Our Family

Our Family

Monday, November 30, 2015

Sea World 2015

We went to visit my mom and dad for Thanksgiving.  They live about 40 miles from all of the "attractions" near Orlando.  Last time we went to Florida, we stayed at Disney for a few days but did not have an opportunity to go to Sea World and many of the children have never been.  I love Sea World and since the children have such a fascination with animals and going to zoos and aquariums really wanted to take them.  My husband was agreeable so mom, Art, and I loaded up the children one day and told them we were going to a surprise.

I had looked at tickets online and weekday online tickets were $70 compared to $99 buying them at the gate, so I purchased them online and loaded them onto my phone.  We did not need to print anything out, they just scanned my phone.  Since we were less than on hour from the park and I wanted to keep the day as inexpensive as possible after spending so much on tickets, we packed a picnic lunch and waited until 10:30 to leave.  We ate in the van after we arrived and headed into the park which gave us about 6 hours before they closed.

Even though it was the day before Thanksgiving it was not terribly crowded.  It rained on us a little but it does that in Florida (ask my 10 year old he'll tell you all about the weather there!) We did not get to see and do everything, but we did the things that were most important to everyone.

The first thing we saw were flamingos.  My children love flamingos and Anthony told everyone facts that he had learned by watching Wild Kratts.





The sting rays were really neat.  I bought some food do the children could feed them, but they got scared!  Except for Alex, it didn't bother him at all.






Then we headed towards the dolphins.  This is the one place that I was very disappointed in.  When we were at Sea World in 2006 you could go the whole length of the dolphin pool to view the dolphins.  If you were there at certain times you could buy food and feed the dolphins.  Now they have the pool blocked off so you can only be at the far end of the pool in a very small area.  The other side they only allow people who pay extra for a dolphin encounter, and this side of course is where the dolphins stay.  But we did get to see them and got some pictures.








Next we saw the manatees and sea turtles.  The children thought the manatees looked like giant balloons.




 Then we saw the alligators.


It was almost time for Clyde and Seamore's Sea Lion High Show so we headed over to the arena. We loved the show!  It was so much fun to watch!














We had just enough time when that show ended to get over to the One Ocean show.  That one was really good too although I think the children enjoyed the other one more.







The children kept asking about rides which surprised me because I didn't think they would want to ride.  I had forgotten about the area that had some children's rides but we were very close to it when we came out of the show so instead of hurrying back to try and catch the dolphin show, we went into the children's area (Shamu's Happy Harbor) and so they could ride and play.  Even Anthony who will not ride rides went in the big play area and on the boat with the rope climb.

I didn't get pictures of everything, but I did get a few.

Such a good big brother!

Emmie is beside Art.  It was her first roller coaster ride

Lily is beside my mom



Then we headed to the shark encounter which was very hard to take pictures of while you are trying to look at everything!  It is very cool though.  You are on a moving conveyor belt while all of the animals swim around you.








By then it was 4:00.  Alex really wanted to ride one of the big roller coasters, The Kraken.  So we headed over there and he got in line with his daddy.  The wait time on it was a little long, about 30 minutes and by the time we had gotten over there and they rode it was 4:45.  Mom took the children into some of the shops but Alex and I had not had a chance to look at anything so we went in a few more shops as we were making our way back towards the way out.  We walked out of the park at 5:20.  By then everyone was tired and hungry!

The only things we wanted to do that we missed was the dolphin show and Antarctica: Empire of the Penguin.  That one had a pretty long line the whole time we were there.

It was a great day!


Saturday, November 28, 2015

Homeschool Wrap Up Week 12

 I'm a week late on this post.  I intended to have this written last Friday along with a few others so that they would post while I was gone, but I didn't make it.  My dad finished his radiation treatments November 20th and since they would not be able to come out here at all for the holidays, we decided we would take a trip out there to see them the week of Thanksgiving.  It takes us 2 days of driving to get there so we were only able to be there 4 full days.   I had a lot going on during the week and did not get any posts written and the whole time we were gone I did not answer emails or do anything on the computer at all.  I have a bit of catching up to do, but better late than never!

Week 12 in Our Homeschool


P.E.-We had some illness that caused us to miss some of our morning school work so we only did P.E. two days and did lessons 47 and 48 in Family Time Fitness.

Bible- We completed Lesson 8 of Grapevine Old Testament 1.

Read Aloud- We read chapters 9-11 in God's Secret Agent.

History- In The Mystery of History Vol IV Nick and Alex completed lessons 28,29, and 30 on Famous Abolitionists, Hudson Taylor and the Taiping Rebellion, and Florence Nightingale.  They completed the worksheets, memory cards, and timeline figures.

Science- We started Chapter 6 in Exploring Creation with Anatomy and Physiology.

My Father's World Adventures- In history we started reading about George Washington.  Our new read aloud is Sarah Whitcher's Story which I have never read before.  In science we learned about the seasons.

Math- Everyone completed lesson 11 in their Math U See books.

Grammar/Lit/Writing- Anthony, Christian, and I worked on a story sequence chart for and rewrote the story.  In Fix It! Grammar 1 and 2 we finished lesson 16.  Nothing new for Nick or Alex this week.

Reading/Spelling-Anthony and Christian finished Step 8 in AAS Level 2.  In All About Reading Level 3 they finished Lesson 8.  Lillian finished lesson 27 in All About Reading Level One.  Alex completed lesson 10 in the Phonetic Zoo.

Horizon's Preschool-Emmie has finished up to lesson 64 in Horizon's Preschool.  She did a lot of worksheets over the week-end and one evening when she asked for more school work to do.

Other Activities This Week:

Monday the girls had gymnastics.

Tuesday we packed our Operation Christmas Child boxes.





Wednesday I ran Christian in to the doctor.  He wasn't running a fever, but he has had sinus congestion and a cough for several weeks that would not go away.  He had not been to the doctor in 4 years!  He did prescribe an antibiotic.  Wednesday afternoon we had the last Kid's Club until January.

Thursday I did massive amounts of laundry trying to get us ready for our trip!

Friday we packed and cleaned.  I was also Alex's birthday.  He wanted to make his own birthday cake, a triple decker strawberry!




Lily wanted a gift bag to put a present she made Alex in, but we didn't have one so she made one.




We also made a cute little foam turkey craft that I found at Dollar Tree.



While I was packing and a few of the children were napping, I told these two to find something quiet to do and I found them reading a book together sounding out all of the words.  Very sweet!

First thing Saturday we loaded up and drove 8 hours, spent the night in a hotel and then drove 9 hours the next day finally arriving at my parents house in Florida.  We had a nice visit.  While we were there we saw Charlie Brown at the movies, celebrated my mom's birthday, and Thanksgiving, and took the children to Sea World ( I am writing a separate post about that!)  My dad has some healing to do after but hopefully after a week or so he will start to improve.  I know he is ready to feel better and to be able to start sleeping, eating, and swallowing better and to stop coughing, His voice is very hoarse but I think he was already talking better before we left!
at the Florida Welcome Center




Nana's Birthday


the girls decorated Nana and Papa's tree


I hope you had a great week in your homeschool!