Happy Campers

CAMP CONCLUDES: We made our trek cross town this morning for the final day of yoga camp. We got there early, so the kids enjoyed 10 minutes of part time before getting down to 'work.' CJ begged me to ride the teeter totter with him. I happily obliged. When class concluded, I (at the teacher's request) took a group photo. All in all the kids had a really good time and the camp was well worth the money and effort to attend.MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH: While the kids were at yoga, instead of hanging out in Columbia City, I came back home. I had a little project to finish. Namely, the cookies we started yesterday that will be heading to the firing room at the Rocket Ranch for the July 8 launch of Atlantis.

I really didn't have a plan for how I was going to decorate them. I just found a good photo of a shuttle on the pad and winged it from there.

What a fun project this was. I used the outline (black) and flood (white) approach for the bodies last night. Today, I did the drawing on them with edible ink markers.

EASY AFTERNOON: The kids had a grand ol' time this afternoon. First, they went over to Queen Anne with Rick, to a newish yogurt shop, Menchies. I'd never heard of the place before, but turns out it's part of a nationwide (plus Canada) company (their Web site is very slick). Customers pick the kind of soft serve yogurt they want, add the toppings they want and pay by the ounce. It got six thumbs up from the three siblings.

When the kids got home, their favorite babysitter, our across the street neighbor, stopped by and invited them to accompany her and her dog to the park. They were thrilled to do that, of course.

TAMALE: I think maybe tomorrow we'll actually break out the math books again - if we can find them.

SAY WHAT?:This afternoon CJ announced, "For my birthday I want a bench press. That way I could work on my abs."

?!?!?!?!

Thursday

BACK IN THE SADDLE: We were out and about relatively early again today in order to make day 4 of yoga camp some 40 minutes away. We made OK time, so we had a couple of minutes to kill, which meant the kids got to enjoy the great teeter totter at Lakewood Park once again.

EARLIER: Lately the kids have been reading themselves to sleep, which is great. I was happy to oblige this morning when CJ asked me for a book so he could read before he even got up. Books for 'breakfast' in bed? You betcha!
AFTERNOON ANTICS: I've posted a couple of windows on Craigslist that we bought but didn't use in our latest round of remodeling. One, a sweet Energy Star casement window, attracted the attention of %$#Lydia^%$## right away. (The characters denote unfamiliar symbols that accompanied her emails to me, including in her name. Usually these types of characters in an email are associated with the 'hot singles in your area!' or something along those lines types of spam. So I was a bit leery.

But Lydia kept writing and calling and I responded and so the plan was to meet at our place today. She said she had to wait until today, when her daughter could drive a truck, because she don't know how to drive a stickshift.

Having spoken to her I envisioned a tiny Chinese mother with a tiny Chinese daughter showing up to move a HUGE (5x5-foot) window. Lo and behold I was right. Fortunately, given my Spidey Senses, I had 'invited' Rick to our place to help load the window. Thank Gawd he could come. I won't recount the whole pick up craziness here, but suffice it to say it did take all four of us to load the window. All the while, CJ and Annabelle were charming the Chinese ladies by offering them flowers, inviting them into our house, etc.

The mother was immediately enamoured with CJ, saying how cute he was and she repeatedly told me how nice my children (yes, including Rick) were. :).

The best part was when the mom and her daughter were getting into their truck to leave, CJ asked me, "Are they part of our family?" The Chinese mother just melted at that, and so did I. Too funny.

BACK FROM THE DEAD: Today marked a day we'd been waiting and waiting and waiting for - we finally received a rubber belt that might - just might - bring our recently acquired and completely defective Famicom Disk System back from the dead.

At this point, most of America is wondering, "What is a Famicom Disk System (FDS)?"

Good question.

Well, FDS was released in February of 1986 by Nintendo as a peripheral for the Family Computer ("Famicom") console in Japan. The unit uses proprietary "floppy" disks. Though it was announced for the U.S. market, it was never released. Frankly, based on its reviews/performance, it's no wonder why. The system is/was notorious for it rubber drive belt going to tar. That's exactly what had happened in the one we bought.
So, we found tutorials on YouTube about how to replace it and ordered a small rubber belt.

It took CJ and Christian over an hour to follow the many steps to the procedure. But in the end ...
IT WORKED!! CJ was sooooooooo happy. We all were, actually.

OVERHEARD: "You're being so immature," CJ chastised Annabelle at one point today.

