Froggy Pirate

One day, after a few days, or maybe it was weeks, of rain--Iowa rain, that is--I took a bike ride with my three boys to the park. One section of the park had turned into a full-on swamp complete with tadpoles and hundred of frogs. Since I'm not much of a frog catcher myself and I didn't know how we'd get one home right then, I told the boys they have to come back later with Dad, who is an expert frog catcher. They came home with Froggy Pirate.
We went to the second-hand store and found a small terrarium for $5 and had a great little pet for a couple months. He was, however, an Iowa frog and so had to be set free back in the park where we caught him just before we moved.

???

I don't really know what to say about this except that Jonah is definitely creative and inventive.

The Science Party

In June we threw a Science Party. What is a Science Party you may ask? Well, I didn't know either. I just know that Jonah and Wyatt asked me multiple times each day if we could throw a Science Party, so we made one up. We invited a bunch of little friends to come have fun with astronomy, geology, paleontology, chemistry, and even some tasty entomology. After the invitations were sent out I had a couple moms ask if this was a birthday party. "No, just a party to have a party," I replied. I think the whole world should have parties just to have parties more often. It's a lot of fun and everyone would be happier.

First we started with astronomy. As kids arrived they got to color in the planets.
Once the planets were all colored, I handed out spray bottles with white paint in them to spray the stars of the milky way galaxy.

Next, everyone was assigned to be something in the solar system from the sun all the way down to asteroids in the asteroid belt and even some dwarf planets.
We used the They Might Be Giants "Here Comes Science" album and let each child run around when their part of the solar system was called. On the first verse, the planets are named slowly but then on the second it is much faster, and thus much more fun. If you are not familiar with They Might Be Giants kids' album, I highly recommend them!

Here's Max doing some "chemistry" with a chunk of dry ice blowing up a ballon. We used the dry ice to make homemade root beer.

And here is fun with geology. We talked about plate tectonics and how sometimes the shifting in plates makes volcanos. Every child got a volcano pre-filled with baking soda and little red Koolaid powder. Getting to pour in their own vinegar was definitely the hit of the party.
And here we are making some awesome slime.

Super easy recipe for slime:

Solution A

1 cup water

1 cup white glue

2 Tbs liguid tempera paint or 7-10 drops food coloring (optional)

Solution B

1 1/3 cups warm water

4 tsp. Borax laundry booster

Mix ingredients in solution A together in a medium bowl. In a second bowl, mix the ingredients in solution B together until the borax is completely dissolved. Slowly pour solution A into solution B (Do not mix!). Roll solution A around in solution B 4-5 times. Lift solution A out of solution B and knead for 2-3 minutes. Will store for a really long time in an airtight container or ziploc bag.

I didn't get a picture of our paleontology, but we took plastic dinosaur figurines and encased them in a soft Ivory soap concoction. When the soap dries out you can use the lump as hand soap and slowly reveal your dinosaur.

And finally, the tasty entomology. I lucked out and found some fruit snacks that were different parts of bugs--the wings, the thorax, the head--and we placed them with some worms in pudding-dirt. Most kids were happy to dig in. A few, like sweet Kennedy to whom Wyatt is talking, weren't too keen on the dirt even after I explained it was chocolate pudding mixed with oreos.

Such a fun party. I'm glad my boys asked for it and now that we're in Utah, we may just have to do it again with some new friends.

Don't you wish...

...pureed vegetables tasted this good...
...and made you this happy?

Long Summer Days

Since we weren't sure when or where we'd be moving, I didn't sign up the boys for any camps or lessons this summer. You have to sign up early to get a spot in just about anything where we lived and I didn't want to sign up and then have our house sell and have to move. So we passed the summer days in the backyard, at the pool, the park, and around the neighborhood. Max was busy finishing his last rotations and then studying for finals so we had a lot of time to pass. Here's some photos.

The littlest guy spent most of his summer in and out of the sand box.

He even braved the fountains downtown.
But he wasn't as brave as his oldest brother...

Wyatt graduated to a pedal bike. This is his very first attempt. He has always been a little bit more timid on bikes than Jonah, but thanks to his Boot Scoot he was riding on his own within an hour or so and now he's a pro!
Many, many hours were spent on the trampoline. I love having a trampoline.


I love these little guys!

Another Zoo...I Blame PBS Kids

Max and I refuse to pay for television. We don't watch that much of it anyway and since we can pretty much watch anything we are interested in a day later on Hulu, we see no point in paying for television. Because of this, I rely heavily upon PBS kids to give me an hour to do Boot Scoot stuff in the morning before the day fills up and I run out of time to ship bikes. The boys LOVE PBS Kids and they really loved it when a man named Dan Wardel came on in between shows for Iowa Public Television. Dan is a funny and animated guy who can keep a giant library conference room full of kids entertained and enthralled for 45 minutes. When you think about it that way, Dan is amazing. Anyway, for about two months, Dan kept coming on and telling kids to come and see him at the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines. Not only would Dan Wardel be there, but Buddy the dinosaur from Dinosaur Train too! Jonah begged and pleaded to go and even took down the calendar, found the right day, and wrote ZOO on it in big letters. We had recently been to the Omaha Zoo so I wanted to protest my case for not driving 2 hours each way for a much smaller zoo, but when it turned out Max needed to study for finals and didn't mind not having us around to interupt, my three little guys and I made the trek. And we really did have a good time.

Only in Iowa????

The Blank Park Zoo is small and more like I remember the Hogle Zoo being when I was young, complete with a train, camel rides, and lots more animal interaction. We fed fish, chickens, goats, and even giraffes.

And here's Buddy--it was stinkin' hot and humid that day and Buddy had to keep taking breaks, probably so he wouldn't pass out. Luckily we caught him and my boys' day was complete!

My Baby Turned One

Emmett is such a cutie! He is very easy going for the most part--although we have recently been in a screeching phase that now seems to be passing, thank goodness. With two older brothers he gets knocked down and pushed around a bit, but he usually doesn't mind. Lately he loves to grab onto Jonah's clothes from behind and pull or spin him around.

For his birthday, Max and I gave him toothbrushes. Yes, that's right, three toothbrushes.
And here is why--he will move a stool to a drawer where he knows there are toothbrushes and suck on everyone's toothbrush. I've gone to brush my teeth and night and had to search for my toothbrush only to find it in a pile of toys in the playroom. So sanitary. So we gave him multiple toothbrushes and tried to hide everyone else's a little better. It has worked for the most part, but every once in a while he manages to get a hold of someone else's. He's tricky like that.

This is where I wanted to take a photo so I had to stop him from grabbing the cake. Mean mom--I put a cake in front of him and then don't let him touch it. He wasn't as keen on grabbing it when I let him. He showed me--no cute photos of a messy, cake-covered 1-year-old.

His brothers "helped" to unwrap presents.