This book is dedicated to my children, Kayleigh and Ryan, who have watched me work so hard to complete my degree. They have dealt with all my craziness and still love me.

I love you both to the moon and back again!

Mrs. Stelling is my most favorite teacher in the entire universe, and today she is accompanying our class on a field trip! It's the beginning of spring, the spring equinox actually, so I hope the weather will be nice and visibility will be good.

I learned the spring equinox is also called the vernal equinox and it marks the moment the Sun crosses the celestial equator. That marks the first day of astronomical spring.

That means we will have the benefit of more daylight today because the day and night will be nearly equal. Mrs. Stelling is always teaching us fun facts about astronomy and so much more!

We will be headed in the vicinity of the coast today, but we will stop approximately every few miles to include other locations as well. We might have to make some adjustments to our schedule depending upon the traffic, but we will stop in the desert and also at a stream along the way! We will drive through the valley, but ultimately, we will end at the coast.

I love living in Southern California; I think it's the best place on Earth! Where else can you visit such a large variation of environments in such a short distance? Oh sure, we have to deal with the occasional earthquake, but at least we don't usually have hurricanes, blizzards, or tornadoes!

Mrs. Stelling says our climate in Southern California is a more temperate one. The climate is the average weather in a place over a long period of time. Temperate means that our region is characterized by mild temperatures; it's usually not too hot or too cold.

We learned all about climate and weather during our unit on meteorology. That's a branch of atmospheric science that includes atmospheric chemistry and physics, but it predominately focuses on weather forecasting.

Those are some gigantic words, but Mrs. Stelling always teaches us new words. She also tells us to use the glossary in our books to look up the definitions. After you define a word, it is much easier to use it!

In case you are wondering, an earthquake is a sudden release of energy, of the Earth's lithosphere (it's crust and upper mantle). They are caused by a release of built up stress within rocks along fault lines, or even by the movement of magma in volcanic areas. It cause what feels like violent shaking sometimes and it can be kind of scary.

A hurricane is a severe tropical storm with violent winds and heavy rain, and a blizzard is a severe snowstorm with high winds and low visibility. I've seen both of these on the television and they looked pretty scary!

A tornado is a violent windstorm that has a twisting, funnel-shaped cloud. Mrs. Stelling taught me that tornadoes actually come from a cumulonimbus cloud, and they occur over land usually in the Midwest.

Before I can leave for my trip, my mom helps me to get ready. We check the weather to see what the temperature will be. She says it will be primarily warm and there are no thunderstorms predicted; not even a chance of drizzle, and definitely no tornadoes!

The prior month there was a huge rainstorm so we had to cancel our trip. We had record rainfall, which seemed to be continuous for days. It's rare for us to have a lot of rain for so many consecutive days, but it was actually good news since we've been in a drought.

A drought is a period where it might normally precipitate more, but there is an abnormally low rate of precipitation instead. This results in a reduced water (or, H2O) supply for a region.

Mrs. Stelling told us that this shortage can affect ground water or surface water supplies. It can even affect the ecosystem and cause economical harm!