The Gamble Life

Happy Halloween!

Gus in his school Halloween parade.  Oops, make that Captain Pirate Gus!

Captain Gus and Jack-o-Lantern do some early trick or treating (before Abe needed to go to bed).  Abe loves to knock on doors, so he caught on to that part right away.

He also loves to take things out of containers so that was also a breeze for him to figure out (Gus did show him the ropes at the first house).

And he happily carried his candy in his hands, objecting vociferously if anyone tried to take it and put it in his bag!

I made trick or treating bags for the boys this year, after my friend Kristin told me about hers.  We were given one of those plastic pumpkins years ago, and still have it, but I didn't want to buy a second one.  The bags were so fun for me to make, and they got several comments from people who saw them this evening.  Those darn plastic pumpkins always brake, take up tons of room the other 364 days of the year, and everyone has them.  I was proud that my kids carried one-of-a-kind all cotton bags!

 

Pirates on the High Seas

Our family vacation this year was to the Outer Banks, NC...a great area.  One of the things we did was take Gus (and Abe, who they made me pay for!) on a pirate adventure.  Gus was very excited leading up to it but then when we got there he seemed decidedly unhappy.  I was really not sure how it was going to turn out.

I paid for him so I went ahead and got his name tag and "tattoo"!

Gunship Gus here still looking like maybe he'll just wait onshore, thanks.

When they started giving the kids jobs like "Look Out!" and "All Hands on Deck" Gus thankfully started to enjoy himself more.

He took "All hands on Deck" very seriously and always, always ran back and put his hands on the deck.

Abe sent the entire time eating pretzels, looking around, and sweating.

One of the very best parts was shooting the bad Pirate Pete with the water cannons.

Look at Gus' happy expression after the kids forced Pirate Pete to give up and give back the keys to the treasure chest!

Poor Abe, still sweating and eating pretzels.

We took a ten minute break from treasure hunting because dolphins were swimming all around our boat.  It was really neat.  The kids were all so excited to be so close to the dolphins.

I didn't have my telephoto lens and also the dolphins only come up for seconds, always somewhere you aren't expecting them, but I still couldn't resist trying to get some pictures of them.

Pretty much before, during, and immediately after I thought this whole pirate adventure thing was just a big money suck for parents.  And there is no denying that it was expensive and they had a million extra things they wanted to sell you, and the "treasure" the kids got was of course hideous cheap plastic "gold" coins and plastic rings.

But.  Gus had so much fun.  And he talked about it for days afterwards.  He loved that the kids were able to defeat Pirate Pete.  He loved having treasure and counted his coins and rings multiple times.  When we saw another group going out a couple of days later he wanted to go with them.

What I think is that he was at the perfect age for this event.  Old enough to understand everything and really enjoy it, old enough to not get scared (one poor three year old cried for pretty much the entire hour and a half; it was heartbreaking), young enough to really get into it.  And also, this was the one and only time for him to do this adventure.  So it really was a special experience that we gave him.  (Some kids on the boat clearly did it every year and I'm not sure why their parents bothered as they spent half their time telling all the new kids what would happen next and looking bored.) 

I think what I take from all this is that as a parent I want to try and make sure we do the things at the right time, when our kids will enjoy them most, and to make them special (and unique) and to keep them that way.

Kitty Hawk

Part of our vacation was a visit to the Kitty Hawk memorial/state park.  It wasn't as great for kids as I was hoping, but it was okay.  We also happened to be there on an extremely hot day and the walk up the hill that I did with the two boys left the three of us pretty wiped out. 

