Penguins

We didn't manage a full fledged Penguin Day, but we did do a few a penguin activities before heading off to the Baltimore Zoo to see some of Choclo's favorite animals.

They have these African Black Footed Penguins.

Choclo watched with this look of intense concentration.

We saw them waddle, swim, and hop about.

After quite a while, I asked if he were done watching the penguins and he answered, "Mmmmm, not yet." About 5 minutes later, "OK, I'm done now. Thank you for showing me the penguins, Mom."

We even saw these rare two-headed penguins with hair. Very strange, but fun!

Can We Come "See" You?

Excellent news!  We've come into a heap of imaginary money!  We've decided to use it to take a once in a life time imaginary trip around the world to see all the places we've always wanted to see! (I know it's a lot of exclamation points, but we're, understandably, very excited)

We are going to figure out how and when to travel where we want to go, where to stay, what to see, what to eat, and how much it's all going to cost.  If you live in any of these places, let us know in the comments what is fun to go and do or see, and if we can "stay" with you. If you live in a different country, let us know why we should come visit!

Don't worry, we aren't going to physically show up on your doorstep, you'll just be giving us a virtual tour of fun stuff to do near where you live.  That probably means just telling us in the comments (we'll find pictures online to post about our trip).  If you have a blog, you can post about our imaginary visit, and we can link to you.  Which I guess would make us your imaginary friends.  But just remember,there are eight of us, so it'll be an imaginary party!

Here are our plans so far:
Starting where we live near Washington DC, USA
Hawaii (can we come see you Annabelle? We'd like to see one of the volcanoes, and a beach)
Australia (what do you think, Sue? I'd like to see your gum trees. And blue fairy penguins, although I think they are south of you,and, oh, lots of Aussie stuff!  You live in Leena's favorite country!)
Japan (We'll have Mxyl show us around)
Mongolia (the land of the Great Khan: I still yearn for a yurt)
India (probably in the north, near New Delhi)
Svalbard (hoping to time it to see the polar bear cubs and northern lights)
Iceland (glaciers and hot springs)
Denmark (Choclo wants to see the original Legoland)
Germany (where I was born and Neuschwanstein Castle)
Spain (Tia and Tio!)
Switzerland (to see Angel and her husband and their new baby girl)
Rome, Italy (Vatican City!)
Jerusalem, Israel (Holy Land sites)
Egypt (pyramids, of course!  And we'd like to cruise on the Nile)
Ethiopia (the great stone churches)
Kenya (Safari heaven)
Zimbabwe (Great Zimbabwe)
Antarctica (penguins and southern lights)
Chile (cruise along the Andes, more penguins)
Peru (Machu Picchu and the source of the Amazon)
Brazil (Amazon river and Rio)
Guatemala (Seeing friends and Aztec and Mayan ruins)
Back home to Washington DC! 

Around the world in 80 days?  I think it might take longer...

Naturally, you're invited to join us on our travels by way of the blog!

Guess What Choclo Likes

When I asked him which pictures he wanted in his room, a certain theme developed.

It's The Great Wall of Penguins!

He was interested in a few of the other pictures I showed him, "But, " he confided, "I mostly like penguins."

We can do that!

Oob is more interested in the trucks.

I have this dream that having just a few favorite toys on low shelves will make it easier to teach the younger boys to clean up after themselves. We should all have a dream.

The piece de resistance, however, has to be this cheerful fellow.

We were actually looking for a new humidifier for the older boys' room (last week's cold has lingered into this week's nasty cough), but when we saw him, Mxyl and Zorg agreed that they should have their old humidifier so Choclo could have a penguin.

That's brotherly love!

The Inner Boys Room

 Figuring out what to call this room is a problem.  This is the room on the main floor which used to be Mxyl and Zorg's.

Now it is Zorg and Choclo's, making Zorg the only kid to not switch rooms.  His consolation was that we started painting his room first!

"Inner" does not refer to the location of the room, but to the birth order of the occupants!  They are the middle two of the four boys.

After so long of having the oldest two and youngest two share their rooms, it's hard to remember who is bunking with whom!

As you probably noticed, the room is gold.  This took one coat of a base layer yellow and two coats of gold paint, so we really painted this room three times.  Good thing it was small!