It made me chortle, hearing that statement coming from an 8-year-old. But I have to give CJ credit. He was calling a spade a spade at the moment he said it.

CUT IT OUT: Today we got a good start on the cookies we'll be sending to the control room at Cape Canaveral for the last launch shuttle launch.
RIGHTING A WRONG: Today, some generous benefactors (Hi Grandma & Grandpa) surprised CeeJ and Bee by sending $ for them to buy new scooters to replace the ones that were stolen from them earlier this week. Very nice! So now we're on the hunt for replacements - and you can be sure the new pair will be kept locked in the basement rather than parked along side the house in the alley.

BUGGY BLOGGER

Blogger/Blogspot was having some technical difficulties last night. Apologies for the late post.
MY WAY: While the kids were at yoga/music camp, another mother and I strolled the neighborhood. It's in the Mount Baker area of Seattle, along the southwest shore of Lake Washington. Lots of stately homes, steep hills and stairs. Oh so many stairs.

The super cool gargoyle pictured above spews water from a concrete channel/trough that runs along a railing for one of those public staircases

One particularly loooooong series of stairs that we ascended was labeled "Dose Terrace" at the top. It made me curious ...
So tonight, I learned from a page on the University of Washington Special Collections Web site. According to their information, "Charles P. Dose was a German immigrant who had a real estate business originally based in Chicago. In 1871 Dose and his partners, the Fricke Brothers, bought a 40-acre piece of land on Lake Washington in Seattle. Dose moved his family to Seattle in 1898 and began working with his son, Charles C. Dose to develop the land. They platted the Dose Addition in 1906 on 10 acres along South Walker Street in the area that would later become part of Seattle’s Mount Baker District. The first house was built at 31st Avenue and Walker Street. The Dose family lived in Mount Baker Park and Mrs. Charles C. Dose (Phoebe Dose) was instrumental in the creation of the Mount Baker Improvement Club."

So there you have it - mystery solved regarding the Dose Terrace label. Further down the page, I clicked on some of the little camera icons, which led me to photos of then new homes built in the Dose Terrace neighbhorhood. I recognized a couple of them from my walk today.

YARN BOMB: We took a different route home from yoga camp today in hopes of avoiding Seattle Mariners' matinee traffic. Our route took us past Occidental Park in Pioneer Square. There, we were super surprised to see several trees wrapped in colorful sweaters!
(Sorry the photo's blurry. I was driving at the time ... )

Apparently it's part of ARTSparks 2011. These tree sweaters, on display June 11 through July 15, are the work of Suzanne Tidwell. They were installed to coincide with International Yarn Bombing Day, June 11, "a day celebrated by subversive knitters everywhere" according to the ARTSparks Web site. Fascinating.

IN THE PM: This afternoon Annabelle had a "Stars and Stripes" ballet camp. I thought its title was simply a nod to the holiday coming up next week. I didn't realize that there is actually a ballet by that name until the teacher let us know they'd be watching some video from it.

Turns out "Stars and Stripes" was choreographed by George Balanchine in 1958, and it featured original music by none other than John Philip Sousa. Performed in 5 acts, it lasts about 28 minutes. The ballet is still performed annually by the New York City Ballet on or around the Fourth of July.

BLOWING IT: After dinner, Annabelle announced she wanted to blow paint. Um, OK. So we watered down some paint, she got a straw, some paper and went to town.

When Ketchup Attacks

FIRST THINGS FIRST: We were a little early for yoga camp this morning, so we hit the park across the street. Here, Bee is attempting to use the rope to climb to the platform. She looks pretty darn cute doing so, but didn't quite make it up today.

CJ, on the other hand, wasn't smiling on his ascent. His expression was one of gritty determination.And he made it to the top. :)

We'll be back for more tomorrow. And I think Annabelle will rise to the occasion.

WATER WORKS: After yoga, we made a brief stop at Christian's work to say 'Hi.' The kids just love the fountain there, because it's interactive. They can turn valves to control the water flow.

CLEAN SWEEP: This afternoon, I asked the kids to each put away 26 things. CJ was all over the assignment, knocking it out in no time. Annabelle, well, let's just say she wasn't as motivated.
CJ noticed her lack of production. "If I'm the one who's doing most of the work, then I'm the one's who's getting a promotion," he declared. That cracked me up. I'm not sure what kind of promotion he is/was expecting!

