Them playing with someone else’s Legos at the library Legotime, me sitting on my butt reading a magazine. Good times. :)
Friday afternoon…
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LEGO picture
A LEGO picture with my initials.
A skirt!
With more Anna inspiration, I found this simple skirt tutorial and made Eve a skirt! I am so excited and it was SO easy! Eve insisted I make one for doggie as well. Of course.
I started it yesterday afternoon while the kids worked on their embroidered pillow projects (more on those later) and bounced around. I did a bit more after they went to bed. I left it with the hem pinned up and the waistband elastic pinned together so I could try it on Eve this morning and make sure it fits. It did. This afternoon I finished the hem and closed up the waistband and voila! A cute skirt!
A cute skirt.
A fancy waistband.
A snazzy hem.
A shy model.
A silly girl and her doll. (Apparently doggie wasn’t in the mood to wear a skirt today so Kristin volunteered instead.)
More piano hunting
Time is running out and we have many more pianos to find. Splash Camp has been taking up most of our time and energy these days! After camp on Wednesday I had haircut appointments scheduled for them, so we stopped by two pianos in the area as well.
Located in an artsy building, this piano is painted with chalkboard paint and available for decorating.
We all signed our names and left little notes.
This one is my favorite so far. It’s decorated in a “blues” theme, with lyrics and blues history and other decorations. The back (why didn’t I get a picture of that?!) is covered with white tiles decorated by lots of different people to show what “the blues” meant to them.
I like how they have a song written inside the cover. Clearly a lot of thought was put into it. It’s a very well done piano!
Lex’s To-Do List
Mowing the lawn, with a little help from dad.
This picture makes it look like he took off on his own! Really it lasted for about 20 seconds. He helped Alan do maybe a quarter of that side yard. Then Alan did the rest. You gotta start somewhere though, right? He was eager to learn, but tired out quickly. It’s a hard job for a little guy!
After dinner piano practice, explaining 8va and slurs to Alan.
Not bad for a Sunday!
About Lex
I have two thoughts for you this evening, both about Lex.
First, we were out and about this morning for his piano lesson. We’ve established a bit of a routine with lessons, then walking around town finding pianos, then getting bagels for lunch. Today we had gotten lunch and were about to settle on a bench to eat lunch, when this big group of people came up to the nearby piano and started remarking over it. Lex, all on his own, started talking to them! He told them why the pianos are around town and that there was an accompanying Valley Quest. They were interested and responded well to him. He had a little trouble making eye contact and keeping himself facing them, and I’m sure they had a little trouble hearing him, but overall I was completely surprised and impressed with his actions. He was brave (by his standards) and confident and knowledgeable. He is growing up!
This afternoon I encouraged them to do a summer journal entry since we’ve been so busy doing things and they haven’t done a journal entry in awhile. Eve eagerly drew a picture of the Home Depot car at the races, but Lex decided he wanted to make a 3D car instead. He is an ambitious boy! He drew it out on paper, all one piece, like an exploded out top view. If that makes any sense. Then cut it, colored it, folded it and taped it together. Then he experimented with 3D wheels, with no luck, so he resorted to flat wheels attached with fasteners so they really turn. He was so proud of his project! Tomorrow he plans to make an interior. I’m not sure how that will go, but he has ideas!
He went to bed tonight with a to-do list running through his head for tomorrow. Practice the piano, do some Khan Academy, play more of his Transformers game, learn to mow the lawn (Alan’s idea!), make more paper cars, make a paper Nascar race track… there was more I can’t remember now. I know Alan also wants to take him to Home Depot for some project shopping. So much for a down day before Splash Camp starts again on Monday!
Back to the beach
I took the kids to the Atlantic again yesterday to play with Julie and her girls. Three years in a row makes it a tradition, right? (2010, 2011) Too bad it will be our last with them.
We turned on our new Ralph S. Mouse audiobook collection and had a silent drive to the ocean, arriving to find a beautiful day and a full beach! The tide was coming in and the kids were excited. We found our friends, found a spot, found the water and enjoyed our day. It went by quickly.
Here are just a few of the photos I took. I take a lot of pictures. Have you noticed?
Into the ocean!
Lex LOVES the waves!
Think the goggles did any good in the waves?
Quintessential summertime picture! We need to get to the ocean more often.
Sail boats make me happy.
Happy girl.
Into the waves… face first!
They LOVED the sand this year too.
I like the look of turning the camera flash on at the beach. I’ll have to experiment with that some other day.
They really loved the sand! Eve said they were making themselves into cement people. :)
Chameleon kids. They could disappear in the sand!
I like this picture. Sometimes she looks so grown up, sometimes she seems like such a little girl still. Maybe it’s the hat.
Speaking of little girls! This sweet baby is growing up.
Buddies.
Molly eventually got into the sandy fun as well.
She’s living the good life!
I love this picture!
They make me smile. :)
Eve has so many different expressions!
