Big Bubbles

When my mom came to visit us, she did some grandma magic. Bubbles hold some sort of enchantment spell over children. Its amazing.  Kids love to blow bubbles, follow them in the wind, and pop them.  My boys love to stomp them if they fall on the grass.

Harrison: Me and Noah thought it would be fun to pretend to save the Star Wars galaxy by popping all the bubbles. Of course it was just a game. The big bubbles were more fun to pop.


She bought a variety of bubble wands, but the big attraction was definitely the massive wand.    Here, I managed to encase Olivia in a bubble, well from the camera's point of view. It reminds me of Glenda the good witch of the South traveling in a bubble.


The boys had taken some of their medium wands and used them as lightsabers to pop the bubbles (and save the galaxy).  After a little while, the neighbor kids noticed and joined in.  We soon had a very large crowd, which came back often on later days to ask us to start the huge bubbles.

Lincoln Logs

I'm going back through all of last year's photos to catch up on the blog, and make sure that some fun things we did go into the memory archive. This is a photo of Harrison and our neighbor across the street. We had a nice group of kids in MD and will miss them. I am also posting this just to make sure I remember that there are other toys beyond LEGOs. We spend a lot of time playing with legos, but occasionally we do branch out.

This was a rather intricate Log home (Grandma Margie would be proud).  The boys really liked doing landscaping, getting a few trees and bushes around the home.  I think there was also a stable for whatever animals we could whittle out of Lincoln Logs.

Everyone should play

So tonight Harrison was playing Monopoly by himself. As he passed around the board, he mentioned to me that there was the tax spot where you had to pay 10% or $200.

He said the the first time he passed it, he only had $1000, so he paid $100. But the next time he landed on it, he had a lot more money so he paid the $200 flat fee. He said that if you have a little money, it is probably best to pay 10%, and if you have a lot, it would be better to pay the $200. And "then there is some place where they are the same, and you can do either, but they are the same."

I asked him how much money you would need in order for them to be the same. After talking it out, he figured out that it would take $2000. That's my kindergartener.

Olivia's Room take II

Remember when I finally got Olivia's nursery finished?   Well, and then remember we moved?  Yeah, I still don't have it finished again.  But I made some progress on it, and wanted to share.  Her window faces west, so it's got great evening sun.  Not so great when your baby wants/needs to go to bed at 6:30.  And the blinds that came with the house were broken.  So I set out to fix it.  I had made curtains similar to these in the boys room in San Diego, so I knew they were simple.  This time I just lined them with sun blocking material, and actually installed them into the window (with a fabric covered board and screws) instead of using a tension rod.  Anyway, here's how they turned out: 

I love the fabric I found, and think it still works with the existing valance, so I'm leaving that up.  And they roll down to block out much of the light when its time to sleep.

Several months ago I painted an old bookshelf we had green to match her room.  I love how it turned out:

 

And this is a wall treatment I experimented with.  It's fabric attached to the wall with liquid starch (which you can make yourself with cornstarch and water.)  So easy.  And totally temporary, you can remove it any time, without any damage to the wall.  I'm not sure I love how this fabric looks - it turned out darker than I wanted, but I haven't felt like doing it over, so it's still there. 

I still have some things to hang on the walls, but it's getting closer!  Now if I could just get Olivia to keep it clean!

You never know what will happen on a Saturday

Our Saturday started out with rather mild plans. The national zoo was having an early opening with some kid-friendly events like animal feeding and birdhouse construction. We got out the door early and to the zoo by 8:30. It was a fun day for animal watching. It hit me that most animals are more active in the dawn and dusk time frame rather than the middle of the day (when most humans can get 3 kids dressed, fed, loaded in the car, and drive downtown.) Our first stop was the farm animals (cows and goats). Next was the big cats, where a tiger was out and active. It was pretty fun to watch the tiger prowl. He was hungry. He would go up to the door where he is presumably fed, and growl loudly. We then moved on to watch a squirrel taunt the prairie dogs by jumping in and out of their exhibit.



After regrouping we decided to try and catch the stingray feeding. It was in a obscure part of the zoo in an exhibit dedicated to the Amazon. We missed the feeding, but there was a very nice zoo employee who chatted to our kids for a few minutes about rays. Then we walked around the corner and found a huge aquarium. I swear, our kids could have been there all day watching these fish, some were as big as our 4 year old. There were a couple more aquariums and exhibits which were just as captivating. It was all the better because the exhibits were not crowded, and we could linger as long as we wanted.



We decided to walk back up and see the construction area where they made birdhouses and plaster molds. After that our eyes caught a chimp 40 feet up in the air. I've never seen this in a zoo before, but the Chimp exhibit is housed in two locations perhaps 100-200 yards apart, linked by something resembling a ropes-course (except, of course, that ropes-courses are modeled off cool jungle stuff. so it's moderately circular. but I digress). There were two ropes suspended between towers maybe 30-40 feet up. A series 4-5 towers made the skyway for the chimps to cross over into their other area. We watched three chimp climb up the tower, swing arm over arm and tight-rope walk, and then descend into their other house. It was pretty cool, and I bet that the animals loved it even more.







As were stalled trying to figure out what to do next or whether to go home, I heard, "Sam, Mollie." At first I thought it was one of our kids trying to get our attention (like after repeated "Dad" attempts), but it was Jason and his three kids. They were up for the day from out of town. We rounded up the kids and went to a local park and played for a while. Our kids are pretty close in age, so everybody had a buddy. I think that these ages are the best for playground fun. they are pretty much self-motivated and self-guided. Add in the excitement of having some new friends, and it was a perfect play date. Afterwards we went out for lunch.






All in all, a great day.

More Easter Pics

as promised...

Lucky Day

Ever since St. Patrick's Day, the boys have been going on about 4-leaf clovers. A recent conversations with the neighborhood kids revealed that they had all seen several. Some had seen the 5,7,8, and 12 leaf clover. As childhood bragging knows no bounds, someone quickly jumped to having seen a 100 leaf clover, but the kids shot that down as not realistic.

This weekend, we took the boys to a nearby park, and as they have done whenever they've seen grass in the past few weeks (which is very often) they bend down to see if they can spot the 4-leafer. They always claim to have found it, ... until they pick it and realize it is only 3. So i was a bit hesitant to celebrate when Harrison claimed to have found a 4-leaf clover yesterday. He picked it and sure enough, it's true.





When I told my mom about this, she said it reminded her of sorting through grass to find them as a child in Iowa. She found them on several occasions. I was surprised by this, because I have spent a lot of time digging weeds from lawns (raise your hands if your Dad delegated yard work) and never found one. But apparently they do exist.