Company's Coming

SOCIAL HOUR: This morning much of MPA's activity was about getting things in order for a visit for a friend's visit. The kids' yoga buddy and her mother were coming for a visit. It's the first time they've been to the MPA campus.

We cleaned (some of us more than others). Case in point: I told the kids to pick up the train tracks and they wound up having a protracted play session with them. Oh well. ... Meanwhile, I was so frantically cleaning that I broke my Swiffer sweeper. Drat!

We baked a big batch of sugar cookies so we could do some cookie painting. We made big leaves since fall is coming, and a herd of tiny horses, as ponies are a favorite of their friend.

While the kids visited and had some pizza for lunch, I whipped up a big batch of paint (powdered sugar, meringue powder and water). I let the kids mix colors (red, orange, pink, brown, yellow, green) and we left some white. I demonstrated how you could blob colors on and then use a fork, spoon and toothpick to swirl the colors about, but told them there are really no rule and there's certainly not just one right way to do it.

Annabelle and her friend sat and painted cookies for about an hour, I'd guess. They were meticulous and adventurous in their confectionery creations. The friend did a neat series of marbled looking horses (left).

CJ came and sat at the counter and was polite and engaging, but really not to into painting cookies. I gave him a horse and a leaf to do, and when I looked over a couple seconds later, he was eating the horse, not even bothering to ice it. :0 We had a good laugh over that.

He did rally and paint a leaf or two.

After the cookie , we walked up to Bayview Park and the three kids played together for about a half hour.

SCIENCE GONE WRONG: This morning, we read one of the library books we checked out yesterday: "Oh No (Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World)."
Before we even cracked the cover, I asked the kids to speculate what was going to happen based on what they could see on the book's front. They both noticed the reflection in the girl's glasses of what appeared to be a giant frog or toad and a large robot with a read laser beam eye. Both spelled trouble in the kids' minds.

Sure enough, once we opened the book, we learned the girl on the cover was being awarded a first place ribbon for her robotic science project when all hell broke loose. The robot went on a rampage. At that, the girl realized she'd made a few terrible mistakes (giving it a laser eye, powerful claw hand and the power to control dogs' minds), yet not giving the ability to hear or read (which means her verbal and written commands to cease and desist went unheeded) or feel pain (smacking it around didn't help either).

Creating a counteractive giant attack toad solved the robot problem, but ...

Well you figure out the rest.

The book was short on words but big on action. It was a quick, fun read. And published by Disney, I can't help but wonder if someone, somewhere has a movie in mind.

HISTORY LESSON: Today in our mailbox we found a packaged shipped by a faraway Goodwill store. Inside was a piece of gaming history that CJ has been wanting to acquire for a few weeks now. It was the game "ToeJam & Earl." It debuted in 1991 (12 years before CJ was born) for the Sega system. The title characters are alien rappers from the planet Funkatron who have crash-landed on Earth.

I remember when it came out it was quite a revolution due to its originality, funky soundtrack, sense of humor and the unique two-player cooperative mode. Also, as the aliens search Earth for pieces of their wrecked spacecraft, the game uses the random generation of levels and items to keep things interesting.

No doubt now you all understand why CJ HAD to add it to his collection.

ROLLIN', ROLLIN', ROLLIN': Naturally, we're still following news from NASA and right now, and much of it is about gearing up for the next shuttle launch. An update about the space shuttle Discovery making its way from its processing hangar to the enormous Vehicle Assembly Building was in this morning's news.

Today's photo from NASA of Discovery's rollout caught my eye because of the 22° halo around the sun - something we learned about last week.
Image Credit: Jen Scheer/NASA

IF YOU ARE SO INCLINED: There's an interesting story in the New York Times about effective study styles. It's titled, "Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits."
An excerpt:

(I)nstead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing.

“We have known these principles for some time, and it’s intriguing that schools don’t pick them up, or that people don’t learn them by trial and error,” said Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Instead, we walk around with all sorts of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken.”

There's more here.


TWICE IS NICE: Our school day wound down with some more P.E. We ran/rode the boulevard along the southwest portion of Queen Anne Hill. It's always gorgeous along that route and our turnaround point is Kerry Park, which has a playground the kids love.


CJ's favorite feature there is a curvy, upright pipe that spins. Apparently it reminds CJ of the building blocks of life because he yelled, "Watch me spin DNA!" and then started twirling it with a vengeance.


As we were leaving I told the kids, "A two park day is a good day."