Sea World here we come!!! The kids were very excited to be headed out to their adventure “under the sea”. The drive was about one hour and they kept themselves busy doing what all twenty-first century kids do in the car – watch movies and play games.
We had a great time this past weekend spending some time cooling off at the Duluth Town Center Fountain. The Sun was blisteringly hot and the air might as well have been dripping water, but the water coming from the fountain was refreshing and cool. We grabbed some Chick-Fil-A along the way, ate on the curb, and headed in. Once they all got used to the water they had a great time. Isaac didn’t need any warming up and was racing in circles as fast as he could swallow his chicken and fries. Piper was on his tail but needed her hand held for the first few minutes – that was until she got wet and started play. Violet needed a bit more prodding and she wasn’t having anything to do with me taking her through. Carol grabbed them all took them on a few laps to get them all good and soaked – that’s all it took to get Violet all revved up as well.
I am never sure whether to feel happy or sad whenever I get to visit the Ranch. On one hand I am happy that these animals get to live, basically get a second chance, and at the same time provide some up close encounters for the kids, sort of entertainment. On the other it makes me feel that this is just another form of making money that, while providing entertainment, lacks what it is perceived to offer. Many of the animals are caged indefinitely without even the chance of freedom. I can only hope that our kids take the time to appreciate Nature for what it is and the impact that We can have on it in both large and small scale.
Now enough of me on a soap box. All the kiddos were going to be away for some or all of Spring Break this year so we thought it would be fun to do something out of the ordinary with them before seeing them off. We didn’t tell them what we were doing until we got there and even then I don’t think they really understood what we were going to do until we started seeing and feeding the animals. We packed a backpack full of old food stuff and picked up some corn and apples at the concession as well.
A special treat this weekend. Stone Mountain Park was hosting the 10th annual Indian Festival and Pow-Wow. An interesting assortment of Indian cultures and traditions. Right inside the gate we walked into a show getting ready to start called “East vs. West”. Two Indians, one from the eastern tribes and one from the western Sioux tribes, compared and contrasted the lifestyles and traditions of their ancestors. Seems the eastern Indians were more civilized, happy to barter and trade to make life easier, while the western ones, the Sioux in particular, raided and pillaged to get what they wanted, or to advance their lifestyle. I am sure this is a gross over exaggeration about the differences but it was neat to hear what they had to say and see the difference in the everyday tools used by each.
Fall is here…although sometimes I think fall actually skips the southeast and winter tries desperately to blow in early, dragging wind and rain with it. Such was this particular day. With winter…fall, comes the annual Dahlonega Gold Rush festival. This was a new festival for the girls and I. We have been to the Duluth Fall Festival and the Norcross Art Festival but hadn’t ventured out much beyond. It was fun from the beginning and much, much larger than the others – not to mention more organized. There were certainly some planned destinations as well. Carol and Bonnie wanted to eat lunch at the “Smith House“, watch the parade on Main Street, and checkout the goodies offered by the hundreds of vendors.
Our school system, Berkeley Lake Elementary, offers a program that lets the students earn a pass to Six Flags Over Georgia if they participate in a reading program that spans the school year. Since both boys did well last school year and read some or all of a book, about 20 minutes a night, each night of the week, they received a pass to the park. Before school started again for the 2009-2010 year we took them and had a blast. They rode nearly all of the rides in the kiddie park and went crazy when we headed to the water slides. Carol didn’t come into the water but the boys and I did. Isaac and I went straight to the top to take the longest and fastest slide down. The lines were short, the water was cool and the day was warm – a perfect combination for roller coasters and water slides. We convinced Jacob to ride “Thunder River” with promises that it was “slow” and you were “likely” to not get “very” wet. He was nervous but rode anyway and had a blast, despite he and Carol getting hit by every waterfall, tidal wave and water gun on the ride. Isaac surprised us both when he asked to ride one of the bigger swing rides that lift high off the ground and spin you in circles – he rode with his hands up most of the time.
We recently added an addiction to our morning routine. Well an addiction for Jacob and Isaac, and maybe perhaps, although she wouldn’t admit it, and might only participate with her head under a blanket, Piper. This addiction is a cartoon series called “World of Quest“. After finding this on Netflix and streaming it through Tivo for some initial “will they be interested” type of screening, the boys fell in love with the show. And for good reason. The World of Quest is tantamount to our childhood where classics like He-Man, She-Ra, Thundercats or Voltron (at least the lion version anyway) were the gold standard to action packed, story based, Saturday morning heroin – complete with poptarts, dry cereal and sunny-d.
