Rebound

GOOD MORNING: When today dawned, Annabelle was fever free and feeling much better. Hooray!

Pretty early out of the gate she asked to visit the kids' portion of the Canadian Broadcasting Company's Web site. There, she played some learning games, which isn't all that easy to do while you're wearing pink satin gloves.

JOURNAL-ISTS: We continued the "Diary of a ... " series. Writing from a dog's perspective CJ's entry for Friday, August 20 was, "I playd with my brother. We ate bones."

Bee had two days' worth of entries to do. She made up her sick day (Thursday) by quickly writing, "I love swimin in the ocean.'

But when it came to Friday's entry she stumbled into a writer's block. What to write, what to write ???

We kicked around a couple of ideas, and I reminded her that not every day is a great day, and sometimes diary entries reflect that. That was all she needed. She ran with it.

Diary of a Dolphin
Friday, August 20

How do you like all her curlicues on her letters? Nothing wrong with a little flair, I suppose. :)

PAINTING PINATAS: Our current pinata project is progressing. Kirby is stuffed and primed. Today, Annabelle helped give it a coat of pink on the body and red on the boots. We hope to have her/it ready to mail off tomorrow.

The Death Star got an extra layer of skin today. It's ready to stuff. After much back and forth in my head, I made the executive decision NOT to put multi colored lights inside it. I looked at image after image of the Death Star online and in none of them did I see any hint of light colored anything else than white, and the white lights were teeny tiny.

THE SANDLOT: This afternoon we were very happy to have a chance to get together with CJ's BFF from kindergarten. We met in the south lot of Discovery Park and made the short trek to an odd spot in the park. Surrounded by grassy meadows and next to a cliff leading down to Puget Sound, there's an expansive natural sand box. It's like a beach without a shore, if that makes any sense, which it doesn't, which is what makes the spot kind of special.

The kids got busy playing in the sand, digging and building. That kept them busy for awhile.

Later on CJ and his friend staged their own informal, impromptu wedding ceremony. ;)

Temperature's Risin'

MERCURIAL: Last night about dinnertime, Annabelle started complaining of a sore throat. During dinner, she started drooping, and by bedtime she was running what felt to the touch to be a high fever.

She slept between me and Christian last night. We gave her a dose of ibuprofen at 11:30 p.m. and again at 5:30 a.m. I think we each kept a hand on her all night to monitor her temperature.

This morning, I rooted around and I found an old digital thermometer. Annabelle registered 103.7. Thinking/hoping it was wrong, I tried it on myself. 98.7. I re-took hers, it read 103.7 again. Not good.

I called Rick and hobbled over to sit with Bee while I ripped over to Alberstons. I bought several types of juices and some frozen push up thingees for her. She has partaken of both and isn't worse, but isn't any better as of this evening.

She's had her good moments and her bad moments today. But she's young and resilient - hopefully by tomorrow, she'll be a healthy person. Meanwhile, fingers and toes are crossed here that no one else gets it.
ON A WING AND A PRAYER: Did you know that August 19 is National Aviation Day? The holiday was established by Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1939, he issued a presidential proclamation designating the anniversary of Orville Wright's birthday to be National Aviation Day.

To note the occasion, we watched a BrainPOP movie about flight. It did a wonderful job of explaining the concepts of weight, lift, thrust and drag. We learned In order for a plane to be able to fly, lift has to be greater than or equal to weight, and to move forward, thrust needs to be greater than drag.

Other aviation-related terms we learned about are airfoil, high pressure, low pressure, ailerons, elevators and rudder.
The kids took a review quiz afterward and got all but one of the questions right. We also checked out the "FYI: Read More" feature about sonic booms. We heard a couple of sonic booms on Tuesday, when President Obama was in town.

From BrainPOP we learned, "When something moves through the air, it makes waves around it. ... These waves move at Mach 1, the speed of sound. As an aircraft approaches Mach 1, the air waves begin to pile up on each other, since they can no longer get out of each other's way." BrianPOP explained that when this air wave build up happens, you can see a cone- or cup-shaped cloud form around the plane. That's exactly what we saw when we saw the F-18s flying over Lake Washington during Seafair (you can see the cone emerging in the photo I took below; they purposely kept their speed just barely sub-sonic during the show, though. IDEA BOOK: Yesterday, I received a magazine called The Idea Book. It's a publication for educators from the A&E, Lifetime, History and Bio networks.

