to get back into the rythmn of things. We seem to be marching through the read alouds so am searching around for more good chapter books. Have two on the way about the Iditarod which we will be following and doing a project on. Sam is excited as we have almost finished kindergarten science and will be starting first grade science next week. I am going to reinstitute the weekly experiments as I got a bit lax at the end of the year. Sam enjoys them so much and as one of my goals this year is to make our home ed experience more fun then back they come. our next young scientists club box should be here soon. We are also catching up with SOTW and are looking at ancient africa at the moment. several good ideas to try out, including a recipe or two.

Sam really enjoyed both home ed groups on friday. In the morning it was the main EO group where we did experiments with light and color and in the afternoon it was mudpud at activity world. Needless to say he was shattered by the end of the day.

Yesterday we went to london to celebrate M's bday. We wandered around covent garden before heading over to the scienc and natural history museums. We treated M to an IMAX movie for his bday . We saw Aliens of the Deep and the boys loved it. I prefered the space one we saw last year. We were all so pooped that we headed home about 4 and all had an early night.

Today is M's bday but he has had to work. Hopefully next year we will get to celebrate with him.