Blue Hen // Eagle Rock

Whenever we are starting to feel the "bug" in our system, we head to Blue Hen in Eagle Rock and inhale their organic chicken pho. Satchi is old enough to eat the whole kids' bowl. Coco not so much. She prefers to stay with her brown rice that comes perfectly dome shaped and steals her sister's french fries with tons of ketchup. 

I took Nerine and Eunice there for lunch this summer and I think we all loved it! 

Why I write...

I go through this process every year. Right around September... I start to dream and wonder about next year's analogue system. Which size works better? Which notebook? What format should I use...??? There are so many questions and I love using the opportunity to reassess what's going on in my everyday and recalibrate what might not be fitting right. 

It's a process and I love it.

This year I decided to go through some of my old journals to ponder. And really... I have found so many pages after pages of treasures. It probably does not mean anything to anyone outside of the family but the documentation of girls' growth, what we talked about in the past, what we enjoyed doing a couple years ago when they were little... to some thoughts that I held close to my heart at certain time of my life is such priceless artifacts. 

It's funny to feel that it's me who wrote it... but it feels like my mirrored-self have written it. I was glad that I had them written down there. I am a firm believer that we are not meant to read through all the journal pages from the past at the same time... but certain pages is meant to be found and discovered at the right time. I definitely found a few pages that I was looking for without knowing what I was looking for.

So I want to encourage myself... that the most important thing I need to remember is to put the ink on the papers. In a very very big picture, the act of writing, reflecting, pondering, remembering, brainstorming is what matters no matter what medium I have in our hands... 

Field Trip // The Living Desert Zoo in Palm Springs

We had a chance to visit The Living Desert Zoo while we were visiting Palm Springs this past week. We have been frequent to Los Angeles zoo these past few years as girls have grown to be really interested in animals... and I am so glad that we have found this lovely zoo only 2 hours away from our home!

Firstly... I adore the name, "living" zoo.  The quiet and serene space of The Living Desert Zoo was such a nice contrast to the zoo in the city. We loved watching the desert animals live in an actual desert environment and was inspired to find out that some of the exhibits actually use the natural landscape that existed before zoo moved in. Because we were there on Tuesday morning, it felt like we had the whole zoo to ourselves. We got to ask a lot of questions to a really friendly animal keeper after the reptile show was over and was able to spend quite bit of time getting to know a desert tortoise.

Palm Springs was still pretty hot (100 degrees...) so I was expecting that we will probably stay for two hours or so... but weather became little bit overcasted and we ended up spending from 9am all the way to their closing time at 1:30pm.

Since we have a lot of small trips to desert cities coming up, we have incorporated "desert habitat" as one of the targeted topics to explore for homeschooling. We had a lot of fun watching some of the episodes from the nature documentary Planet Earth, reading stories from "Life in the Desert" via Be Naturally Curious (thank you Kaori-san for your recommendation), etc.

I can't wait to visit The Living Desert Zoo again once the weather cools down and explore the other 1/2 of the zoo we didn't get to see this time!

Keep Traveling // Palm Springs weekend

Since Frido is traveling for a good chunk of 2 weeks, my girlfriends and I decided to head out to Palm Springs to spend time together and reflect on life. I sometimes have to remind myself how close Palm Springs is to us. Just about 2 hours... we are there! We are very much in a motion of everyday... so having a long stretched time with friends brought a lot of thoughts to the conversation.

Our friend Sara found this lovely place on airbnb to stay in Palm Springs. I brought extra inflatable mattress from Frontgate (which is amazing!!! Thanks Susan for the recommendation.) so girls can sleep in a queen size bed and I can sleep in the same room but on a separate mattress. The common space had so much space that even on the day when all seven of us were there (including 3 little ones:), it didn't feel too claustrophobic.

This was my second trip this summer just with kids (+ friends). Now they are little older, it is becoming easier and easier to travel with them... and it has been so fun to witness them grow everytime we take our adventure.

Value the realness of a life truly lived

I am beyond thankful for all the lovely support we have been receiving about our choice to go with the homeschooling route.

One of the comments that were shared on my previous post by Juliana really brightened my day. 

"Value the realness of a life truly lived"

I loved that the idea of "realness" felt inclusive of good and hard time in everyday... not just the "highlight" of the day. It was such an encouraging word and I thought it might bring inspiration to every family who is having the real life:) 

We have just finished our first meeting with our educational specialist from homeschool charter school. We enjoyed every moment of having a very special teacher all to ourselves for a good hour or so. Also so nice to be able to check in to see how we are doing with our routine with another individual who are very familiar with the concept of homeschooling. Now that we have a whole month under our belt, the new routine is starting to feel more natural to us and we are understanding what works and what doesn't. For us... playing, self-motivated exploration/learning, and everyone having the voice to be heard in the family seems to be working.

Adventure continues... 

Field Trip // California Science Center

Thank you so much for your kind comments and feedback on my previous post. It is so nice to know that there are many other homeschooling families out there... doing what they love:)

As we will be taking many many local adventures in Los Angeles with our kids, I thought it would be fun to keep track of fun places to enjoy with little ones.

So here it is!

Our recent family trip took us to California Science Center for the first time. I seriously could not believe we have never been there considering how close we actually are! We heard a lot of buzz about it when space shuttle Endeavor moved in couple years ago.

Since Frido was in his semester break, we were able to visit there on Wednesday morning and the trip exceeded our expectation. Seeing the space shuttle in person was quite overwhelming. To witness this incredible artifact that has traveled beyond atmosphere... and come back. Girls also found very entertaining to learn how astronauts go to the bathroom in the space. It always amazes me to watch which information sticks the most to them. Not always the ones I predict!

We combined our visit with their IMAX movie A Beautiful Planet. The film was a perfect compliment to our first encounter with the real space shuttle.

Aside from seeing Endeavor..., they have different exhibits throughout the museum space... all for FREE! (I couldn't believe everything was free... ) We loved their small aquarium with kelp forest and meeting divers who were feeding the fish in the tank. Since it was our very first trip there, we didn't see everything in the museum but are looking forward to going back. Especially when they open the new exhibit The Science Behind Pixar in October.