The show is no longer in production and only three seasons were produced but that hasn’t stopped the kids from watching each of the twenty-six episodes over and over. The interest is significant enough that both Jacob and Isaac have asked, and thus been shown, how to access Netflix over the Tivo to start an episode. Looking for season three I found that the show is based on a web-comic that grew into a graphic novel that was picked up and produced by Cookie Jar Company and aired by WB4Kids. Should their interest remain high a graphic novel sounds like a good gift recommendation for Santa. There are now two graphic novels that make up or continue the story. Hopefully another studio will pick up where WB4Kids left off and continue producing and airing new content. The kids love it and I hope they get to see the series run to the conclusion of the story.
I have been teaching Piper how to do mazes lately. An instead of just purchasing books of mazes for her to color in, I have found many many sites online that offer them from very simple to quite complex, all available for download and printing, thus reusable. One site stood out, and while not so kid friendly in locating the appropriate maze for a four year old, it did offer literally one billion mazes. On the sheet that it provides you print out both a blank and the solution.
There were however plenty of sites where I found mazes appropriate for young kids to solve. There are certainly tons of places out there to download mazes, but many I found were wrapped with pop up windows and other annoying site elements that make finding the actual downloads quite difficult. These were the few that were clean and easy.
While looking around I found lots of different types of mazes. There was one site that offered types that I had never even heard of – grids, patterns, hex-grids, spaghetti, freehand, tiles, brains, designs, jumping, and 3-D. All for the pleasure of getting a line from point A to point B in the most imaginative ways possible – now if I could just relate this to getting the girls to take their fork (point A) and put it in their mouths (point B) come dinner time.
So far Piper loves to do these and is getting better at them the more she tries. She still doesn’t quite understand the point or the rules, in particular that you cannot cross over the lines to go down a different tunnel, but with each new maze or the repeat of one she has done in the past she is learning.
The Girls kept busy this weekend. It started Friday night with a My Little Pony movie extravaganza. Zana gave the girls a dvd of the MLPs and once Piper found out it existed there was not stopping it from finding its way into the player. Missy had let her watch it earlier in the week as well but I think that was only a taste, or at least a wetting of the appetite. Interestingly enough Piper has only been recently interested in the ponies. We picked her up a few, along with a small barn and accessories, but until she watched the movies about each pony I don’t think there was any real understanding with what they were – Princesses – Pony Princesses!!! Now, after making the connection, she is all about them. All of the sudden toys long dead in the play room have a new purpose.
Saturday was an early start as we went over to the Thompson’s for another playdate. This time though we got to see Ansley and her new sister Calli as well, a rare treat for the girls indeed. I know Piper enjoyed the company because she talked about it for the remainder of the day once we left post lunch (thanks Zana!!!). Her and Whitley get along great and have seen much of each other recently but playing with Ansley outside of school is rare and it was good to see the three of them hang out and have fun. There was even a time when the three of them went up stairs and played in Whitley’s room – amazingly there seemed to be no conflict, no musical dress swapping and no real drama to speak of. The other three, Riley, Violet, and Calli played downstairs with each other. It is fun to watch as they are significantly different in age and the interaction varies from actual playing, to tug of war over something, to chasing, to wrestling, to trying to do what the older girls are doing, wash-rinse-repeat.
Piper received a pair of pink princess roller skates from Aunt Autumn for Christmas. Today was the day she got to try them out. She reminded us all day that we “promised” a trip to the park so she could skate like Minnie and Daisy, or at least start to learn. Along with the skates came knee and elbow pads to help on the falls that were sure to happen. We picked a park with a flat running track as a good starting place. The temperature was in the low sixties but very windy – there were two guys on the track playing with very large stunt kites. We bolted the skates onto Piper’s shoes but left off the pads since she would be holding our hands the first few times, or until she was confident enough to think she didn’t need our hands anymore.
It was interesting to see her reaction, and I wish I would have brought the camera. Walking in the skates didn’t really pose her much of a problem and she was able to move them around as needed for stepping but as soon as one would start to roll it was splitsville each time. Since she was holding onto either me or Missy during all this she didn’t fall but certainly would have and I think she realized it as well. After a few mishaps like this, even though they weren’t too bad she was through. We coerced her to the grass where she kept walking in them, basically just letting her get used to them on her feet before heading home. Even a little discouraged she still wants to keep practicing.