Its features articles include a story about the history of Halloween and "How the States got Their Shapes." Each story has a list of discussion questions, vocabulary, related Web sites and books, plus extended activities. There is also info about when related shows air on the networks. Good stuff - and it was free!

DIARY DAY TWO: This morning I wanted to continue our "Diary of a ..." journaling. I asked Annabelle if she felt up to it. She said she did. However, when pushing pencil came to shove, she just couldn't rally. After writing Thursday, August 19 on her sheet, she begged off.

CJ completed his entry. He wrote

Diary of a Dog, Thursday, August 19

Today I went to a restaurant. I ate a cheeseburger with
ketchup mustrd mayo relish.

His "illustration" was was words "Come in!" He said it's the sign on the restaurant, as seen through the dog's eyes.

PIC ME: This afternoon Annabelle rallied for a bit (the right mix of ibuprofen, organic vanilla milk and a few M&Ms). She asked to play Sprout online. Once there, she implored me to upload a photo of her to the PicMe portion of the site. The site suggests a good, clear face shot, so I chose the photo of Annabelle taken on the day she lost her first tooth. That's a good mug shot.

Once it was uploaded, I was able to do a bit of resizing and drag some clipping points around her hairline and then Presto! she became a cartoon. I must say, it's pretty darn cute. This is a screenshot; in the online version, she was dancing and playing the maracas.
Once the photo was uploaded, she could watch a trailer, play some games and print some activity sheets out, all featuring her mug. She dug it!

I called CJ over to check out the site. He politely took a look but told me he definitely did NOT want to be cartooned.

ROYAL BALLET: Although Annabelle was in no dancing mood herself today, I thought she might get a boost out of watching a ballet DVD from the library. I chose "Nutcracker Sweet" by The Toy Castle. It featured a collection of short stories/programs performed by members of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. The costumes were awesome and the music and storytelling were engaging. BOTH of the kids watched the whole thing. After the short stories were over, we popped the DVD into my computer's CD drive and Annabelle played several Flash animated games.

GENIE IN A CARTRIDGE: This evening CJ finally got a chance to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new mushrooms and new uncivilized enemies. To boldy go where no Mario has gone before ...!

A few weeks back, I saw an old school Game Genie laying in a bin with electronic equipment at a local Goodwill store. I knew what it was from when Rick and Ken were little kids. As Wikipedia describes it, the Game Genie "is known as the first example of consumer-friendly 'game enhancement' by means of (temporarily) directly altering the binary code of a game." You have no idea how happy this makes CJ, whose head is constantly swimming with hacks he wants to attempt and code he wants to write.

Tonight, CJ and Christian played around with the Game Genie using Super Mario Bros. on the NES. (That's pretty old school - that game/system bundle came out in North America in March of 1986.)

At first CJ and Christian were using Game Genie codes they found on the Internet. Those let them fast forward to advanced levels in the game, speed things up and so on. Before long, Christian started making codes up for CJ to try, and they discovered some wild and wacky levels definitely not part of standard game play. They had a blast.

Monkey Wrench

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Today didn't go entirely as planned. Our Wednesday train started derailing last night, around 10 p.m., when CJ & Bee's biggest brother Rick called. He had just returned home from a distastrous jog where he went down hard, injuring a big toe. I went over to his place for a looksee last night. It didn't look good.

This morning, Bee had a special 90 minute dance camp/ballet class/ Today's theme was "fiesta." The takeaway 'prize' from it - a feathered mask. (To me, that's more Mardigras than Spanish-inspired, but oh well, she loved it.)

Once dance was done, our next stop was a place decidedly less fun: The urgent clinic at Group Health, so that Rick could get his injury checked out. We dropped him at the clinic and then moseyed over to Safeway to get a couple of corn dogs for the kids. They ate them in a lovely courtyard we found at Group Health. There were sculptures, a fountain, nice landscaping and some benches.

There were also some interesting decorative architectural elementents highlighted by brick surrounds. We found a plaque that let us know that the decorative elements were made from terra cotta and preserved from an apartment building built in 1926 which formerly stood on the present day Group Health site. That prompted a conversation about terra cotta (where it comes from, what it is, how it's used).

