We went to Bellows AFS for a walk and light dinner at Keneke’s on Saturday afternoon. It was a nice, peaceful, inexpensive outing. We like it there so much because it’s really spacious and there is a ton for kids to do. It’s also where we camp and go trail running. As we drove in we saw this huge beast of machinery on the beach. Dave said right away it was an LCAC that the Marines use to land on beaches. After dinner we spotted it hauling away – it’s powered by two huge fans in the back, and it rides on cushions. If you go to youtube.com you can find video of how it works. It’s actually really pretty fast and seems to haul itself around on beaches or even road if need be. It’s awkward looking, but pretty impressive. It (looking for the word here – not sail, not flew, not rode, not paddled…) whatever – it made its way back to the mother ship (forgot the acronym for that one – I’m sure one of my buddies will fill me in!) and really swirled up the water all around it. The huge spray disguised the LCAC so all you could see was this spray moving toward the ship. Pretty neat. Sam enjoyed it.

We’ve also been learning about the solar system lately for my “freeschool” – i.e. learning that is motivated by the world around us. Sam and I do “stories under the stars” on nights when Dave is in school or the weekend – special nights. So he does bath, teeth, and then stories are out on the deck instead of in his room. There is a planet that we’ve been watching so Dave fired up his Starry Night computer program to see what it was – Jupiter! I actually figured that out as well from a star map I found on the Bishop Museum’s web page (patting myself on the back here 🙂 ). Very cool to know some of the stars and planets. Sam knows the sun, then Mercury, Venus and Earth. Working our way out 🙂 I asked him what he wants to learn about in preschool next and he said “the earth” then followed up with “the magma inside.” Sounds like a plan…