Friday, April 22, 2011

Catching Up

We've been crazy busy lately. I run the state SAT testing for island home schooling families but it's all done...until next year. I still need to send everything back. So here's what we have been up to...
Erica practicing balance, posture, and position bareback,
Erica can hula hoop while riding her rip stick-I'd say that's some good balance,

Erica found a really cool moth,
Owen entertaining himself in the rain,

last Friday we headed off for a night time reef walk and found some really cool sea life,



Evan and his hole hole or flag tail fish,
shrimp,
a symbiotic relationship between a hermit crab and 3 sea anemones that attach to his shell. When the crab needs to move to a bigger shell he also moves his anemones. They protect him from predators and he supplies them with food,
Owen found a a coral banded shrimp,
this is what the shrimp he found would look like if we had been able to catch it,
he also found a really large, gooey sea hare...or maybe it's hair??
shells.
This is really cool, we totally learned something new. Dunlap broadsides were printed on the night of July 4, 1776, by order of Congress at the shop of John Dunlap near the corner of 2nd and Market Streets in Philadelphia. About 200 copies were printed, only 25 are known to still exist. These copies predate the handwritten Declaration of Independence in the National Archives. They were done quickly and in excitement-watermarks are reversed, copies were folded before the ink dried, punctuation move around from copy to copy. The Dunlap broadsides were sent across the colonies over the next two days and another copy was sent to England. Producer Norman Lear bought this original Dunlap broadside for $8.14 million and has put it on tour. It was here in HI for two days. There is a great 15 minute movie that accompanies the document.
The kids were pretty excited to get to see it, here they are with their copies of the broadside,
Evan tested for his purple belt,


Erica was in an Easter play,

after testing was officially over we took some pictures of some gorgeous flowers,





and the kids found a huge praying mantis,

you lookin' at me...

2 comments:

Clint, Tanya, Dane and Kimber said...

Wow! Looks like you guys have been busy. Cool pictures of all the critters! Thanks for sharing!

Mallard Nest said...

I read this one a while ago, but I guess I didn't have time to comment. Congratulations Even! Amazing talent Erica! I can't even hula hoop standing still! Love the pics of the praying mantis!