Corn dogs consumed, we headed back into urgent care to find Rick still sitting there. We left him again, heading for the awesome slide on the Group Health grounds. The kids must have gone down that slide 50 times today. It's really quite high, unlike slides you'll find in the average play park, that's for sure. For one thing, the steps leading up to it are darn near vertical, more like ladder rungs, really. Of course our kids have grown up amidst remodeling, and climbing ladders is second nature to them.

After the slide session, we went back to check on Rick. Good news is, he was gone from the waiting room. The bad news is, he was nowhere to be seen/heard. So off we went again.

We headed for the lab, where I had to donate a small vial of blood. The kids got to see the blood draw, which I think is a good thing. Neither one of them has had to have a blood draw ever/yet, and so seeing it done up-close and seeing that it didn't hurt or freak me out is a positive thing, I'd think.

After we were done there, there was still no sign of Rick. Given that, I reminded the kids that there was a cool toy store down the street. One that had M&Ms in every color of the rainbow, and then some. ...

Needless to say, that got their attention. So we headed to Red Balloon Company.

I told the kids they could pick a couple of colors each. Annabelle opted for light pink, dark pink and gold. CJ went with silver and gold.

We walked back to Group Health. Still no sign of Rick, so we went back to a park bench by a slide. I told the kids they could each have 20 M&Ms. If they wanted their colors to disappear at the same rate, that would mean they'd need to eat an equal number of each color.

The math for CJ's was easy - 10 gold, 10 silver. Annabelle's tri-colored bag presented a bit more of a problem. She couldn't have 10 apiece, that would be 30. Too much! We did the math for 9 apiece (too much!), 8 apiece (too much!) and finally 7. We decided that 21 is close enough to 20.

We took another little walk, this time around the residential area behind Group Health. We saw some interesting architecture.

Finally, about three hours after we arrived, Rick was finished. The verdict is a broken big toe. The cure is four weeks on crutches. BIG bummer.

DEAR DIARY: Building on our reading of yesterday (Diary of a Worm, Diary of a Spider and Diary of a Fly), this morning I asked the kids to choose a critter and write a diary entry from its perspective.

Annabelle wrote

Diary of a Dolphin
Wednesday, August 18
I love being a maml. I am going to play with a beach ball later. Wale is my
freind.


CJ wrote

Diary of a Dog
Wednesday, August 18
I did not eat a bone yet.
I want food.

THE EYES HAVE IT: This morning, watching cartoons, CJ wondered why one of the characters "looks like he's asleep" but clearly he wasn't - the character was talking and interacting with others. The character he spoke of had little more than black slits as eyes.

Without me saying anything yet, CJ noted that he's seen other characters similarly animated. "They were from China," he observed. "Why do they do that?" he asked of cartoonists' drawing Asian characters' eyes like that. "They look like they're asleep."

Good question, CJ. I told him that people of Asian ethnicity often do have eyes that are a little less round or almond or oval shaped than non-Asians. "But their eyes are NOT slits," I was sure to stress. "Honestly, I think it's just lazy cartoonists. They aren't taking the time to properly draw their eyes."

Game On

PENGUINS AT PLAY: One of the first things the kids did today was connect with their preschool friend who recently moved to San Diego. The three used to play together nicely and pretty regularly at area parks, but because of the distance that now separates them, today's play date was in the virtual kind: They all met up in Club Penguin.

In order to connect, they had to be online and using the same server at the same time. They connected in Sasquatch. There, they had a couple of snowball fights and hid behind snow forts, checked out an underwater cave, hung out in a pizzeria, swam in an indoor pool, played soccer in a stadium, danced at a disco, checked out a pet store and more.

The kids were careful to make sure not to lose their buddy "Pingazane." (I overheard Annabelle say something to CJ about "penguin sitting," which I thought was pretty funny.)

Pingazane caught on quickly. Annabelle and CJ are definitely looking forward to more penguin pow-wows with him.

CONTEMPLATING 'COMPLETE': At one point this morning, CJ walked out of his bedroom and announced he had just completed his "new" Mickey Mania game.

I was a bit taken aback and questioned, "Really, you beat it?"

He immediately confessed that he was able to "beat" it thanks to a cheat code gleaned from YouTube which let him select any level he wanted to play and he chose to go to the final boss, whom he beat.