They picked out burgundy curtains.  Note the extra curtain for the closet.  Replacing all the kids closet doors with curtains has been a huge win for us, both in terms of space and repairing the doors.

And, look!  Choclo still likes penguins, so they followed him!

If you look carefully at the first picture, you can see, hanging from the ceiling, a penguin in a hammock. 

Zorg thinks penguins are fine, but prefers Super Mario Galaxy (and cats).  Fortunately, Choclo also likes both of those, so everyone is happy!

In fact, these boys also share a love of robots and all things Lego, which you can see a bit of on the shelves and bins in the first picture.

Natural History

The sculpture garden with the museum in the background

 Last week we made it to Natural History -one of my favorite museums!  Since we would only be there one week, we split up so that everyone could see what they were most curious about that day.

Mxyl, Klenda and Zorg went off to see the gems and minerals, and Leena, Choclo, Oob and I started with the mammals.

I have to admit, this part of the museum always make me think "dead zoo."

Still, you can see all the animals up close, including ones that would not do well in our climate.  Here we are with a pangolin.  We love pangolins, but have never seen a live one.

Look at the toes!

We also saw Zorg's favorite animal, a tapir. Unfortunately, this one is fully grown.  The babies look like watermelons with legs!

The closest live tapir that we've been able to find is in a zoo in South Carolina, although it's unclear if it's still there. 
If not, they have them in San Diego, 3000 miles from us. At that point it may be easier to visit Central America!

We also spent a lot of time in their Australian exhibit (thinking of Sue and Vicky!)  Leena's favorite place she wants to visit is Australia. 

penguins!

We all met together in Ocean Hall to visit my favorite animal, the giant squid (as well as all the other marine life).  To my surprise, they had an Adelie penguin there (stuffed, alas). 

Choclo and Oob are both penguin crazy - here I've told them, "Look like penguins!"

It was a lovely visit, and I'm glad we made it before the government shutdown which will close all the museums for an indeterminate amount of time.  I'm just glad that this week we are going apple and pumpkin picking at a farm not owned by the government!

Choclo's Machines

Choclo has been going on a building spree with the big red cardboard blocks.  He likes to build large and fantastically complicated "machines" like this one, which feeds penguins (fish and squid) and  shoots leopard seals (the primary predators of penguins).

Do Science!

They're going to spy on penguins for science?

Did you see?  I've added a new set of links to my sidebar: Do Science!  These are links to projects that actual researchers have asked for help with from the public.

The umbrella site for these projects is Zooniverse, and it is well worth a look. 

Interested in astronomy?  We have blogged about Galaxy Zoo in the past, but they have nine other space projects to choose from: Want to look for another Earth? Try Planethunters. Want to see explosions within the sun? Try Solar Stormwatch.

And there are so many other projects!  You could track climate data from old ship's logs, or decipher ancient Greek, or catalog war diaries from The Great War.  They have ten different wildlife monitoring projects going on, everything from plankton to penguins!  And they have biomedical and physics projects, too.

It's a Zoo Out There

And we had a great time!


We saw the great bears.










And we stuck some kids in a bear trap.

And Mxyl "drove" the Tundra Buggy.
















I'm starting to rethink the whole "Mxyl will be learning to drive next year" thing...

It's the crazy gleam in the eye.

 And we saw the most fascinating thing at the zoo!


Everyone was riveted!









It was an African Hornbill eating a frog!

And I took a picture, just for you!!

Ummmm...  We also saw penguins!!

It's hard to believe that live penguins could be anticlimactic.

Off to the Zoo

After a week and half of being stuck inside, we needed to get out, so we headed off to our favorite zoo.

It always amazes me that, although we live within sight of Washington DC, it is actually as fast or faster to drive up to Baltimore for either the Zoo or the symphony.

We used to live in Baltimore, so this was the Zoo I took Mxyl to when he was a baby. It was a nice zoo then, but now, it's fantastic!





We particularly liked the tundra buggy/polar bear exhibit.


Here is Leena, "driving" the tundra buggy!



And here are Choclo and Oob, playing in a bear trap (What? Like you never let your kids play with bear traps?)



This visit we did their African trail . This actually includes African penguins next door to their elephants!

