A Day In the Life: School at the Beach

Visiting: Heceta Head lighthouse and beach. The Oregon coast is beautiful. But the wind....that cold wind stinging your legs with sand, blowing through your ears, tying your hair in knots. In the fall, the temperature difference between inland and the beach evens out, and the wind dies down. I'd packed a beach bag three weeks ago, but we couldn't make it. "It's now or never," I told loving husband this morning. "If we don't go now it'll start raining by the time we're able to head to the beach." We knocked out math and science, then hit the road.

Enjoying: The weather.

The weather forecast for the beach today: High 60's, winds 5-10 mph, partly cloudy.

The actual weather at the beach today: Low to mid-70's. A light breeze. Not a cloud in the sky.

Hiking: Up the hill to the lighthouse. I'm not sure it counts as "hiking" when it's only half a mile up a gently sloping gravel path, but it was a hike to the fine young gents. I secretly wondered if I'd be packing the youngest gent up the last hill, but he ran the entire way. They were fascinated by the lighthouse.

Playing: With sand, of course.

We studied rocks and minerals.....



Handwriting and spelling......



Animal behavior.... (all right, this one's a stretch)

I must digress into a dog story: I really didn't want to leave Poppy home. But I was worried about trying to manage three young rowdy gents and a puppy and the ocean. "Ok, think it out....what's the worst thing that could happen?" I asked myself.

Here's a tip for those of us with active imaginations: Don't ever ask oneself, "What's the worst thing that could happen?" Well, since I asked....tsunami, earthquake in the tunnel, I'll be driving over several bridges, a young gent could be sucked out to sea, horrible car crash.....not a useful question. Reframe: "What's the worst thing, barring some unforeseeable and unlikely tragedy, that can happen if I bring the dog?" She might potty in the car. Oh, well that's not likely. Along comes Poppy on the beach trip.

Along the way she had horrible gas, so I pulled over to let her go to the bathroom. I stood there on the side of the road as she sniffed around having a good ol' time, then she sat down and looked at me like, "Okay, this is fun, but what next?"

"Mooo-ooom! It still stinks in here!"

Oh.

She pooped. In the car. Diahrrhea. (With some intact hazelnuts....poor thing. We've got a filbert tree in our yard, and clearly she'd swallowed some whole, shell and all. Too much information? Imagine having to clean it up.) But get this....on the floor was some paper. 8.5x11, the glossy newspaper flyer kind. When I was loading the car I'd considered picking it up off the floor of the car but decided to wait until we got home. God is good. That dog pooed right on that paper and even left a clean edge for me to grab as I slid it into a plastic bag. The worst had happened.

Construction and physics.....


We made rock towers and bridges and castles. They were waaaaay cool.


We also looked in the tide pools, but the good ones were underwater, watched birds, splashed in the ocean and explored a cave.

It was a glorious day.