I told him that I wouldn't consider that approach "completing" the game, because the meaning of the word complete is "all parts," and he most definitely did not play all parts of the game. So we went back and forth for awhile about beating/completing.

I asked him if he was done with the game now (we'd had it all of 24 hours. It came to us via eBay for just $1.99 plus $4 shipping). He said he wasn't, which was good to hear. I encouraged him to consider trying to truly complete the game - something he's done with other games for which he didn't have a cheat code.

Quick aside - CJ became absolutely obsessed with "Mickey Mania" when he stumbled across it in a YouTube video. For whatever reason, he LOVES the music that accompanies the game. Today he left the game on the title screen for the longest time. He said, "Now I can listen to it for as long as I want" instead of being limited to the duration of the YouTube video. When I ask CJ why he likes the music so much, he says, "Because it's orchestral."

TIGHTS AND TILTS: Early afternoon we simply HAD to go to the U District to get Miss Bee some new tights and a new leotard. Her old (and original ones, might I add) were looking HORRIBLE. I was embarrassed taking her to class last week. She looked more like she was reporting for construction work than ballet dancing. ;)

On the way there, we stopped at Archie McPhee, always a hit with the kids and me. I thought it would be a good place to buy some pinata stuffing. I was right. :)

Just two blocks before we reached Centerstage, the dance clothing supply place, CJ spotted a Full Tilt. It was one we tried to go to on our tour of arcades on his birthday in April, but it was closed then. Today, it was open!

The place is TINY. We were hoping for/expecting it to be like the other two Full Tilt locations we've been to (West Seattle and Columbia City), with a dozen games or so, plus awesome ice cream. Well, this closet-sized space had just one machine. It was Tempest, the game which was actually my favorite game when I was in high school. CJ played it once. He wasn't impressed.

He was, however, impressed with his birthday cake flavored ice cream. Annabelle had strawberry chocolate chip. If I'd have ordered one, I would have opted for their green tea flavor. Mmmm.

YOGA NOGA: You know it's hot out when the golf course our house overlooks is practically devoid of players, as was the case today. We were going to go to yoga later this afternoon, but it was so blazing hot as we were running our errands late morning/midday, that I pulled the plug on that idea.

My tired old car has no air conditioning, and going to yoga means at least 1.5 hours in the car. The trip home can take 60 minutes or more, during rush hour, heading toward the sun, and it's often stop and go (or stop and stop) traffic, so no breeze to relieve the heat. Plus, today President Obama is in town and lord knows what kind of monkey wrench his motorcade might throw into rush hour.

That said, we can't just sit around all week, waiting for it to cool off. So, we turned to our good ol' Internet and our 'friends' at Sparkpeople for a little cardio workout, and then to the folks at Fifth Avenue Pilates for some core work.

SO THAT EXPLAINS IT: I heard two crashes mid afternoon, and I thought something fell around the house, but found nothing. I blamed it on the railyard running a few blocks to our east. However, it turns out two fighter jets were scrambled from Portland to respond to a violation of flight restrictions put in place during President Obama's visit to Seattle. Those were sonic booms we heard!

DEAR DIARY: I figured we needed to do something a little more school-y today than just P.E. and play video games. So, I busted out a couple of Scholastic DVDs. The first was "Diary of a Worm," a cute book about a worm's trials and tribulations as he goes through his days (which include going to school). The second was its sequel, "Diary of a Spider."

I found some classroom activity suggestions on Scholastic's Web site, including an activity sheet checking for comprehension by asking the kids to put occurrences in the proper sequence on the front of the PDF, and on the back they were to draw a picture of one way the worm helps the earth.

There was also a suggestion to have kids write a diary of the animal of their choosing. I think that would be fun for the kids. I think I'll have them do that for the next few days - just a couple of sentences each day from the animal of their choosing's perspective.

We also read along with the newest "Diary of a Fly" on the Tumblebooks Web site (via the Seattle Public Libraries' portal). On the Tumblebooks' site, we were also able to play games related to the "Diary ..." books (one game was to increase typing speed, another to promote verb awareness). Neat-o!

Hot and Bothered

MISTY MORNING: Our heatwave continued today. It really didn't cool down much overnight, unfortunately.

