Let's Move!

SCOOTIN' IN THE SUN: Now that spring has sprung, we are making a point to try to spend a significant amount of time outdoors every day (beyond just running to and from the car, har har).

To that end, around midday, we headed for the hilltop and spent an hour getting fresh air, exercise and some Vitamin D. The kids happily scooted 'round the park, and clambered on the playground.

Meanwhile, I gave Kirby a good walking, when she wasn't busy being petted by preschoolers.

When Christian got home, the kids had scooter round 2. We went to the waterfront this time. They scooted along the south shore of the ship canal between the Ballard and Fremont bridges.

It was idyllic - if you don't count the part when Christian and I were absolutely DOUSED by a bird flying overhead (if you catch my drift). It was both horrific and hysterical. Like getting struck by lightning, in a way. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. (No point in getting mad about it - that's just part of being out in nature, no doubt.)

WHITEHOUSE TWEETUP: Via a Let's Move post on Facebook, I learned today about an exciting TweetUp taking place on Monday, April 9, at the 134th annual White House lawn Easter egg roll.

The link to apply for the Tweetup is here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/tweetup   Registration is open through Tuesday, March 27th at 11:59 p.m. EST. Registration is for children ages five to thirteen and one to two parents or legal guardians. I threw our Easter bonnets into the ring, of course. I try to teach the kids about American history and traditions every day. What better way to teach them than for them to experience it?

Flying to DC would be wildly expensive for us, but the opportunity to visit our nation's capital for the first time: Priceless! Keep your fingers crossed for us!

PEEPS PROJECT: While they aren't part of our regular diet, we do love Peeps - for art projects. :)

Regular/longtime readers of our blog know that Annabelle's "Sesame Peeps" won the Grand Prize and Peeple's Choice awards in last year's Seattle Times contest. This year, the paper's just calling for photos, but there's no contest per se. That's totally fine by us, it's not all about the ribbons and glory and grand cash prizes. :) It's "art" for the sake of har (heh heh).

Here are some of our raw materials ...

You're going to have to wait until Monday to see what this year's "masterpeeps" is. The kids spent hours on it today and I can report that it's shaping up nicely.

I would also like to report that it's amazing how much curriculum you can work into a Peeps art project. In addition to all of the art aspects (color mixing and matching, cropping, composition, blending and more), we also talked lots of math (size, scale, circumference, diameter, length), and research skills were important, too (finding images on the Internet, for instance).

Cerebral stuff, this Peeps sculpting is.