THE DOCTOR IS IN: I was shocked to see a Dr. Joyce Brothers column about homeschooling appear in my inbox today via a homeschooler email list. The shock wasn't the content - in fact, I nodded my head in agreement with all of it. What surprised me is that Dr. J is still alive and still a columnist. (I know, mean, but I thought she was really old when I was a kid and now I'm really old!)

AFTER NOON: Annabelle had her weekly ballet lesson today, and while she was so engaged, CeeJ and I hit the Magnolia Public Library in search of more Captain Underpants fun and adventure. We found three more books in the series (numbers 6, 7, 8), and checked them all out. CJ hadn't had his nose in that book more than 10 minutes when he was talking about ketchup packets and a practical joke. ...

Dunno about you but I ALWAYS pack ketchup packets in my purse, so we had that aspect covered. CJ explained to me he needed to put a ketchup packet under each of the 'bumps' on a toilet seat ... That's easy enough.
CeeJ had decided Christian should be his victim. So, as soon as Christian walked through the door, CJ (NOT Rico Suave) asked/ordered, "Don't you have to go to the bathroom? " and suggested Christian grab a newspaper and directed him to the downstairs bathroom. Naturally, Christian knew that Something Was Up immediately and sized up the toilet- with its bulging ketchup packets - with a jaundiced eye.

So he passed on the opportunity. ;)

CJ, not to be denied, decided HE would use the toilet.


WARNING!!!

GRAPHIC

KETCHUP

SPLATTERED

TOILET

IMAGE

FOLLOWS:

And this, I promise, is the last photo of a toilet you'll see on this blog for a looooooong time. Perhaps FOREVER.

LETTUCE ENTERTAIN YOU: Our greens are going gangbusters. Tonight we all (some more than others) enjoyed some lettuce from our garden.

IN THE BAG: This evening Annabelle went outside to play. Within a minute or two she ran back inside. I heard her say she needed something, but that she was going back outside. OK by me.

About 10 minutes later she came tottering in, wearing a yard debris bag she'd crafted into a costume. LOL!!!Apparently on her earlier trip in she'd grabbed some scissors and duct tape. The crafting queen strikes again!

BLOGGERS BEWARE: Should you find yourself in Tapei and feel tempted to comment on bad food you've been served, think twice.

Stop! Thief!!!

This is the face of a crime victim ...

VICTIMIZED: Today Christian and I were down in the alley moving some stuff around and Annabelle came out to ride her scooter. Only one problem - there was no scooter to ride. She couldn't even ride CJ's scooter because both of their scooters were gone.

Christian is pretty sure he saw them yesterday so, they left our place sometime last night or today before 1 p.m., when we got home from morning running around. Should we have locked them up? Yes, of course? Should someone have rolled off with them because they were not locked up? No, of course not. Bottom line is, CeeJ and Bee are scooterless now.The scooter caper comes on the heels of us noting our Most Favoritest Shovel in the World has also gone missing. The "Contractor's Grade" one with the fiberglass handle. Never thought I'd use "love" to describe a shovel, but, by god, I DID love that shovel.

So here's our APB: If you see anyone riding two Razor scooters carrying a contractor's shovel, call 911!!!!

Clearly, we are going to have to shore up our perimeters 'round here.

Oh, and Annabelle was happy to find a kitty in the alley today. We have pretty much removed it from the suspect list.IN HAPPIER NEWS: The kids started their week long, half-day yoga and music camp this morning. It's down in the Lakewood neighborhood. They both report really enjoying it.

Afterward, we stopped at the Lakewood Playground across the street with their BYF (best yoga friend).FREMONT STROLLS: This afternoon we did something we rarely do - a little window shopping. We were over in the Fremont neighborhood, which we love. We browsed the Fremont Vintage Mall, were we scoped out all sorts of treasures - and bought a few 'new' plates - in the oh so atomic Temporama pattern, which is our fave.

The entrance to the mall has great murals several feet long lining it. CJ's favorite was Bruce Lee. Bee made a beeline for R2-D2. GOOD HABITS: While bedtime stories were all the rage for the past few months, for the past couple of nights, the kids have opted to read before zzzzzz. CJ's sticking with a "Diary of a Wimpy Kid ..." series book, while Annabelle mixes it up.

Tonight's selection: "175 More Science Experiments to Amuse and Amaze Your Friends." :)