We had the pleasure of company for breakfast (Grandma and Grandpa and the kids' biggest brother Rick). After G&G headed south toward home, the kids and I started taking care of some business. Specifically, there are some parched plants around these parts.

I watered the green roof, our blueberries, and CJ's from-a-seed apple tree. Then, I turned the hose over to CJ, who carefully watered the tomatoes (well, only ONE tomato so far), the (pepperless) pepper plants, the strawberry-less strawberry plants and some straggly looking cilantro.

CJ and Annabelle also watered each other, of course. And Kirby, the hot dog, got a misting, too.

Some P.E. action also took place in the alley. We played "monkey in the middle" (keep away) with a wet, spongy ball. (CeeJ and Bee need lots more practice playing catch.) And the Moon Shoes, Razor scooters and Hippity Hop all got a workout, as well.

Afterward, the three of us walked to the south end of the alley to pick some blackberries so we can make another cobbler. I pointed out to the kids there were some very low-growing ones, and soon CJ was sitting in the alley picking 'em.
NEW TASTE SENSATION: This morning, out of nowhere, CJ asked me to put peanut butter on his chocolate chip cookie.

Certainly he's not the first or only one to think of combining chocolate and peanut butter (Reese's springs immediately to mind), but in my 44 years I've never heard that peanut-butter slathered cookie request from him or anyone else before. Interesting.

He gobbled the whole thing down. Later today he said his inspiration was he'd been thinking about peanut butter toast, and when I offered him a cookie, he thought to put peanut butter on it.

CHOPPY WATERS: It has been a couple of weeks since the Explorer I took its maiden voyage. Since it was so hot and sunny today, it seemed like a good time to get back into the drink, so to speak.

Here's our boat going across the Fremont Bridge
This time we put in at a boat ramp near the west end of the University of Washington campus instead of the one near the Ballard Bridge as we had last time. We were thinking that by putting in down there, we'd have less trolling time at 7 knots, and that we'd see some new sights.

Our boat trip started to take a turn for the worse almost as soon as we shoved off from the dock. It was tight quarters there - not a wide waterway leading to open waters, lined by expensive boats on both sides. Making matters worse, there was a stead stream of Ride the Duck boats rolling on into the water at the dock. (By steady stream, I mean one every minute.) To make matters even "worser," I'm not sure what was going on, but Christian was having a hard time steering the boat. A really hard time. As in we-actually-hit-another-boat (at very low speed) hard time.

Mercifully, we eventually made it out to Lake Union, but I was already feeling uneasy after our rough start. So we get out to the lake and it's really too hot within just a few minutes. It's like we're sitting in a convertible in rush hour traffic. The solution would have been to go faster, to get some air moving by our faces and some water spraying around us, but Christian said the boat motor was maxed out. I don't know what was up with that - we were going nowhere near as fast as we'd topped out at on our maiden voyage. So that was unpleasant.

And then, once we got to the canal under the Montlake Bridge things got really interesting. I don't know if it was the lack of our speed and/or the lack of steering control, but we were bobbing like crazy and going sideways a good portion of the time. That's not a very good feeling.

Then we finally get out to Lake Union, where it's also choppy. So choppy, in fact, that I look over to my left and see, at about 60 yards away, the bottom of a boat. You shouldn't see the bottom of a boat unless you're under water or it's in a dry dock. I point it out to Christian and we were the first onto the scene. There, we found a pair of young women both wearing life vests (smart!). They were bobbing along side their sailboat which was laying on its side. They couldn't right it by themselves, no way. Too much of the sail was under water, creating too much drag.

While we could have pulled them from the water if they were in distress, they weren't. Beyond that, we were of no real help to them, because we had no anchor (and no way to stay put next to them (with the wonky steering) that would have allowed me or Christian to get in the water and try to help them get the boat upright. We looked around and saw two other boats (all bigger and better equipped)quickly making their way toward the capsized boat, so we pulled away to allow those boats to get close. Also, a police boat was making its way over.
We bobbed and spun around Lake Washington a bit. We had a nice view of Husky Stadium and the floating (520) bridge, but before long we made our way back toward the dock. As we approached, we could see it was rush hour there. We had to idle our engine and wait. And wait. And wait. In the heat. With the engine fumes. I was quite ill by the time we finally got to pull up, and CJ and I were both talking about never going boating again.

