Fort Caroline

Over the weekend, we visited Fort Caroline for the first time. It's not far from Kingsley Plantation and is part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, run by the National Park Service, the same as Kingsley.

Fort Caroline, is a reconstruction of the fort built by the Huguenots, French Protestants, in 1564. The original fort had a tragic end. It was attacked by the Spanish, a year after it's construction, and of the 200-250 inhabitants, only around 50 survived (mostly women and children).


Taking the ferry across the St. Johns River to Mayport:





The Fort Caroline Visitors Center:





At the fort:









A near-by Timucuan hut:





On a bluff, overlooking the river:

Egyptian Feast

Every three years, the school that I work at has the children learn about World History, which includes ancient Egypt. The recipes that follow are ones that I printed out to send home with the students after having an Egyptian Feast with the first and second graders six years ago. We revisited these recipes this past week at home, as we were wrapping up our unit on Egypt.









The tabouli recipe:
http://overthecrescentmoon.blogspot.com/2009/06/tabouli.html










There were a couple more books to read



and a couple more projects,



but now we are moving on to ancient Greece.

This Weekend at Kingsley Plantation

We had a good weekend visiting DH at Kingsley Plantation this weekend, which included having dinner at a Chinese Buffet with an old friend, seeing the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, watching a beautiful sunset, and visiting the beach for the first time this year. Unfortunately, it also included getting a new tire for the car, but that didn't take very long.





We have been going to Kingsley Planation this time of year for 5 years and this was the first year I had seen a gopher tortois laying eggs. Now, I've seen it twice in two weeks.

Tortoise covering her eggs after laying them in a hole:


Peacocks in, and next to, the road on Fort George Island:

The End of the World

Happy last day of the world (again)!



Anybody having any fun "end of the world" parties?

Today's Crazy Schedule

Check e-mail

Get showered and dressed

Make sure Blaze gets dressed

Give Blaze his meds.

Call pharmacy for refill on prescription

Have breakfast

Blaze does unit 28 math test

read a book aloud about ancient Greek children

Take Blaze to speech therapy

Stop by the school

Get camp chairs and table out of storage locker (DH wants them at Kingsley)

Go to Target to buy Blaze a new body board (boogy board), since we may go to the beach this weekend, and the board he had last year broke in half.

Go to the medical plaza to pick up meds.

Eat lunch

Blaze's on-line phonics lesson

Load dirty laundry into the car

Blaze cleans his junk out of the car

Pack suitcase and get it to the car

Drive two hours to get to Kingsley Plantation and try to get there before 5 O'Clock, when the gates are locked for the night

Eat dinner

Hopefully go see pirate movie

My Pictures in Print

The book 1000 Steampunk Creations is due to be released July 1, 2011 and can be pre-ordered from almost any book store. Here is the link for Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/000-Steampunk-Creations-Neo-Victorian-Fashion/dp/1592536913

It's full of all kinds of beautiful and creative works of steampunk art and fashion, but the reason I'm really excited about it, is that six of my photographs will be included. Pictures of Blaze in his airship pirate costume take up nearly a whole page. It will also contain a picture of the lamp from Blaze's room and the $1.49 squirt gun I repainted to go with the airship pirate costume.

Kingsley Plantation:The First Weekend of Field School

Archeology field school started at Kingsley Plantation last week (for pictures from previous seasons, see the label marked Kingsley on the sidebar). DH was there all week, but came home Friday night, and Blaze and I rode back to the plantation with him on Saturday and spent the night.
We arrived too late Saturday to see anything at the plantation, because my real motivation for going, was visiting stores in Jacksonville that we don't have here. It had been a stormy day, anyway. We did have a little adventure while shopping, though. While looking at the imported food section of World Market, the electricity went out.
Sunday morning was beautiful! DH wanted to go check on all the plastic tarps that covered the places where the students had been digging, and some of the wildlife came out to enjoy the nice weather, as well.







The sea island cotton coming up in the garden:


The "big house" looks a bit run down this year, but that is only because it is being prepared for repainting.




This peahen was strutting around the cars when we first walked outside. She doesn't really belong to the plantation. There is a flock of peafowl down the road. The rangers believe she has been driven out of the group.



Then there was this gopher tortoise:


It decided to go for a long walk and didn't seem to mind if I accompanied it.







Blaze wasn't as interested in following tortoises around. He preferred sitting on the sea wall, shooting rocks into the St. Johns River (he doesn't get to use the slingshot at home very often).



Our animal adventures weren't quite over yet. Just as we were getting ready to leave, we found a female gopher tortoise laying eggs next to (almost under) our car. We had to wait until she was finished and walked away before we were able to very carefully, with a ranger looking on, move the car.

The Rest of Universal's Islands of Adventure

Yesterday, I showed you the Harry Potter area of Islands of Adventure. Today, I want to show you the rest of the park.





Islands of Adventure has several different, unrelated, themed areas, each with a gateway separating it from the other areas. Some of the areas are tie-ins to specific movies, like Jurassic Park and Harry Potter, but other areas are based on things like "old school" comic strips and super heros.


















If you are going to Islands of Adventure, go prepared to get wet. Whether it's having a water fight in the Jurassic Park playground or splashing down a rapids in a raft, there are many opportunities to get drenched.







One of our favorite non-Harry Potter areas was Seuss Landing. We were very pleasantly surprised by the soothing colors and the calmer rides, that were still big enough for all ages.