The tide went out and suddenly we had a whole lot of beach to play on! Molly made a sidewalk to help us find our way from the blankets to the sand village we built.
Lex worked hard on building a sand castle.
Kate worked hard on filling the bucket and learning to walk on sand.
Lex and Kate, hard at work.
This pale boy ended up very red by the end of the day! It occurred to me, too late, that the spray sunscreen we used for his first coat was getting low and must not have had enough sunscreen coming out with the spray. Eve and I got a touch red, but we used lotion for both applications. Lex wanted spray for his first coat and I think that was the problem. Luckily he’s feeling much better today!
I drew a hopscotch board in the sand. The kids were surprised and excited. Molly is very good at hopscotch.
Lex is quite good as well.
I had a lovely picture in my brain with “Friends” and the date scrawled in the sand and four smiling children in a row. Lex loved the idea and got right to work making the word. His block letter weren’t quite what I had in mind, but cute anyway. Then I took a hundred pictures (plus or minus a few) and couldn’t get a single one with four kids looking in the same direction, never mind smiling! So here we are. Friends. :)
Look, Julie and I were there too! :)
After we did things my way Lex explained that he drew the boxes so each kid could sit in one around the word. Oh, ok. They all arranged themselves and I snapped a picture. Cute.
Then Lex said Molly and Kate were supposed to turn around so everyone was facing the same way. This was his vision all along and I have to say it’s the best group picture I got! Smart boy! Smiling kids. Happy friends!
On the way home the kids and I stopped to get pizza, then stopped an hour later to get some candy. (Which also seems to be a tradition if you read my 2001 post. The difference this time is that the kids knew exactly what kind of candy they wanted! I guess we’ve gotten a little lax with the sugar exposure lately!) We got home late, but made it through showers and bedtime with little fuss. Poor Lex was completely burnt and cried about that. I found some old aloe lotion in the cabinet that smelled ok and slathered it all over him. He said it helped. He is still red today but much more comfortable. Thankfully!
Wisdom
My daughter is wise. I was feeling a little cranky this evening (neighbor gossip for another day!) and I apologized to her, saying I was feeling a little sad and cranky. She said, “I’m going to look into your brain and see why.” A deep sounding concept that she got directly from A Wrinkle In Time. The wisdom came, however, when she said, “Mommy, you are feeling sad because you aren’t taking very good care of yourself lately. Your brain wants you to take better care of your body, then you won’t be sad anymore.” An idea that I’m sure she got from me along the way, but it sounded so wise and so entirely true that I couldn’t help hugging her and thanking her. The neighbor situation put me in a cranky mood, but the food choices I made to curb the cranky mood were really the problem. Hello marshmallow fudge! I told her she was one hundred percent correct and she said, “I know because I looked inside your mind. It was hidden in there.” I love that girl!
Pure Silly
Here is how we pass the time on a hot summer afternoon.
This was actually after I got back from work today. Yep, I went to work today! The babysitter swears the kids were angels for her, but they were pretty cranky for me. Hot, sweaty, tired, ya know. In an effort to turn our afternoon around I grabbed the camera. This led to 45 minutes of wrestling on the living room floor. Lex gave it his all and he’s quite strong these days! After that we were all hot and sweaty so we called a drink break (with LOTS of ice cubes!) and then everyone settled down into a lovely evening. Sometimes you just gotta give them some attention. :)
Monday Morning Science
Lex got a book for his birthday (from me!) called Science Rocks and he has been happily reading it ever since. Towards the end of last week he decided to try a few experiments. Unfortunately we don’t have most of the “common household items” that the experiments need, like empty 2 liter bottles and plastic hosing. Today he found one that we did have all the supplies first and he was thrilled! At 7:00am we were doing scientific experiments!
Today’s experiment was about color separation. Or water wicking. I didn’t read the book.
They each drew a big dot on strips of coffee filters, put the ends of the filters into water, and watched as the water wicked up the filter and brought the colors along with it.
Lex got great color separation with the colors he chose! Eve’s orange and pink didn’t do as well. (this picture was taken by Lex)
Last week they tried to make a hydrolic lift but we had too many substitute parts and the painters tape didn’t hold up to the water and the whole thing just didn’t work out.
This is Lex’s hydrolic lift. It leaked water every step of the way. :(
This is how it was supposed to look!
Eve’s experiment is the one in front. She is less interested in directions and instead chose to make up her experiment as she went along. She had a very elaborate story which I can’t really remember. It involved a generator (not show) which would spin fast and generate steam and… something. It all sounded scientific and quite plausible, as long as you didn’t listen very closely. :)
Funny girl!
Eve has actually been in “scientist” mode for quite awhile. Before Lex even got out the book she was talking about conducting experiments. This particular “experiment” started by mixing food ingredients (marshmallows, graham crackers, butter) and was shaping up to be quite a tasty experiment, but then she started adding rocks and balloons and more expensive food items, so I had to cut her off and send her outside. This is what she came back with. I’m still not sure what the purpose of the experiment was as her hypothesis kept changing. :)