So I've started working on my list of things to do on the weekends that I mentioned.  I'd like many of them to be specific to Durham, NC, or the area, but of course not all.  So...does anyone have ideas for me?  Here's what I've come up with so far:

1. Duke Gardens
2. special events at the Life & Science Museum (Butterfly Bash, etc.)
3. more hiking at Umstead Park
4. hiking at Jordan Lake
5. tree rubbings (Gus added this one)
6. visiting an aquarium
7. visiting the zoo (I have conflicted feelings about this one)
8. visiting DC
9. Gus' birthday party
10. Abe's birthday party
11. botanical gardens
12. visiting Austin (two weekends in October)
13. my cousin Sofia's wedding
14. Chris' cousin Keaton's wedding

Oh my gosh, I just realized that I was planning to do a birthday banner before Gus' birthday!  I'd better get cracking on that.

The Next Tiger?

Not likely!  But Gus does have a lot of fun playing golf in our backyard.  Enough fun with his own little homemade course (he dug a hole in the ground) that we're going to make him a more "official" little three hole course in the yard, with flags, better holes, and tees.  Maybe we'll get it done over the weekend.

I hope everyone has a wonderful 4th.

Here's a pretty weed from my yard.

 

That's sadly what passes for gardening for me these days, appreciating the weeds that flower.

I've been reading a great book,Welcome to Shirley, a memoir that is making me long for a house and neighborhood full of kids with the freedom to go all over into all the houses, the woods, whatever.  I'm getting to the more serious and sad parts of the book now so I'm interspersing it with another book, America Eats (I think, I don't have it in front of me right now) which is very interesting; basically a collection of regional food habits and traditions during the depression.

Summer Camp Home Edition: "We're Making Rain!"

So I mentioned that last summer Gus went to camp (day camps) pretty much all summer long at the local museum.  They were wonderful; he really enjoyed them and learned a lot.  But camps are really expensive, he's gone pretty much all day, and there is a lot of driving involved.  This summer I really wanted things to be more relaxed and I wanted to spend more time with Gus myself, and I wanted to save money.

So we sat down together and came up with a whole list of "Camp at Home" topic ideas.  Last week was our first official week and our topic was weather.  I bet you think I came up with that topic, right?  Nope, that was Gus.  I never would have thought weather was interesting enough for camp, but I would have been wrong.

I got two books from the library:  Can It Rain Cats and Dogs? and Weather Projects for Young Scientists.  The first is a question and answer book covering many, many weather topics.  It was great for just flipping through and finding questions that interested us and then reading the answers.  But the real highlight of the week was the second book.  I was a bit worried that its projects would be too difficult or complicated for us to do at home without buying a lot of stuff, or that Gus wouldn't get the point of the projects.  My worry was wasted--the book is wonderful!

Here Gus is proving that air has weight; this was super easy as it only required three identical pieces of paper and a pencil.

While Abe colored.

This next was my personal favorite experiment.  Gus proved that air has mass and occupies space.  This was so easy and perfect; I loved it.  First you pour water through a funnel into a bottle and talk about where the air that had been in the bottle went.  Then you create an air-tight seal (we used playdoh) around the neck of the bottle and the funnel and try again to pour water in.  Amazingly the water fills the funnel and stays put.  It was SO COOL! 

Here's Gus excitedly talking about how the water couldn't go in because the air couldn't get out!

Turns out this next project may have been Gus' favorite.  We showed, in water, how a hurricane moves.

We also explored the power of the sun by testing to see 1-what the sun will do to a piece of construction paper, and 2-what kinds of things will block some or all of the sun.

And really fun, I bought a package of Sun Prints and Gus made several.  He hasn't decided what to do with his finished sun prints...some kind of collage probably.

Finally, we did two experiments exploring the water cycle.  We looked at how hot and cold water react differently to a cold air source.

And we made rain!  Gus wasn't sure what this project was going to show (I didn't tell him, I just told him the steps), but we had just finished reading and talking about the water cycle, and as we were checking on our project, he figured it out:  "We're making rain!"

I am pretty sappy when it comes to seeing my kids learn, but man, this was really, really fun.  I can see how home schooling parents can enjoy themselves. 

