I think this is my favorite picture of the bunch. The beautiful red head is doing her best scrunchy face while her brother is thinking of hiding from the camera again. Niki is giggling at her rescue of Michael from the "Vortex of DOOM" that the kids were doing in the whirlpool. How homeschool to do a science experiment with some 15 people in a hotel pool! I'll have to get permissions from the rest to blog those pictures, but they are so cute... Afterward, most of us trekked out into the blustery 40 degree weather to the heated outdoor pool and hot tub. The hotel had mini golf and roasted marshmellows for us - but it was too cold to get too far away from the heat sources. The Marco Polo game turned into a Roman-water wrestling, so there were some very tired, very happy soggy kids in Duluth that night.

Just back from Duluth, and it was terrific! This is Niki and William on the Lakewalk with a fish sculpture near the Vista cruise boat. The panda is a junk shop buy that went all over Duluth with us.

Wow - I did get busy and couldn't do too much with my shoulder acting up. The "Not Back to School" picnic was fabulous! We had about 20 families come - some as far away as Brainerd.

School is begun, and Eastern History looks like it could be stretched into infinity. We colored flags, and used wiki to find out facts about the Pacific Islands. I think they were more interested in the trench and volcanos than the islands - but ok. Deep Ocean studies ahead...

The homeschool group is set up with field trips, party ideas, and interesting things all around. I set up www.bemidjihs.com and even got it hooked into a free email server.