August 20, 2008

Bear spent three days playing with two new friends in Shearwater, BC.  The kids are from two families who live on the island (Denny Island).  Aliyah is a six year old girl who is cute, sweet and a tomboy!  Her best friend, Callum, is also six and lives next door to Aliyah.  So Bear joined the two of them and they made a fearsome threesome with their swords and Playmobile knights.  He hung out with them all day long for two days then the morning of the third before we left. 

August 7, 2208

Last night Bear was fishing off the back of the boat and he caught two sharks!!  When he hooked the first one, we were surprised at the fight on the end of his line.  He struggled it up as Eric stood ready with the net.  When the fish emerged from the water, we were stunned!!  All of us exclaimed, "It's a baby shark!!"  And sure enough, Bear had caught a small spotted dogfish - a type of shark that can grow to be five feet long!  It sure added excitement to the evening!  Eric carefully extracted the hook from its mouth that was loaded with tiny sharp teeth.  Once free, Bear dropped his line again.  Five minutes later, he hauled in another shark!!  This time we couldn't stop laughing!!  When we read about the dogfish, it said they were mostly loners so we didn't think there would be a school of them below us!  This was definitely a different and bigger one than the first.  Since Eric didn't want to continue to risk fingers in freeing the catch, he convinced "Bear the Shark Slayer" to retire for the night.  What fun! 

In Bear's words - July 30, 2008:

"Hello, I'm Bear.  We are having very much fun on our boat.  Sometime I wish you could see it.  Our boat is a 64 foot boat.  It's very shiny until birds poop on it.  We have a little remote that controls our TV to go up and down.  We have two chairs up in our pilot house.  I hang from our handrails that are on the ceiling and I have a cool trick that I can do.  I wish you could see it.  And the trick is a secret.  So, if you come, you find out.  My bedroom is a bunk bedroom.  I have an office in it that has a desk and lots of Jack and Annie Magic Tree House books.  Those are my favorite books. 

We're in Alaska.  It's a very cool place.  It has neat anchorages and docks.  We have seen some brown, black and grizzly bears.  And we think we saw wolf tracks once.  We saw lots of humpback whales and a few Orcas, also named killer whales.  We've seen sea lions, seals and sea otters.  And a few Puffins which is my mom's favorite cereal. 

Signed,

Bear Bloomquist"

July 2, 2008 

Cathy and Tom got in late Friday night to Juneau.  The excitement started right away when we were all awakened at 1am by shrill screaming from Bear's room.  I bolted out of bed and flew to Bear's room.  Cathy was already there, trying to console Bear who had fallen out of bed.  Wanting just Mom, he was pushing Cathy away and clawing to me.  As I closed my arms around him, I suddenly felt flushed and sick to my stomach.  The next thing I heard was Cathy saying, "Ann, what are you doing?"  I had passed out on top of Bear!  In a very wet sweat, I pulled off of Bear, put my head between my knees and yelled for Eric.  He came running, found blood on Bear and me about to throw up.  I kept saying, "Just take care of Bear" which he did and found a cut above his eye.  Someone got me to the toilet where I attempted to recover.  By the time I could stand, I went back to Bear in his bed where he was bandaged, still crying and exhausted.  We laid together until we both fell asleep.  The next day, we examined the damage and determined Bear will probably have a little scar above his eye and, yes, his eye is black and blue.  We figured that I just got up so fast that all the blood rushed to my head too quickly as I was fine the next day. So the start of Cathy and Tom's vacation wasn't very relaxing.  The next night, we put a siderail up on Bear's bed.

April 28, 2008  After arriving in Port Angeles, WA after a six day passage from Dana Point, CA

Bear LOVED the big waves and wished there had been more, for two reasons:  1.  He got to sleep in our big bed so he wouldn't roll out of his and 2. The waves were so much fun - it was like being on a roll-a-coaster!  He was bouncing all over the pilot house bunk, whooping it up.  He has never shown any sign of the seas affecting him in any negative way.  He is so lucky!  He took good care of me though.  He was my errand boy.  I'd ask for anything and he'd run and get it for me.  If he could have only peed for me, I wouldn't have had to ever get up!  I was wondering how he would do cooped up for so long without getting off the boat.  Opposite from what I expected, he actually calmed down the longer we were aboard.  By the last day I thought we'd be climbing the walls with him, but he was mellow and loving it.  I think he really liked all the undistracted attention from us.  We kept him on his regular school and sleep schedule as much as possible.  It went well.He would sit for an hour and read books with anyone who was a willing participant.  He watched a couple of movies a day but really less than I expected.  He had gotten two new toys before we left and those kept him busy - an airplane which he bought with his own money and a Lego Star Wars ship that needed repairing every mission.  I felt bad that I was so sick because it could have been wonderful quality school time if I'd have been up to more.  But we kept up with the minimum.

 

For school, Bear and I developed a chart together for what subjects to do each day of the week.  We have nine subjects:  math, reading, writing/spelling, science, geography, Spanish, music, art and recess.  We do the first three every day and the others twice a week.  (Recess is on there because on Mondays we do "double recess".)  It was really good to decide the schedule together because he keeps us on it.  He puts stars on the chart every day as we complete the subjects for that day and doesn't like to leave any blank.  It's been taking us about two hours a day to do school.  For the most part, it's fun.  I love to watch him learn and see those ah-ha moments.  I've been trying to explain the "carrying the one" theory this past week.  I knew he finally got it when he said, "Mom, you don't carry the one, you carry the ten."  He still gets mixed up on subtraction sometimes though.  Like on 11-7, he'll put down 16.  For two days we couldn't figure out what he was doing.  Then we did it together.  He was subtracting 1 from the 7 and 0 from 1 because how can you subtract 7 from 1?