Wordless Wednesday: American History Museum

Seven Quick Takes: The Weird, the Wonderful, and Lent

 

 1.  It was the strangest thing.We were walking through the woods and saw robins throwing leaves.  They were on the forest floor, very deliberately picking up leaves and throwing them vigorously into piles!

We went over to investigate and found the places where the birds had been: small patches of bare ground with a little leaf pile next to each spot... and a worm hole in the exact center of each bare patch!

 2. Klenda continues to do very well at art school,  She has become known  as "The Quirky One."  For some reason.

They were painting a white ball surrounded by colored scarves (an exercise in perceiving reflected color).

She put this face on the ball, which I think shows hidden depths of creativity, skill, and creepiness.




3. We had slipped into a rut in our dinner time conversation.  We would start out talking about our day, and quickly move over to what was happening in a video or computer game or movie.  I wanted to broaden the horizons a bit.

What did I want to talk about?  I came up with a list and put it on a spinner.  You may notice that all the topics I found annoying are also on the spinner.

We don't spin the spinner, just move the hand one space each day.  The question jar is a jar filled with dinner conversation topics that I got here and here.



And, yes, we also have a spinner to show if we prayed before meals because one family member got tired of others asking at each meal (usually after prayers), "Did we pray yet?"

We're a bit weird like that.

 4. Now that it's March, I guess it's time to mention Valentine's Day!  

One of the question jar questions was : what is your favorite family tradition?

Mine is everyone making valentines for each other!

We go around the table and read them one at a time. So fun!  So much love!




 
5. I had a bone infection in my jaw and had to have minor surgery and a tooth removed.  They are going to put another one back (dental implant), which makes it feel a little less like I'm just losing body parts as I age, but it still hasn't been the most fun.

Every time I want to complain, I think of this meme (from Lit Catholic Memes), and it cheers me up!

6. Lent is almost here!  At long last! It feel weird having this much time between Christmas and Lent.  Also, given that I can't eat much right now (see #5) it feels like it's already Lent!  I'll do a separate post about this year's Lent, but if you're looking for Lent ideas, here you go.  This is the poster from 3 years ago, but, given the 3 year cycle, this year's poster will be similar.

7. Can I just say that shoebills creep me out?

When we were at the Natural History Museum this week, we stumbled onto a wonderful new exhibit tucked back behind the dinosaur exhibit on the second floor.

The actual exhibit is a selection of fascinating things from all over the Smithsonian collections, and we loved it!

But seriously, these birds are each about four feet of creepy!

Have a great weekend!  More fun with Kelly!

Wordless Wednesday: Natural History Museum, Second Floor

The Museum (New and Improved)

 The museum just keeps growing!  I can tell we are on our way to having our very own Hall of Wonders!!





We now have three wings: the William J. Jensen Wing(models, rockets, and things we have made),








the Ocean Wing  (shells, fish, fossil shark teeth),

and the other wing that we haven't named yet (rocks, fossils, bird nests, bones, and anything the kids find and want to put there).

I love having a museum!

I love having a place to exhibit all the things we find and are interested in!

To me it's a place to honor my kid's interests, and reflect on all of the amazing things which have fascinated them

Mount Vernon

 We loved Mount Vernon!  It was totally worth the substantial amount of money!

Here we are in front of George Washington's actual house.  You can see a bit beyond the house, that it's sitting on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River - very beautiful.

We got a full tour of the house (no photos allowed) and it is set up exactly as it was at the time of Washington's death, right down to the shades of paint.

The location is really beautiful, and we spent quite a bit of time wandering through the gardens and outbuildings.  This is the view from the back lawn.

The kids had fun with the adventure maps provided to them at the outset.  It was Talk Like a Pirate Day (Did you notice the eye patch?  I didn't at the time.), and it took us a while to realize that they do these maps all the time.

 We had spent several hours there before we realized that there was a separate museum (I mean really?  The whole place is a museum!).  That was partly because they built the museum part underground so that you could still see Mount Vernon as George Washington saw it.

I must say, we see a lot of museums, and theirs was fantastic!  It was every bit the equal of a Smithsonian.  It also had a 4D theater with real fog and snow (snow!) and so forth.

And they had a children's section with dress ups, games, head cut outs, crafts and all sorts of great things for 8 and under.

The whole thing was very, very well done, and we loved it!

Seven Quick Takes: Excavation of the Homeschool Room

1. Following up on last week's success with the basement, I am attempting to sort out the homeschool room. It's not quite ready for prime time, but at least I've cleared out our museum again.

Plus, now you can walk into the room!! To be fair, a lot got dumped in here from the basement, but still, who knew there were all these narrow wooden planks at the bottom of it all?

It's almost like there was once a floor there.

Our collection of Things -the-Kids-Have-Found-or-Made continues to grow.

Klenda and I put together the Visible Woman over the course of several Girls' Nights.

Mxyl found the deer skull while on a scouting expedition.



Not that it has anything to do with wanting to get the homeschool room in order, but did I mention I'm doing my portfolio review at my house in a few weeks?

2. The best part of excavating is the rediscovery of new and exciting things I can use. I found a ton of stuff that Choclo and Oob can do while the older kids and I are doing homeschool blocks.

It's such a happy thought that they are productively occupied instead of, I don't know, mixing random ingredients and then cleaning up with toilet paper and fruit.

I know in this picture, Choclo looks like he'd rather be smashing more eggs, but I'm confident that he's really happier playing the Noah's Ark balancing game with Firelord.


3. We also discovered the crystal growing kit that Zorg had gotten for Christmas. Perfect timing! Zorg, ever happy to slip on a lab coat, was able to do the whole thing (except for the boiling water). The crystals will be full grown in a few more days.


4. And then I found these beautiful blank books for Klenda and Leena, as well as some cool pad and pen sets for Mxyl and Zorg.

What is it about beautiful stationary? I found these pretty little books absolutely swoon-worthy, and I am not really one for swooning.





5. I found a Foxtail ball and book which someone gave us a long time ago. I tucked it into Zorg's homeschool drawer. I love tucking things into the drawers and waiting for them to be found.

Zorg found it this morning after all his work was done and went out and played it with Oob for a long time.


6. This is the bear Klenda made for a friend's baby brother. She hand sewed the whole thing by herself!

The baby loved it and started kissing it as soon as she gave it to him. How's that for a reward for your labor?





7. Not in the homeschool room, but Zorg graduated from Cub Scouts! Congratulations, buddy, and welcome to the world of the big Boys!

More with Jen!

Museum Opening

This is our friend Bill.
Bill can do anything.
OK, almost anything!
He's a computer engineer and he donated an entire wing of our museum, so he was the logical choice as the ribbon cutter.




This our main museum.
The top is cool stuff we've found.

The left side is sea shells.

The center is fossils (including the shark teeth in the white cabinet).

The bottom center shelf has our rock collection.

On the upper right we have crystals (including some from the salt potatoes!).

We also have a bird nest with various feathers and egg shells and a blank shelf for further expansion.
And here is Bill with the wing named after him. We are also very grateful his last name is simpler than Udvar-Hazy.

We have rotating exhibits related to space (particularly the Apollo program) on the top shelf.

The second shelf is dedicated to science fiction models.

The third has boats and submarines.

The bottom shelf has aircraft and a working model of a car engine.