Niles spent the past week at the Apple Store in the mall, doing mini-camps on a Mac computer. He made 2 songs, a slide show of pictures, a video presentation and a mini-movie. Aside from the obvious effect of brainwashing him against PC's for ever [haha!], he had a fabulous time! He loved being able to create crazy things on the computer and then bring them home to show us. The people who ran the camp did a great job with the kids and I would recommend them if you get a chance.

It was a bit frustrating for me, simply because I couldn't leave the mall all morning & had Elie & Luca with me. At least the play area kept them mostly occupied, as did a breakfast at Panera, free pastry day at Starbucks & dunkin' donuts during the week. ;)

Niles finished his Iowa testing and now we are waiting for the results. 2 weeks of Tae Kwon Do camp are coming up & then we are officially beginning the next school year!

Iowa Testing

Niles is doing Iowa Testing this week, given by my friend Heather. He was distracted during the math part, big surprise, but did ok on the English part she said. NC has a law that homeschoolers have to give a national test each year. They don't want the results [unless your school is inspected] and the score doesn't effect whether or not you are allowed to h/s either. Seems weird to me, but it's the law, so we're doing it. I'm not sure whether or not I had to this year, as he had part of the year in regular old, public school, but I'm not taking any chances.

Museum & Sea Turtle Hospital visits

We went to the Topsail Island museum and the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Hospital on Friday when it was so hot. You can tell that the kids were getting tired by the expressions on their faces in the first few pictures. You can't take pictures of the sea turtles, but we did get to see several of them. I did get to take pictures at the Museum as you can see.

We got to see several Ospreys flying along the beach and other military helicopters. Plus way out to sea, we saw what looked like a naval ship.

Barnacles, Fish & Crabs Oh My!

We had such a great time at the beach! We got to see barnacles attached to several things, an old buckedt& an old deodorant stick to name two. We found sand fleas, or sand diggers depending on who you ask, and two different types of crabs. Here are some shots of the barnacles & one of the crabs. David also caught a small silver fish & we had that swimming in the little pool for a bit, but I couldn't get a decent picture of it.

Farmer's Market

We went to the Raleigh Farmer's Market with our good friend Heather & her daughter Cambree this morning. I'm not posting the picture I took of them at lunch or Heather will kill me. But we did have a great time! Elie loves all the fresh fruit! Luca does too, but is often too shy to take pieces from the vendors w/o some help from me. We got some fresh salsa, tomatoes, peaches, blackberries, honey & some hot sauce for Dad. When we got home, we talked about the small tomato seeds vs. the large peach pit/seed. Very cool! As you can see, the boys had fun being silly too, with Luca pushing Niles around a bit in the stroller as Elie, who was sitting in my lap at the time,cracked up.

TKD Tournament