Off On Vacation!
We are headed out on vacation starting on Thursday. We will just be down in Southern CA for a week. DH has a mini-reunion with his college a capella group – which should be fun. And then we are headed down to Disneyland and maybe also Legoland, if we feel ambitious. The boys have started a countdown to vacation. They are positively giddy with excitement!
In our household, I am usually the official vacation planner and packer. I enjoy the planning and I have inherited the packing gene from my dad! This year I have two very willing assistants.
Woody helped me with all the planning and scheduling. He was on Google Maps for days planning the drive down. He then helped me book all our hotels online. What was scary was the fact that by the second hotel booking, he had my card number, expiry date and security code memorized. So then I had to sit down and have a talk with him about how credit cards can only be used by adults in the house. Which in turn led to a conversation about how credit cards work in general. I used this site to show him a visual of how this worked.
And Buzz helped me with the packing. And he shows early signs of having the “I am able to fit an insane amount of stuff in small boxes” gene! Unfortunately for me, the stuff he packed included his entire collection of Thomas trains complete with all the tracks and his entire library of books. I tried to reason with him but he claimed (and I quote) it was “critical” that he take all the toys and books with him on vacation. Good thing we have the big minivan!
We are all really looking forward to getting away from home for a few days!
Brad Paisley
Earlier this year, I got the Pandora app on my iPhone. For those of you that are not familiar with Pandora, it’s an Internet Radio service (free!) that allows you to type in a song or an artist that you like and it then uses an proprietary algorithm to identify other similar songs that you might like. It is really cool and gives you great recommendations! And did I mention that it is complete FREE!
Well it turned out that one of the songs that Pandora’s algorithm generated for me was by a country music artist called Brad Paisley. I am not a big country music fan and to be honest had never heard of him before this. But I was in the car and I tend not to multitask when I am driving and so I didn’t try and skip the song but let it play on. At the end of the song Woody, who was in the back seat, asked me who the artist was and then proceeded to tell me that he loved the song, loved Brad Paisley’s voice and then asked if he had other songs out. I replied honestly that I had no idea but that we would find out.
When we got home, we Googled him together and found that Brad Paisley is actually quite famous (shows you how out of touch I am!) and has had a string of chart topping songs. Woody asked if he could download some more of his songs and thus started his love affair with Brad’s (yes he is now referred to as Brad at our home) music.
Fast forward to today, we now have most of his songs and Woody continues to really love his songs. He knows every single song by the album the song is in and he has organized the songs on my iPhone in the order that he likes them. He listens to him on our way to school and back. And he wants to ask his piano teacher if she can teach him how to play one of his songs. Buzz knows the words to most of the songs but refers to them as Woody’s music!
Woody also found out that Brad Paisley’s American Saturday Night tour is scheduled to roll into Mountain View on September 25th. He has promised to be an exemplary kid for the rest for the summer if we take him to the concert.
So I’m looking to see if we can find some tickets…..Wish me luck!
Cool Site: Kid’s Ed Website
Check this site out.
Quite cool. I think this was created by teacher for her gifted students to use as enrichment at home. A new interactive educational website is posted each day. And many are really interesting. Like designing a 3D House, Multiplication Facts website, Simple Machines,…
I can see us putting this to good use!
Backyard Camping
The kids have been clamoring for a camping trip for many weeks now.
Those of you that know me will know that I have always harbored ambitions of being an outdoors goddess! I grew up on books like the Famous Five where adventurous kids would forever be jaunting off on camping trips to places with wonderful names like Smugglers Top, Mystery Moor and Demon’s Rock. And I would lay curled up in the very urban apartment that I grew up in with the sound of traffic in the background and dream of tents, campfires and sleeping bags on remote islands.
I remember when I met my future in-laws and they started talking about camping trips of their youth. My ears perked up. Aha! I thought, I was now about to join a trail savvy camping family! They then proceeded to talk about deer hunting. Gulp! Not quite the outdoor adventure I had envisioned. Hunting for Bambi! Never! And as it turns out that my in-laws love for camping adventures did not last beyond their youth and certainly did not get passed down to DH or his sister. When I broached camping to DH in the past, he has typically responded by saying “why sleep on the cold hard ground when we can find a perfectly comfortable bed at a hotel around the corner from the camping site?”
So I have to tell you that I watched with glee as the boys worked on convincing their dad that camping was a good idea. I swear I did not put them up to it, it was completely their idea. And DH was just putty in their hands. They reached a happy compromise: we would first try camping in our backyard and if the boys really enjoyed it then we would venture further afield!
So yesterday, we pretended that the backyard was our campsite. We pulled out the old REI Hobitat tent and sleeping bags (that I had optimistically bought some years ago) and DH set it up with help from the boys. We had our dinner in our backyard complete with smores, the boys ran around for a while and finally settled down in the tent. We read books by the light of the lantern and then the boys fell asleep to the sound of crickets. The only damper was when the sprinklers came on early in the morning, showered the tent with water and woke us all up. But even that was an adventure for the boys!
Needless to say, the boys had a blast. And this morning DH had to admit that camping was “actually fun”. I guess this means that we will be doing more of it in the near future. And I get one step closer to being the outdoor adventuress that I have always wanted to be…..a tiny tiny step closer….
Tent that was amazingly easy to setup!
The Solar System
Some days ago, the kids and I built a very simple model of the solar system. We used the Geo Safari Motorized Solar System and Planetarium kit that we picked up on sale at the local toy store. This kit is perhaps not the best on the market (and the planetarium part of the kit is quite underwhelming) but it did give the boys a hands-on feel for the solar system that they could see and play with. And we got it cheap!
They put it together in no time as the photos below will testify. What was quite interesting was that Woody was more interested in the facts about the planets that came with the model kit instructions and kept getting side tracked by these details. Usually Buzz follows his big brother’s lead when it comes to assembling things but he got so impatient with Woody’s meanderings that he picked up the model and started to assembled it himself!
We then also read more about it in Exploring the Solar System, a book that their Ammama (my mom) got them for their birthdays. And we explored the following sites in varying degrees of detail.
Kids Astronomy: This site gives you some basic info on the planets. Also ties the planets to the gods and goddesses of Greek mythology which is kinda cool.
NASA Solar System Exploration: Good site for some basic facts about the planets. Especially good for Woody who was looking for details like the temperature on different planets, distance from the earth and how many days it takes for the different planets to make their way around the sun.
I am hoping to organize trips to Chabot with both sets of grandparents later this summer. And Woody and Buzz are signed on to a Mad Science class later this summer that is described as a journey into outer space which should be great fun!
4th of July Party
So much to write about but I am also so wonderfully tired.
We had a fun 4th. The boys planned and hosted a party in our backyard. I had given them $10 each for decorations. They made a list of what they needed in terms of decorations and then we made a trip to Michaels and also Target to pick up the goodies. Woody made a sign for the party that read “Woody and Buzz’s 4th of July Party” and he then had a detailed breakdown of the planned agenda for the day (including swimming in the pool starting at 3:19). Buzz’s sign read “Buzz’s Dinosaur 4th of July Party” 
So without much further ado, here are some photos that will give you a sense of the antics during the day:
The boys got into bed at around 10:30 post fireworks and fell asleep the moment their tired little heads hit the pillow! Partying is hard work!