Monday, June 30, 2008

Birthday Cakes

Spring is our birthday season for our boys. They each seemed to have a good birthday! Here is a gallery of the cakes that celebrated their getting one year older!







Tim's cake was a treasure island cake. He had a treasure hunt for his party that all the boys enjoyed very much!

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Monday, June 23, 2008

Safety Village

We went on a field trip recently to Safety Village where the children spent time with a firefighter learning fire safety, and practicing a fire drill, and with a police officer learning road safety. That was all very interesting, and useful, but by far the best part was after sitting in classrooms learning about road safety, they were taken out to a miniature village and allowed to drive little electric cars! You should have seen the ear-splitting grins!



Tim and his buddy:






Emmi and her friend:

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Sunshine Eggs!



Emmi found a recipe that she wanted to try for lunch today. So (with help from me) she made Sunshine Eggs for the boys and herself. I think they turned out pretty nicely!

Monday, June 16, 2008

Last Week

This is what was on our driveway last week:


A little later that day it was all in the veggie garden!

Then we planted. Tim has planted corn, here he is with Pip:



Emmi planted lettuce, beans, carrots and pepper and tomato plants. I planted tomatos, basil, zucchini and marigolds. And some pole beans (runner beans) which is what the poles are for. We're keeping a close eye on things out there!

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Fresh Air Fund

We're expanding our family for two weeks this summer! We have applied to be a Fresh Air Fund host family, and we have been matched with a 7 year old girl named Yvette. She lives in the Bronx in New York City.

From their website:http://www.freshair.org/default.aspx
"Since 1877, The Fresh Air Fund has been giving inner-city children the joy of a summer vacation with volunteer host families and at Fund camps, creating unforgettable memories and fresh possibilities."

We are very excited, and already have been thinking about the day trips we can take Yvette on, and different experiences that we take for granted that may be new for her. She will be sleeping in Emmi's room, on a futon, and Emmi is pretty pleased that she'll have a girl to play with!

Yvette's visit will be in July, so stay tuned for more details!

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Washington - Coming home


The last day of our trip we spent the first part of the morning packing up and leaving the condo. Then we drove to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center which is part of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, which is near Washington Dulles International Airport. This is a very large museum which has a real Concorde and Space Shuttle (among others). There is also an observation tower where you can see the planes landing and take off at the nearby airport.

Under the space shuttle:


We walked about looking at the different airplanes, ate our picnic in the parking lot, went back and looked at more airplanes. Then we left for home!

Our drive home was uneventful. We stopped for supper in Philipsburg, PA and got home about midnight.

Altogether an excellent trip!

Monday, June 2, 2008

Washington - Museums Take Two

Our last full day in Washington was spent visiting more museums - some we hadn't seen yet, and re-visiting our favourite!

We started our day with another ride on the Metro! We got off close to the Museum of Natural History. The entrance-way was teeming with school groups, but we made our way to the Ancient Western Cultures exhibit which was a walk-through Western History from nomads (cave people) to Rome. Although not particularly interactive, it was well laid out and interesting, and as we have studied this time period the children were very interested. We then went to the Gems exhibit where we saw the Hope Diamond - very impressive!

Next came lunch in the Hirschorn Sculpture Garden. We ate our picnic next to a fountain, and had a little rest there too.


After lunch we returned to the Air and Space Museum to see some exhibits we missed the first time through. Some of the exhibits had been closed because Ben Stiller was filming Night at the Museum II at the Air and Space Museum, and we wanted to see them. We particularly enjoyed the exhibit which recreated an aircraft carrier.


From there (and after snacks on the lawn of the Mall) we walked to what turned out to be our favourite museum - the U.S. Postal Museum! This was a relatively small museum about the history of the mail in the United States, and the different ways it has been delivered (e.g. Pony Express) but it was very interactive and interesting! Here are the children in a stage coach:


We printed out custom postcards, sat in the cab of a big rig, "rode" in a train, and stayed until closing! Then we went next door to a restaurant which is also a brewing company, and tried their custom rootbeer, and had supper.

Home to the condo, where the children watched a movie while we packed up.