In happier news, Annabelle took a few photos while waiting on the dock. Here's a self portrait. ...

(You can see our boat over her right shoulder.)PINATA PROJECT: Today, for our arts and crafts edification, we got started on a pinata project. We hope to craft a fully operational Death Star. ...

OK, well not FULLY operational. But at least one that looks good, and has real lights, how 'bout that?

I went and bought some inflatable punch balls this morning, as I needed an orb that was perfectly round and a standard balloon shape simply wouldn't do.

The kids helped tear paper strips and mix the papier mache goo. Annabelle helped apply some strips. CJ would have none of it - he really can't stand the feel of the clingy paste on his hands. Can't say that I blame him.

The first shell went well. After it was done, I set the bowl holding the orb outside, in the shade, to dry.

When we got back from boating, I was horrified to find that (I'm guessing due to the heat) the punch ball had expanded and it was now misshapen. In fact, it was shaped pretty much exactly like a standard balloon, which is exactly what I don't want. So back to the drawing board for us. Sigh.

KING OF KONG: I mentioned last week that CJ was looking forward to meeting Steve Wiebe this weekend. Wiebe, a Redmond, WA resident, is a living legend among gamers, having held the world records for the Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong, Jr. arcade games. While most world class gamers play in obscurity, Wiebe gained fame when a documentary "King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" chronicled his trials and tribulations.

Christian, CJ and Kennedy went to Big Time Brewery, not exactly knowing what to expect. That said, I do know that what went down exceeded their wildest expectations! CJ was literally jumping for joy at meeting him.

Christian said as soon as they got there, Wiebe came over and introduced himself.

CJ asked Steve a few questions - for instance, if he's played "Donkey Kong Math." Wiebe hasn't, which is a bit ironic, I thought, since he's a math teacher!

CJ got LOTS of time and attention from the King of Kong and at one point, the two of them even played a two-player Donkey Kong game together. Talk about CJ's dream come true!

Steve gave CJ some valuable tips and, of course, CJ had some tips to share with him, as well. And CJ told Wiebe that he likes to do "ROM hacks." That amused Wiebe, who said he's never attempted such a thing.

To add the cherry on top of their great experience, the guys even won the raffle (autographs and a "Team Wiebe" t-shirt). Oh, and later that night, Christian got a nice note from Steve Wiebe via Facebook saying how nice it was to meet him and CJ and how he looks forward to seeing CJ's future world records.

Christian took a lot of great shots to capture the event. This one's my favorite.

It was a day CJ will remember will remember for the rest of his life.

Checking Up

DOGGY 'DO: One of the first things we did this morning was clean up Kirby's act. I decided that it was high time the kids get in on the action. I figured it's good for them to learn that if you have a pet, you have to take care of it - that's under the "life skills" category, I suppose.

Secondly, it's always good to learn a trade. Maybe one of them will become a professional dog groomer some day. ;)

CJ did most of the hosing duties. (And, remarkably, he kept all the water in the sink.) Annabelle helped with lathering Kirby up (with flea shampoo - tis the season).

Once Kirby was clean, it was time to get rid of some of her cloud of hair. I armed each of the kids with some round tipped scissors and they started snipping.

CJ lasted about two cuts. I don't think he liked the feel of the clingy wet dog hair. (Frankly, I don't either.) Annabelle hung in there, styling away.

Kirby was so patient. She's really such a good dog (when she's not being a bad dog).

I told CJ it was his turn next, that his bangs were way too long.

"Bangs? What bangs?" he asked.

So, CJ got a vocabulary lesson along with a trim.

OPEN WIDE: In preparation for the afternoon dentist appointment, I had the kids read "Open Wide" by Laurie Keller. Whimsical artwork in a dynamic layout, and the facts about dental health are presented in a captivating way. It had enough "silly quotient" to keep CJ turning the pages.

We checked it out at the library and it came with an audio CD which was also really well done. There were great sound effects, a multitude of talented voice actors and even an "Open Wide" anthem.

After reading, we also did some math worksheets - a mixture of addition and subtraction in columnar fashion. They both got 'em all right. Nice!

Before long, it was time to head up to the car and out to the dentist.

