Easy Friday

CHECK IT OUT: Today Annabelle had a burning desire to play checkers. It has been about a million years since I've played checkers, but I was willing to give it a shot.

We used a cool Sponge Bob and Patrick set we scored at a garage sale a summer or two ago. Truth be told, I'm not sure we played by all the right rules, but it "felt" right. I was pretty impressed with Annabelle's play and how she, in most instances, knew what the consequences of her moves would be.

That said, in the end, Sponge Bob (that's me) did come out on top.

THEY'VE GOT RHYTHM: I asked the kids what they did at Musikgarten today. Annabelle responded, "We drew circles and colored them in and then put stems and beams on them."

"Oh, so you drew musical notes," I replied.

"We had to make notes to make melody before we could put it into rhythm," she explained.

The parent participation part of today's class involved some rather complex choreography to what sounded like a German beer-drinking song. For a few minutes I felt like I was on "So You Think You Can Dance."

TICKET TREK: Another Friday, another freebie from Starbucks as part of their We-Love-You Fridays for Seattlites. Today's offering - a voucher for free children's admission to the Seattle Aquarium. We have a Starbucks about 8 blocks from our place, and the weather was really nice, so I thought it made sense to walk down and get the vouchers.

We walked eastward, down our hill and crossed the Interbay railyard at Dravus.
We left home about 20 until 2 and arrived to Starbucks at about 10 til. That gave us 10 minutes to kill (the vouchers weren't being passed out until 2 p.m.) So, we spent a few minutes exploring the Interbay Sports Complex, which has a couple of baseball fields, green space and a good sized soccer and football stadium. We've never been to a game there, but I love having the stadium close by. When I'm working out in the yard on weekends, I can hear the crowd and the ref's whistles and, once in awhile, players' shouts. All that is music to this sports fan's ears. :)
Just before 2 we headed over to Starbucks. CJ was happy to see they had a mini Top Pot chocolate doughnut in stock and Annabelle opted for apple juice. So our 'free' aquarium tickets cost a total of $2, but given that regular kids' admission is $11 apiece, we are still $20 ahead for our "trouble."

MEASURING UP: This campus of MPA needs a whole lot of baseboard moulding. In fact, as I think about it, I think only one room - the downstairs bathroom - has moulding. Sigh.

So today, I had the kids help measure the downstairs so that we could figure out just how much moulding we needed to buy. Using and reading the tape measure was good math practice for them - a good demonstration of "real world" math.

Tonight, we're off to Home Depot. Just another wild Friday night for us. ;)