AGAINST THE WIND: Last week we signed up for the President’s Active Lifestyle Award program and we're taking that seriously here at MPA. To that end, we made sure to get our ride/run in this morning when the sun started to peek out from behind the ceiling of clouds.Our journey down to the waterfront was a bit more difficult than usual as we were running/riding into a strong headwind. Because of the wind blowing toward us, you could smell Puget Sound from a distance today. Our reward for our hard work was that when we go there, there were bona fide waves crashing into the shore. (Usually the waters lap at the beach, and the only time it's more dramatic than that is when there's a bit of wake from a passing Washington State Ferry or departing cruise ship.)
Before we left home, Christian looked up the tide table and discovered that the tide should be fairly low when we headed to Pier/Terminal 91. The tide tables were (of course) right. Beach combing was good.
We found lots of shells (clam, crab and others), and Annabelle even found a sea urchin.To be honest, when Christian proposed a trip down to the beach, I wasn't that excited about it - I had a playground in mind for the kids. Of course, as it turns out, the beach is a playground (duh, me). The kids happily scampered about, climbing small boulders, walking "planks" (large driftwood) and slipping around on seaweed.
The sun even came out in full force for our playtime. Nice!
HOME EC: I try to sprinkle some life skills lessons into our curriculum every so often, and today that came in the form of teaching Annabelle how to apply an iron-on patch.
She has some jeans with cute embroidered flowers - and a hole in each knee. Rather than throw them out, I told Annabelle we should just add some more embellishments that would do double duty as patches. So we bought a pack of iron on flowers last week and this morning we heated up the iron and stuck them on.
She was thrilled with the look and I was happy that we'll get at least a few more months out of them for just $4.
POP! GOES THE THANK YOU: One of this morning's projects was crafting and writing an overdue Thank You card to Aunt Renee and Uncle Jim for all the super cool stuff they brought the kids a couple of weeks ago. One of the gifts was the awesome Encyclopedia Prehistorica - Dinosaurs.
The publisher of the unparalleled pop up book is Candlewick Press, and on their Web site there is an activity kit you can download. The "kit" is a PDF that gives you the template to create your own pop up T-Rex card. I thought that would be perfect for the thank yous.
The kids first colored their dinos, then cut them out. Then it was time to fold and the pop up face to the body background. They were pretty pleased with the effect!
BRAIN FREEZE: This afternoon the glue had dried on their pop up cards, so I asked the kids to write "Thank you" on the front of them. Annabelle quickly did so in her signature curlicue letters. CJ, hmm, well that was a different story. You would have thought I asked him to raise the Titanic. He managed a T in short order but then he just seized up.
Let me assure you, "thank" is a word he knows how to spell. I suggested a dictionary, but when you can't get past T, that doesn't help much. I asked him to close his eyes and write it (that almost always works) but not today. He really wasn't plugged in. I told him to go to his room and ponder it, instructing him to get a Magna Doodle out of the drawer and try to write it. He was back out less than a minute later saying, "I don't know what a Magna Doodle or a drawer is."
OMG. At that, I told him he was on his own and to let me know when he had "thank" written on a Magna Doodle. He finally managed to find a drawer, a Magna Doodle and write "tank."
I asked him to read it to me, and of course he saw it as "Thank." I asked him to read it again, sounding out each letter. He finally caught his mistake and spelled it right. I think the whole ordeal took about 30 minutes. Egad. Needless to say, the rest of the day was spent sans video games and YouTube for him. Time to plug the brain into reality, CJ.
ACROSS THE POND: This year, the kids have homework for their Musikgarten class. This week's assignment included instructions to find the British Isles on a globe, which they did with little trouble.
They also had to color flags for England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland. We all agreed that Wales, with its big dragon, has the coolest flag.
WATTS UP: This afternoon during Bee's ballet, CeeJ, Christian and I walked to the Magnolia Library. We returned a few items, checked more than a few out, and picked up an item on hold. We'd been waiting months for our turn to use a "Kill A Watt."
The device is a meter you plug household appliances into to see how many watts of electricity they're using.
We started with the big screen TV. It took only 1 watt of power when it was plugged in but off. Once on, that wattage shot up to 209.
My computer and its peripherals (monitor, printer, cable modem, router and sound system) drew 26.5 watts when plugged in but off; while running it used 136.
The Wii drew .5 watts when plugged in but not on. When we fired it up, it drew 15 watts.
We suspected the fridge would be the biggest energy vampire and we were right. It ranged from 106 to 428 watts, depending on what was running at the time.
ROLL OUT: Late this afternoon we watched a few minutes of the six-hour roll out of the space shuttle Discovery. 
Attached to its booster rockets, Discovery was upright during its 3.4-mile journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. NASA reports the vehicle was moving at about 3 MPH. I told the kids that if they were there, they would be able to walk right along side it and keep up. That they were as fast as the space shuttle (at least today!) seemed to impress them.
Discovery is set to launch Nov. 1 as mission STS-133. (Photo credit: NASA, naturally)
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