Mxyl pointed out that it looked like the penguins had feet without legs and the elephants had legs without feet. I never thought of it that way before, but it was pretty funny going from one to the other!




Then we discovered they had a baby elephant! Way too cute!








I let the kids loose with the camera, and they came up with some very nice shots.


All in all a lovely day!

Awesome Geography: Antarctica

This was a fun one!

I wanted to do an art project based on icebergs, but I wasn't sure how to do it. 

Finally, I hit in the idea of having the kids crumple and tear paper to make their iceberg, and then photocopy the crumpled paper. 

 The crumples gave a great ice like texture, and the photocopying provided realistic shading, including a shadow behind each berg.

Then the kids drew tiny penguins with pens.  Really, you just need the idea of penguins, so these are mostly little lines.


Lastly, they used pastels and/or crayons to indicate water, sky, and even an aurora!

One cool trick is to make a gradient from lighter to darker blue to indicate water depth. 


And, of course, most of the iceberg is under water!

For our snack we made snow cones by grinding ice in the blender and pouring a simple sugar syrup over it.


As you can see, Mike really liked this class!

Geust Blog by Mxyl and Zorg: Angel Came to Visit!

Hello and good evening to all sentient beings capable of understanding this rather complicated form of communication; aka: Hi guys.  What's with the big words?  But anyway, we have run into a considerably precious friend of ours, Angel.  I do not believe we have told you that Angel is getting married?  Soon instead of Ms. Angel, we'll start calling her Aunt Angel!  With a British accent!  What could be better?  Ahem.  Sorry.  Force of habit, digressing like that.  Can't help it. 

For example, did you know that my blog name started out as an abbreviation for Mxyzptlk, one of the villains Superman fights?  Or for that matter that Zorg's name originated because that used to be the only word he could speak in English? 

Actually, it wasn't exactly English, but rather ancient Zoomlian meaning a number of things, from "sweet dying moose" to "sweet moose that's going to make someone else die real soon" to... Oh, I'm digressing again, aren't I? 

Now as I was saying, Choclo got his name from loving chocolate so much, although he's mostly out of that stage and now he's obsessed with penguins, so maybe we should rename his something sounding a little like Pingu instead.  Oh, and speaking of Pingu, did you know that it actually isn't a--


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Even More Beach Fun

 We visited the light house and had fun straddling the state lines.

We made the much anticipated run to Candy Kitchen, an enormous candy store with an unbelievable variety (as in several hundred kinds) of candy. 

The Zoomlians each pick out three kinds, and then spend the rest of the week swapping and eating candy.

Choclo got his favorite gummy penguins!

Wax bottles, pixi sticks, and candy legos are other sine qua nons.

 We also went to my very favorite mini golf ever!

It's an indoor course with an under sea theme.  I haven't been there in years, so I was very pleased to find it not only operational, but meticulously well maintained.

It's such a quirky fun course, playing through sunken ships, submarines (top and bottom decks), and reefs populated by moving sea creatures like this eel about to pounce on poor unsuspecting Choclo (but he still sank his putt!).

I was having such a great time, I forgot to take pictures (these are courtesy of the Emperor), but one thing that I love is that the floor is covered with sea shells placed in swirling designs when the cement was wet.

Changes

So, presuming that you have just come back from a four day, three hour jet lag, whirlwind trip of non-stop fun, and then you lose power for several days while one of your favorite house guests in the whole world is visiting, and you are about to take a week long trip out of state to visit your family, but you have only two days to prepare, what is the obvious thing to do during those two days?

Of course!  Have all the kids randomly switch their (densely packed) rooms and paint all those rooms twice!  Did I mention you have your portfolio review coming up and you need to learn Chemistry this summer? Ha!  Ha!

 Klenda and Leena, who have been in their room ever since it was built (2003) decided it was time for a change and moved into Choclo and Oob's old room.

That meant the room went from purple and penguins to...

 Yellow and blue and pink and butterflies!






And horses, of course.














They have the art desk set up near a sunny window. 

We've all been doing quite a bit of drawing and sketching with art books and videos this summer.

This room was painted twice because it took two coats (of each color) to cover the dark purple.

On the plus side, Klenda and Leena (especially Klenda) were old enough to do a lot of the taping, painting, and room shifting themselves.