A trip to the zoo

Megan, Matthew and I took a trip to the zoo. It was a lovely day and we even met up with some friends for the second part of our trip. We enjoyed seeing the animals, playing and visiting.

Marsupial Matthew.

Arachnid Megan.

Playing with lions.....

.....and elephants.

What a treasure we found in this oyster shell!

They love driving the tractors.

Matthew really wanted to milk the cow, especially since the book we were reading had a girl milking a cow to make butter.

All tuckered out!

Orchestra concert, hair

Sarah had an orchestra concert. We enjoyed hearing her (and the other children) play. It's amazing how much progress they've made in just a few months!

Sarah has taken to experimenting with her hair lately. Here's one style that looks quite nice. (I believe that Matthew took the picture.)

Bugs! and other science adventures

We went to a member preview of the 3D Bugs IMAX show at the science center. It was interesting to see things from a bug's perspective. I enjoyed watching all of the younger kids, including Megan and Matthew, try to reach out and touch the leaves and bugs and butterflies. Sarah found it disturbing that they showed bugs eating each other ("eating their guts" she would say). It was a bit graphic. They chronicled the lives of two different bugs, who they named, and at the end, one of the named bugs at the other one. That was disturbing! Overall, we did enjoy it. Except maybe for Sarah.

Styling our glasses.

We went to the aviation area of the museum for a bit. Matthew loves hanging out in the airplane and watching the videos over and over again. We'll hope he loves it as much on our LONG plane flights!

U and Megan making airplanes to fly on their airplane shooter.

Sarah sees how her simulated airplane flies.

Matthew on the bed of nails.

Sarah loves spinning!

Megan on the bed of nails.

(One thing to add is that Megan was able to pull herself to the top of the pulley system all by herself which I thought was pretty impressive. I didn't get a photo, but we have pictures of the pulleys from other trips.)

Megan and Matthew racing each other on their wheelchairs.

Wedding fun!

We went to a wedding reception a few weeks ago. All three kids really enjoyed the waffle bar (Matthew says he ate 100!). We saw Grandma and Grandpa M, Megan's grandparents and enjoyed some dancing. 

Megan dancing with Grandpa M.

Megan and Matthew with Grandpa.

Sarah enjoyed dancing with Brock, who was the brother of the bride and is Sarah's Primary class.

Sarah and Brock practicing their moves.

A few random photos

We downloaded photos from the iPhone recently. Here are a few.

Matthew loves to help make pancakes!

Megan loves her $1 shaped like a heart.

Sarah at JA Biztown.

Proud Matthew wearing U's JA Biztown badge.

Matthew's Mat Man

Matthew enjoyed making a very large Mat Man yesterday. He then took a number of pictures of him and wanted me to include it in the blog.

The picture I took with him so you can see the whole creation--6 arms, 5 legs, many feet, 4 hats, etc.

A sampling of Matthew's own photos. He was very proud of Mat!

Grapefruit Juice and Punch Stand

Sarah and her friend Hailey are quite the entrepreneurs and are always coming up with new ideas to earn money. A few months ago, the juiced a bunch of fruit from our fruit trees and then had a juice stand (plus Hailey brought some punch). They enjoyed a fun afternoon outside and made a bit of money too. People's favorite kind of juice? All of them mixed together! And yes, that includes the punch.

Sarah's teddy

Sarah volunteered to sew the eyes on a teddy bear to help with a young man's eagle scout project. She was super excited to help. Here she is with the finished product.

Preschool: The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge

We've enjoyed reading The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge the last couple of weeks. We learned about New York and watched a video where we saw the real lighthouse and bridge the book is based on. We talked about how everyone has important jobs to do. We studied lighthouses, including using prisms to make sunlight more intense and did a lighthouse craft. We also designed different bridges. We learned about compound words. Megan and Matthew are continually applying that one: "Fire + fighter = firefighter; Post + man = postman. It's fun to hear! And I'm amazed by how much some of these language lessons stick with them.

Playing with prisms.

Megan with her block bridge.

Matthew with his block bridge.

We did an experiment to see what type of bridge would hold the most pennies. The bridge that was 1/2 of an index card held 5 pennies. The bridge that was an index card folded in half (so thicker) held 13 pennied. The bridge that was an index card with the sides folded up held a lot! In fact, Megan and Matthew just started pouring pennies onto it. It's amazing what a little bit on engineering can do!

Some of the lighthouse creations.

A close up of the top reveals two lights (one white and one green) and a foghorn (the blue light which is not on).

Megan with her lighthouses.

Motivated Matthew!

Matthew picked out some cars at the Dollar Store that he wanted to earn and boy was he motivated to do some extra jobs around the house. Within 24 hours, he'd finished earning a plant for John Henry's tank and earned his three cars! (He got the fourth car on a date with Me.) Here are a couple pictures of the cars in the LEGO garage he built specifically for them.

Side view.

Front view.

In other news, Matthew successfully ate a few cheese crackers yesterday. We've been gradually trying him on bits of dairy. He's progressed to the point where he can have waffles and pancakes made with 100% cow milk! We decided to try cheese crackers next and he seems to be handling them fine. Now we need to give him a normal serving amount and see if he's still ok with it. Then we are planning on trying butter. It's pretty exciting that he doesn't seems to be quite to sensitive anymore. Yeah!

Megan's first lost tooth and other Megan happenings

Megan lost her first tooth yesterday. It was getting super wiggly and so she worked really hard on it all day. By the time daddy came home, she was ready for him to yank it out. And yank it, he did.

Megan, daddy and the pliers.

Megan wanted to make a horse for the preschool teacher she had in her last class. She helped daddy make it. Here are a couple pictures she took of it. She did the bows all by herself.

We learned that Megan has an interesting talent: she can flip her tongue over so it is upside down. It looks pretty strange! Here's our attempt at capturing the feat on camera.