BUT FIRST: Since we were going to have to drive all the way through downtown and over to the Madrona neighborhood, on the western shore of Lake Washington, I thought we'd better make it worth our trip. So, I looked for parks near the kids' dentist and just because of its proximity (about 6 blocks from the dentist), from a Mapquest map, where it was just a green rectangle, I chose Powell Barnett Park. It was a good choice.

As we pulled up to it to park, we saw a huge boulder with an inscription that the park was the recipient of a Starbucks "Ultimate Park Makeover" grant. Score!

I think the park had more climbing/play structures than any other park we've been to in Seattle so far. There was a section for little ones that included a cute firetruck. There were two steering wheels so the kids competed for control over which direction they were heading.

The middle of the playground had this awesome climbing structure that looked a bit like the Eiffel Tower. It was made of steel cables covered in red rope. One of the great things about it was that because it was cables, it moved when you climbed on it - and when other kids were climbing on it. That made it even more challenging - and a little frightening for CJ and Annabelle. CJ thought he should tell the other kids to quit moving, so he could climb. I told him I didn't think that would go over too well. :)

There's even a great paved tricycle course, and the bathrooms are hidden in a circular castle facade. Oh, and as an added bonus, while the kids were playing, I watched a skirmish between a bald eagle and a crow.

The only bummer at the park was its wading pool was dry as the Sahara. Budget cuts.

Powell Barnett Park is named after the Leschi Improvement Council's organizer and first president.

PEARLY WHITES: The dental assistants were ready for CJ and Annabelle as soon as we arrived. They were in side-by-side chairs, and I hopped between the two stations. This office, Lakeview Kids Dentistry, is a place you'd LOVE to visit if you're a kid. I wish they took adult patients! Everyone is friendly, punctual and competent and they have the coolest toys and tools. :) The kids each had a flat screen on the ceiling above their chair, and the patients wear headphones to hear the audio (which is also great for blocking out those annoying dental tools' sounds). Annabelle watched a "Dora the Explorer" video. That kind of surprised me, because this morning when Annabelle got up, I turned on Dora for her and when the cartoon character implored watchers to "flap your arms as fast as you can," Bee mumbled, "Yeah, whatever," through a mouthful of Cocoa Puffs.

CJ opted for "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs." At one point during the session, I heard CJ protesting, so I hopped over to his chair to see if he had some kind of discomfort. Apparently he was troubled because the hygienist was blocking his view of the screen. Geesh! If only that were my biggest worry at the dentist.

Happily, the kids both got a "no cavities" report. Hooray!

CRASH LANDING: At one point today I heard a pretty loud crash from CJ's room. I haven't even taken my first step toward his door to go see what's up when he pops his head out and says, "I can explain that to you. I can fix it."

Nothing like being proactive, CJ. ;)

He'd been jumping around to a video and the reverberations had knocked a lightweight nightlight off the top of the TV in their room.

About two minutes later: Crash! followed quickly by CJ popping out to assure me, "I can explain this again!"

Whirlwind Thursday

"NON-TOXIC LOVE": That's the title Annabelle gave this little doodle she produced this morning.

AIR APPARENT: We have some library books we need to take back, so this morning we worked a short stack of 'em.

First, we read " I Fall Down," which was all about gravity. One of the things we learned is when you drop something, whether it's big or small, it falls at the same rate. For instance, if you drop and apple and a paperclip from the same height, they'll hit the ground at the same time. (The only exception would be if wind blew the lighter object, which could affect its touch down time.) The book pointed out if there's no air, gravity pulls everything at the same speed - a fact that was demonstrated by NASA astronauts on the moon.

That said, some things land with more force than others, because they are heavier. ("The bigger they are, the harder they fall" is true!)

"I Fall Down" is by Vicki Cobb, and part of a "Science Play" series.

Next, we read "Air Is Everywhere" by Melissa Stewart. We all loved this book because it was full of simple experiments to drive home the points it was making.

For instance, to demonstrate that you can't see or feel air, but it's there, we were instructed to tear up a sheet of paper, put it in a clear plastic bag, cinch up the top and blow in it with a straw. The kids enjoyed watching the paper particles dance.

Next, we did an experiment that clearly showed how air can take up space. We were instructed to shove a napkin in the bottom of a clear glass and then submerge the upside down glass in a sink full of water. When you remove the glass from the water (careful to keep it vertical in the process), you find the napkin is still dry! The air occupying the space kept the water from getting to it.

