A new chapter of our lives has begun.

When I heard about the Heber/Park City homeschool group, my first response was one of excitement. But I have to admit, that my second thought was "I wonder if Park City home schoolers are nerdy?" 

Am I totally perpetuating this terrible stigma? Yes, yes I am. It's kind of true though, we home schoolers tend to care less about current trends in clothing, and focus more on... you know... uh... other stuff. 

I also forgot to blog about our first outing with our new group of friends. Remind me to do it later, cause it was awesome.
Today's adventure took us to the Swaner Nature Preserve and EcoCenter in Park City.

Those are my two little nerds towards the right. We're about to find Macro Invertebrates, determine their species, and by so doing determine the quality of the water from whence they came.

I know, so cool. 

This is Maggie, teaching them how to figure out what kind of bug they found using a dichotomous key. I  just googled how to spell that.

Claire was sleepily not paying attention.

Then they moved on to the buckets of watery goodness where they sucked up bugs and took many closer looks at them and determined the water quality.

Can I tell you how happy this was all making me? 

Well I would... except for Caleb was actually the one down there doing it with them, whilst I was putting baby to sleep in the nearby field.

It didn't work. This girl prefers to sleep in her Daddy's arms over her Mommy's. 

 Jonah was right in on the action too - bugs don't bother these guys one bit.
I'll never forget this one day, in the changing room of the local pool where we had Home School Swim Day once a month with our fellow nerdies. A Huge spider was slowly lowering itself down in the middle of the room, and rather than scream and try to smash it, we all gathered around and counted it's legs and discussed what type of spider it might be.

A good deal of education does happen at a desk, it's true, but it can happen in almost every other place that you find yourself, too, if you let it.

Then it was time for the long slog out through the marshland to the frog pond.

Claire slept the whole way out there, and Caleb chatted with the Nature Lady (I think her name was... Kathy?). We got soaked. It was great. And luckily it wasn't snowing today like it was yesterday. 

The purpose of going to the pond was to catch frogs.

 Purpose fulfilled.

I have since determined that kids have built-in frog catching skills which fade with adulthood... they were good at it! 

And these little guys were really little guys.

It was awesome, to say the least. A whole bunch of schooled-at-homers, their lovely Mothers, a gorgeous sunny day, and a whole, huge, watery field of knowledge waiting to be soaked up.

 Jonah loved his frogs. I think they liked him too, because they snuggled right down in his calm little hands, rather than trying to jump away.

And I got to sit back with Claire and a few other Moms and chat. I met one from New Zealand, one from England, and two from here. They were all lovely, and we all shared one major thing in common which made conversation with these complete strangers easy.

They're not complete strangers any more. They're our fellows scholars, and we're thrilled to be a part of them.