This was all really easy, nothing too structured or too formal about any of it.  And I really do think Gus learned a few new things.  Even if your kids are in camp or school there is no reason you can't pick this book up, or a similar one, from your library or bookstore.  You'll have fun!

Odds and Ends

The really modern five year old texts with his dad...while they are sitting side by side. 

This sweet little birds nest is in the newspaper box under out mailbox; a terrible place for a birds nest if I've ever seen one.  For a few days every time I went to check the mail a bird flew out at top speed squawking at me.  That has stopped and I think the nest has been abandoned.  We'll wait a few more weeks to make sure and then see if we can remove the nest intact for study.

Abe on a recent walk, mastering the Snack Trap.

I am planning a great write up of our first week of "Summer Camp:  Home Edition"; last summer Gus was in camp almost every week.  He absolutely loved it but it was really expensive, involved a lot of driving, and of course didn't provide that "lazy summer" feeling.  So this year I didn't sign him up for any camps at all.  We've got the pool, free bowling, and together he and I came up with a list of "camp" topics, one a week.  I get different books from the library, we do projects, and if there is something reasonably close to go see or do (that's related) we do that too.  It's very low-key with the emphasis on fun learning.  I am asking him to write and illustrate one entry in his journal each week, to keep his writing skills progressing.  I don't tell him what to write about but I'm hoping he'll pick something related to "camp" at least once or twice because I think that would be cool.

This week was weather, and I found two really great books at the library that have provided a lot of fun and interesting information and great projects (easy too!).  More tomorrow.

First Tooth Lost!

A mere week after first getting "wiggly" and it's out.  I can barely believe it.  The tooth fairy, for those who are interested, did find the pillow despite its unusual style and left behind trident, dental floss, a note, and a quarter.

My Boys

I'm so behind on things I want to post about.  While we were in Austin we held our annual cascarones party and it was pretty awesome.  A little smaller than in some previous years and that made the party completely stress-free; everyone just relaxed and had fun.  And the "big" kids (5 year olds) are really getting into the egg hunt now so that was really fun to watch.

During that time after which we are ready for the party, but it hasn't started yet, Gus was READY FOR KIDS.  He sat out here on the porch just waiting for the first person to show up.  Isn't that so sweet?

Here's Abe doing what he does every time he sees me pick up the camera, a phone, or anything remotely electronic.

And here's Gus posing as T Rex for me.

Chris and I got iPhones and I have to say I am having so much fun.  I was exploring knitting apps last night and discovered that the awesome folks over at Ravelry have on their to-do list an app to link your Ravelry page to you iPhone and can I just say that that alone will make the iPhone totally worth the cost for me.  Who knows how long before they get that done; I know they work pretty much around the clock as it is, but I'll be waiting until they do!

I realized this morning that I missed my window to mail something important off in time to get where it was going which is very frustrating for me.  It's completely my fault.  I really hate it when I let things slip like that.  I'm trying to figure out how to fix it; I don't want to spent $20 or whatever mailing it overnight and I don't know if priority mail can guarantee a Thursday arrival.  I guess I'll be heading to the post office to find out.

Well, I have hilarious bug related pictures and stories to share but that will have to wait because I have actual family work to do this morning!

Happy Earth Day

I thought to celebrate our beautiful and bountiful Earth (shouldn't every day be Earth Day?) that I'd let the joy of discovery bring us all back to our childhoods.  Abe and his first strawberry:

I haven't come up with any special way to mark Earth Day this year.  A couple of years ago we went to a really neat festival at the Austin Nature and Science Center where Gus got to make paper and do other nifty things like that.  I think today maybe we'll go on a bike ride after school or a walk and just enjoy the beautiful spring day.

My baby sweater is coming along nicely; I thought I might finish it last night but ran into a bit of a delay casting on stitches for the sides of the body.  Perhaps tonight!  I've got birthday banners to sew after all.  Some of the fabrics I bought for the banners:

Easter Baskets