Maiden Voyage

ANCHORS AWEIGH!: Christian has been working hard on getting our "new" boat ready and today, we finally got it in the water!
We launched just east of the Ballard Bridge at about 3 this afternoon.

We puttered eastward, toward Lake Union - under the Fremont Bridge, under the Aurora Bridge, around the perimeter of the lake and under Interstate 5.

It was a lovely afternoon and there were tons of vessels out on the water. We saw working boats (barges, tug boats, cargo ships) and motorized pleasure crafts of all shapes and sizes. We saw tourists riding the Duck boats, an Argosy cruise ship and people in rental boats. We also saw paddlers in canoes, kayaks and those newfangled stand-up-and paddle boats.

One of the Duck boats we passed today was packed full of men dancing and singing in unison - we don't know what language it was but it definitely was of the African continent.

Mercifully, the boat's motor started on the first pull and ran like a champ the whole time. We've dubbed our vessel Explorer -I, after NASA's first earth satellite. Both our boat and the satellite were born in 1958.

BY GEORGE: We started our morning off with some history. We had "A Picture Book of George Washington" by David A. Adler from the library. It came with a companion audio CD, so the kids read along. I figured any day is a good day to learn a bit more about the man our state was named after.

The book was well written - I learned a few things about our first president that I didn't know before!

After finishing the book, we hopped onto BrainPop and watched their video about George Washington, and the kids took (and passed) a quiz about him.

RICKROLLED: This morning CJ was reading a magazine and asked, "What's 'Rickrolled?' " I told him it's a bait-and-switch trick, for instance, when you trick someone into watching a bad music video from the 1980s. I asked him if he wanted to see the video that spawned the phrase, and he did, of course.

Apparently CJ didn't mind being Rickrolled. "It sounds funky!" he declared.

Later in the day he was talking about "Chocolate Rain." Too funny.

IN CONCERT: Tonight I was flipping through the channels and came across some lovely orchestral music on KCTS (the Seattle affiliate of PBS). Turns out it was "Video Games Live" in concert. On its Web site, the event is described as "an immersive event created by the game industry featuring the best game music performed by top orchestras and choirs combined with synchronized lighting, video, live action and audience interactivity."

Um, yeah, the kids might like that. ;) They watched the whole 90-minute concert on TV, pretty much using it as a soundtrack to augment their play together.

In checking out the tour dates, it looks like Video Games Live will be in Seattle next January. You know we'll be there!