“From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.” -Dr. Suess

We’ve been here and there, near and far lately, with trips to Dinosaur National Monument, trips to the park around the corner, lost of museum play, a birthday and another trip to the beach in California coming right up.

Gavin finished his summer reading challenge and picked out a book. He was very pleased.  Lilah’s read three times the number of books, at least, but is still working on writing down ten.

We camped near Dinosaur National Monument at Steinaker reservoir with friends and

Gavin started his very own fire

we roasted marshmallows over Gavin’s fire

we swam in the lake

walked right up to amazing petroglyphs

we started boondoggle keychains

the kids prepared kebabs for dinner

there were dinosaur bones up close at the quarry and

 

both kids earned their Dinosaur Monument junior ranger badges after learning about dinosaurs and then swearing in with a park ranger.

I’ve been working on a long overdue project at home: a big mandala on our wall.  I painted a background for it, a large blue circle with drips underneath, 4 or 5 years ago but never got around to working on the mandala.  It’s been more fun with kids help anyway! (They would have been too young to help much at all when I made the background.)  It’s still not finished but here’s some of the progress.  I drew it by hand and then painted it with help here and there from the kids.  It feels so good to be doing it finally and I’m really enjoying the process and the progress!

Lilah painted another on her own.

 

We did some more geocaching with friends and found three caches in about an hour.

It was really exciting, the mapping, the hunting, the eventual victorious finding and the recording of our names in the cache log.

 

There were games, like Mine Shift.

Computer coding games for kids have been popular at our house lately.  Chris has been looking into more options for them to keep exploring. This one involves code writing to make designs which they print out and admire.

 

Lemon cucumbers and cherry tomatoes are ripe in the garden.

From there to here, from here to there, beautiful learning is everywhere.