Kennedy Space Center

The last big event of our vacation was something I had wanted to do for years…visit Kennedy Space Center!

You can’t turn around without tripping over a reference to President Kennedy!

One of the things I was most excited about seeing was right inside the front gate…the Rocket Garden:

We got to take a bus tour past historic launch sites, before going around the Vehicle Assembly Building. It doesn’t have a bad side! It was really cool to see it in person, because you just can’t grasp how big it is from pictures or even videos!

The bus tour ends at the Apollo/Saturn V Center. We got to see what Mission Control looked like at the time of Apollo 8:

The star of the center is the Saturn V (although there are lots of other things to see, too!). Again, it’s so hard to comprehend its size without seeing it for yourself!

No trip to Kennedy would be complete without seeing a piece (or two) of the moon:

We also walked through the Apollo 1 Tribute, which was unbelievably moving.

We were there at just the right time, because we got to see Artemis I out on the launch pad for a test, and now it’s time for it to fly!

We walked through the Moon Tree Garden, which has trees grown from descendants of seeds that were taken to the moon. There is a lovely statute of the crew of Apollo 11, and markers noting each mission of the Apollo program:

After we took the bus back to the main visitors’ complex, we visited Space Shuttle Atlantis.

We also learned about the other Space shuttles, including the two that were lost. The memorial to them was one of the most moving things on our trip, so much so that I didn’t take pictures of the memorial itself.

There is a larger memorial, the Space Mirror Memorial, dedicated to all of the lost astronauts, located outside:

There are other things to see outside, too:

I really enjoyed walking through the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame:

We also visited Gateway, which looks at the future of space travel. We got to see a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster that has flown twice:

Speaking of which, we were lucky enough to be at Kennedy for a launch. We saw (and heard) it from quite a distance, but it was still impressive, and seeing it in the shadow of the Rocket Garden was really special!

I’m so glad I finally got to have this experience!

Markels Making Magical Memories–Day Twelve

Kennedy Space Center; 10,984 steps

Our last big outing in Florida was something I’ve wanted to do for a long time…tour Kennedy Space Center (I’ll have more details on our day at KSC in the future)!

I was so excited to see the Rocket Garden!

We took a bus to the Apollo/Saturn V Center, and it conveniently went right past the Vehicle Assembly Building. It’s almost impossible to comprehend just how massive the structure is!

It’s also difficult to understand the scale of the Saturn V!

We got to see Artemis I on the launchpad for a test run…it was so exciting to get a glimpse of the future of space travel!

I thought the Moon Tree Garden was also really cool:

We took the bus back to the main complex, where we got to see the Space Shuttle Atlantis:

We also took some times to remember the lost at the Space Mirror Memorial:

I really enjoyed the Astronaut Hall of Fame:

It was a great place for all of us space nerds to visit!

And we even got to see (and hear!) a SpaceX launch!

When we got back to the hotel, we finally had time for an evening swim and walk…we’d been out so late every night up until this point, we just didn’t have an opportunity to explore the resort!

Up next: A relaxing day by the pool.

2017-18 School Year–Week One

The first week of the 2017-18 school year is already behind us! This year, I have two ninth graders, a fifth grader, and a Kindergartener!

We started on Tuesday, so it was a short, four-day week. And the first day of school is always mostly fun…finding out what’s in this year’s schultüte, handing out books and organizing desks, taking lots of pictures, and building a Lego set. The latter took several hours, as it is the largest Lego set (the Lego Ideas Saturn V), that we’ve ever built in school. It was a fun project that everyone got to help with (we intentionally started before Moose’s first day of school so he could participate), and was educational, thanks to the fantastic extra details in the instruction book.

On Wednesday, we had a pretty full day of school, beginning most of our subjects for the year, from high school geometry and biology to fifth grade math, spelling, and vocabulary, all the way down to reading Ramona the Pest out loud and Kindergarten handwriting. But then we took a break from our work on Thursday to go on our first field trip of the school year, to see The Discovery of King Tut at the St. Louis Science Center. It was a fantastic exhibit, full of extremely well done replicas from Tut’s tomb, and was also a great way to kick off our history studies for the year, as everyone is going to be studying ancient history in one way or another.

Today we finished off with another regular school day. The only subject we haven’t started yet is our various literature studies (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to start for Turkey and Bunny, and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe for Ladybug), which we will add to our schedule next week. I’ll close with something new for this year…I chose a Bible verse to be our theme for the year for the first time ever, and I think our chosen verse of Philippians 4:8 is an especially good reminder with all the chaos in the world right now:

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Chickadee Thursday

Today we had our first field trip of the 2017-18 school year! We went to explore The Discovery of King Tut at the St. Louis Science Center. Chickadee was especially interested in the replica of Tut’s mummified remains, but that doesn’t make for a very good picture, so here she is in front of the replica Rosetta Stone:

We also visited the Missouri Botanical Garden:

And a bonus picture from our first day of school…the Lego Ideas Saturn V we built is almost as tall as Chickadee!

First Day of School 2017

Today was the first day of the 2017-18 school year!

We started with everyone’s favorite first day of school tradition…opening the schultüte:

Of course I took a lot of pictures:

After everyone looked through their new workbooks for the year (and put them away), we had a short Matins service. And then we started on our other favorite first day of school tradition…building our new Lego set for the year. This time, it was the Lego Ideas Saturn V rocket, the biggest school set we’ve built so far (it took about four hours!!!)! Since we started school before Moose this year, he got to join in the fun, too!

That’s about it. We didn’t do any real work today…that can wait for tomorrow. We’re looking forward to all the new and interesting things we’re going to be learning this year!