Ballet and Baseball

MRS. ROBOTO: Above is a creation of Annabelle's from the PBS Kids Web site. "It has three heads, six arms and four legs and it was almost all gold," she says of it. The heads are topped with beehives "because I liked the bee hats," she explained.

To get to the robot building tool, you have to visit Word Girl's Web site, then click on Huggy's House of Fun, and then Tobey's Robot Workshop.

TAMBOURINE TIME: Annabelle sprang out of bed with more gusto than usual this morning. Her enthusiasm was due to her remembering that this morning she had a special dance camp, Tambourine Time.

Though it's the same teacher and the same place (the Magnolia Community Center) it's different than her regular lessons, in that there are more fun and games type activities as opposed to the more drill-like approach during standard lessons.

The teacher always has special dress up items for the kids, and a little takeaway gift (today it was a small tambourine-like instrument).

We dropped Bee off at 10:30, and CJ and I took Kirby for a stroll around the village, hitting the post office and a park along our way.

Soon, it was time to pick Ballerina Bee up. When we arrived, she was prancing about with ribbons and a tambourine to music from Swan Lake. She had a ball. And speaking of ball ...

MARINERS MATINEE: From ballet we went straight to the ball field for a 12:40 start of the Ms vs. the As.

Christian went down early and was able to find a parking spot without too much trouble. The kids and I were not early (due to ballet) and the only spots to be had anywhere near the stadium were $35 apiece. I wasn't going to pay that, no how, no way. Thanks to our cell phones, Christian and I were able to connect and he came and got the kids out of the car right by Safeco. Then I drove. And drove. And drove ... for about 10 minutes looking for a spot. Because it was a weekday afternoon, none of the local businesses were selling spots in their lots (instead reserving them for customers), and because of Mayor McCheese's full speed ahead on tearing down the viaduct (even though no replacement is in the works), thousands of former parking spots have been taken away, with no replacements.

I ended up parking about 12 blocks away, on the street. I was glad the kids weren't still with me - it was a bit of a hike. I didn't make it to the field until the second inning, and walked past many poor souls still in search of a parking spot.

It was a lovely day for a game - about 80 degrees and blue skies. We were in section 115, on the infield side of the right field foul pole - in Ichiro territory. Unfortunately, he's about the only one worth watching any more.ACTION!: CJ and I worked on verbs this morning. He had a worksheet where he was supposed to circle the 'action' word. He circled a noun or two initially, but got into the grove by the third worksheet. Annabelle worked on some descriptive word exercises this evening.

BEST BOOK EVER?: When we were at the Pacific Science Center last week, in their video game center, they had "High Score: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games." As soon as I saw it, I knew we had to get a copy.

It was in the mailbox today. Christmas in August!

CJ has been poring over it all evening. It's nearly 200 pages with tiny type, but I have a feeling he'll have it read cover to cover in no time at all.