Wednesday we packed the car and the pup and headed to the San Bernardino Mountains to Aunt Mimi's Family Cabin. It's a hidden little valley owned by a small group of people for about a hundred years with a wonderful history attached to it. It is cluster of cabins nestled between two streams and separated by fields of apple trees. It is my version of Heaven. I had visited the cabin when I was my kid's ages and this orchard contains some of my fondest childhood memories. Now my children are very privileged to get to experience it too. 
We arrived, unpacked our cooler and headed directly to the stream to play. The weather was perfect, around 78 degrees and the fresh stream water chilled our feet. Of course the boys have to go neck deep whenever possible.My original plan was to build rafts and huts for GI Joe, to test speed and flotation, to make bows and arrows and test speed via bow tension... Lots of plans for these trips to the river. You know what they say about Best Laid Plans? Yup...the kids had their own plans, which included doing what they do best: playing. And who am I to try to force them to do this stuff anyway? Ha ha, jokes on me, Teacher Mom.
There was lots of learning happening anyway. Aunt Mimi surprised the boys with Golf Cart driving lessons, which must have turned out to be pretty funny but I missed the lesson and that's probably a good thing for the state of my heart health. Apparently T Man nearly rammed them into an apple tree! He got better on the next lesson :)
We gave Aunt Mimi a lesson in Geocaching and we were all happily surprised to find an awesome cache within a mile of the cabin. It was an old ammunition case filled with lots of toys.
On the way back to the cabin, we got one of our greatest lessons of the week: finding a baby bird that fell out of its nest. T was vehemently against taking the baby home and thought we should leave it flailing in the dead grass next to the road. Mimi and I were all for attempting to save its life. We put him in a shoe box and immediately queried our Facebook Friends to see if they could help identify it so we could feed it. Duckling? Heron? We were given a number to a volunteer organization that works to save wild birds and got some very valuable advice on finding baby birds like this: Put it back in the tree it fell out of, watch for an hour and hope and pray mama bird finds it. Essentially my little T was right. We shouldn't have messed with it. I found this out too late. By the next morning the baby couldn't peep anymore and was quickly on his way to birdy heaven. I feel awful about it, but isn't that how we learn lessons? Today Mimi said her son thought he was a Vulture. I'm pretty sure that is correct. (sigh)
Near the end of the day, it was clear that the golf cart was the boon of the visit. They boys obsessed on it. T pointed right at Mimi and said "You need to take us out in the golf cart." This got an eyebrow raising! Mimi explained that she is a Communication Expert and that she's pretty sure that this is not the way to convince someone to do something for you. She coached him on how to properly ask someone for something. This was an invaluable lesson and I am so grateful to have her do this because it doesn't matter how much mama harps on her kids for their behavior, coming from Mom it sounds like a regular nag session. Coming from Mimi, however, makes all the difference in the world.
I am, for the most part, solely responsible for the complete education of my children. Not just reading, writing and arithmetic, but life skills, communication, social skills, manners, self-care, reproduction, respect, love, logic and common sense, caring, you name it. It is a daunting task that I often try not to think about, but live in the moment and make every situation count to the education of these boys. It is a wonderful gift to be given when someone steps up and helps in this journey.We got a little sit-down work done during our full day at the cabin...the kids use dice to do addition (PJ) and multiplication (T) and they wrote on their Favorite Thing about the Mountain Cabin. (the golf cart, of course) We started reading Life of Fred Butterflies and it covered the life cycle of the butterfly, and moved onto Astronomy and the Orion constellation, specifically Betelgeuse, the super-sized star that makes up Orion's left shoulder. Apparently this star is the size of a football field compared to our Sun, if you can imagine our Sun as the size of an orange. Crazy Big.
One of the awesome things about getting to visit the apple orchard in September is that it's Harvest Time! Mimi took us into a separate orchard where we got to bag up all kinds of apples. And of course, in the Harvest tradition, we had to bake a pie. By this point in the day, around 4:00, the kids were pooped out, so they watched TV and I poured a glass of wine and started to peel apples. I'm proud to say, it turned out to be one FINE apple pie :)
On our way out of the mountains on Friday, the kids were able to jump out of the car and play in a real, honest to God, mountain waterfall. What a way to end an amazing few days in nature.
Home Sweet Home brings us pictures of the Shuttle Endeavor flying piggy back on a 747 on it's way to LAX and its final resting place, the California Science Center. We are looking forward to visiting it when it opens. During the week without the crowds, of course, because we have that freedom now that we homeschool. Just like the freedom to explore nature whenever we are invited to the Heaven that is the Mountain Cabin. And the availability to spend these precious times with Aunt Mimi and learn from her too.