In that same sink full of water, we submerged the upside down glass and this time tipped it over while it was underwater. The result -burping air bubbles escaping from the glass.

The book also reminded us that the reason balloons filled with regular (exhaled) sink is because the balloon itself is heavier than the air.

We also did a fun experiment where the kids ran across the room and the force of the air held a piece of printer paper against their tummies. As the book says, "It doesn't fall because air holds it in place."

We even got to do a little art project while experimenting with air. The book told us to water down some paint and then blow through a straw to push it around on paper. Annabelle's work is called "Coral City."

CJ called his "The Aoesh Ship." "It's some kind of weird looking ship," he explains.

MORNING MOVIE: Instead of his usual sunrise cartoon session this morning, I fired up "King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters" for him.

It's a great documentary about high drama in the world of vintage arcade gamers seeking world records. The anti-hero is smug, smarmy Billy Mitchell of Florida, whose "records" are all set in private, and submitted by VHS. The people at Twin Galaxies fawn over Billy Mitchell, and are completely (and perhaps willingly) overwhelmed by Mitchell's superior social and manipulation skills.

Things get interesting when Steve Wiebe enters the scene. A middle school math teacher from Redmond, WA. Wiebe seems like a super nice guy, gifted intellectually, musically and athletically, but he's had to deal with a number of barriers and hardships in his life. Anyway, Wiebe breaks Billy's record and then all hell breaks out.

It's a great movie - suspense, drama, life lessons and some great vintage gaming all rolled into one. CJ was rapt the entire 1 hour and 23 minute run time.

CJ is looking forward to meeting Steve Wiebe this Saturday, at a public appearance/fund raiser .

IT'S CAPITOL: This afternoon we headed on over to Capitol Hill. just east of downtown Seattle. We checked out their library branch. It's small, funky, diverse and crowded - in other words a reflection of the neighborhood.

We found a dozen plus items for check out - mostly DVDs and books with accompanying audio CDs.

CJ, who is super intrigued by different versions of things, found two similar but different copies of Ten Apples Up on Top. He and Annabelle sat down and read them side by side. The words and drawings were all the same, but color was used differently in each book.

PLAY TIME: After the library, we went looking for a park or a school. We soon found Lowell Elementary's playground. There, they spent a good amount of time playing a chasing game on a bridge.

From there, it was on to Group Heath, which has this wonderful, enormous slide. It must 10-plus feet tall, and two-plus kids wide. So cool!

As an added bonus, the kids got to go to a THIRD play place - Cal Anderson Park.

There were some temporary art installations there. The kids' favorite was a crash-landed rocket. At first Christian and the kids thought it was just a sculpture, but lo and behold, there was apparently an astronaut inside!

Christian heard CJ talking to someone and went around the rocket to find CJ talking to someone "in" the rocket. There was a 5x7 video screen and a Web cam behind the panel. Next to it was a speaker and hole housing a microphone. All of this allowed CJ to converse with the Rocketman, whose face you could see in realtime on the screen. (Christian thinks it was a remote hookup to wherever it is that Rocketman works/lives.)

At one point CJ said something like, "You're not real," to which Rocketman asked, "What do you mean by 'real?' " CJ said he meant something here on earth. Rocketman said, "Well, I'm here on earth."

Quite curious what was inside the rocket, a couple of times CJ threatened, "I'm going to open the hatch."

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that," Rocketman replied.

And CJ kept putting his finger over the lens. At that, the Rocketman would ask, "Why do you keep doing that?"

"Oh, sorry," mischievous CeeJ would reply.

Turns out the rocket installation is by Jason Puccinelli and part of MadArt Seattle, which supports emerging artists and brings art to lives in unexpected ways.

After the rocket talk, the kids explored the park's playground and got their feet wet in its water feature. LIVE, IN CONCERT!: Since most all of their big brothers' gigs are in a bar setting, Annabelle and CJ rarely get to see them jamming. However, tonight they, along with their friend Nick, played a one hour set at a church up on Phinney Ridge (it's where Nick goes to church). I must say, it was different seeing them play in a church. ...

CJ and Annabelle were good audience members, though CJ did have a habit of asking, "Was that the last song?" after every song. :0