A couple of weeks ago Andrew was invited to a birthday party for one of the boys in his music class and it was an animal themed party. They brought in a small petting zoo with ducks, rabbits, and goats, that the kids could feed but the highlight for Andrew was the pony rides.
Jen took this picture of him during one of the many pony rides he took during the day.
In fact he had such a good time that he too wants to have an animal themed party.
Our class made owl’s in Art class. I made a good one. I cut out the eyes from yellow paper and drew black circles in the middle. My owl’s wings were long. I drew a rocket ship in the picture and I also drew the moon and lots of stars. I colored it with oil pastels. We made the wings curvy rectangular lines. We made the body in the shape of a square. We made the beak one triangle facing up and one facing down. I made two leaves.
-Alex
The shark was watching for food.
He saw a man.
He swam after the man.
The man was too hard to catch.
The shark saw 10 fish.
Then he saw 20 fish.
Then he saw thirty fish. Then he saw forty fish, fifty fish, sixty fish, seventy fish, eighty fish, ninety fish and then then he saw one hundred fish!
Then he saw 110 fish, 120 fish, 130 fish, 140 fish, 150 fish, 160 fish, 170 fish, 180 fish, 190 fish, and then he saw 200 fish.
The he saw 210 fish, 220 fish, 230 fish, 240 fish, 250 fish, 260 fish, 270 fish, 280 fish, 290 fish, and then he saw 300 fish!
Then he saw 310 fish, 320 fish, 330 fish, 340 fish, 350 fish, 360 fish, 370 fish, 380 fish, 390 fish, and then he saw 400 fish!!!!!
Then along came 410, 420 fish, 430 fish, 440 fish, 450 fish, 460 fish, 470 fish, 480 fish, 490 fish, and then he saw 500 fish!
Then he saw 510 fish!
Then he EXPLODED!!!!!!!
We typically take two nights to watch a single episode and the other night we were finishing up the one on the Shallow Seas. Even by Planet Earth standards this one seemed to have much more predator on prey action with one segment featuring great white sharks hunting Cape fur seals off the coast of South Africa. I’m sure you’ve all seen the pictures of the sharks breaching the water tossing the seals about in very dramatic fashion with the highlight being a new type of video photography that allowed them to capture all this action in super high-def slow motion. Of course they couldn’t let this new technology go to waste so there were many slow motion shots with poor seals being flung through the air.
After this had calmed down the episode wrapped up with a group of king penguins on the Marion Island. Everything looked very innocent with mothers feeding their young but it suddenly took dark and sinister turn when they panned over to a group of fur seas sitting on the beach separating the penguin nests from the sea. David Attenborough, the narrator, chimes in with “The penguins need to cross the beach filled with fur seals that have acquired a taste for penguin blubber.” Nothing good came come from a statement like this.
Sure enough the very next thing we see are the penguins slowly hobbling across the beach getting attacked by the seas. This turned out to be more then Andrew could take. He’s eyes got huge and he turned to Jen and in horror yelled
“They aren’t eating the mommies are they?”
“Oh no, no, no! Those aren’t the mommies.” There is no way he is going to be buy that, who else would they be eating?
“Ok. They’re just eating the grandma’s and grandpas, right, not the mommies.”
“Right, just grandma and grandpa’s, not the mommies.”
And that was good enough for him.
Guest blogger Alex on his Self Portrait in Winter:
I made myself in winter. It was fun and it took a couple of weeks to finish it.
The first thing we did was make the face and ears and we tried to find a color which matched our skin. Then we drew our winter hats. Then we made our scarf. I picked red and black. Then we made our winter coats and I picked orange. Then we used oil pastels which were white and pressed hard on the open spaces to make the snowflakes. Then we painted around them and I picked blue and purple. Then we made the mouth, nose, and mouth and eyebrows and eyes. Then were drew pick circles to make our cheeks look cold.
Alex and I just finished working on the Day out with Thomas pictures for the website. In 2003 we took Alex to the Day out with Thomas and since Andrew is at the same age and enjoys playing with the Thomas train set we knew he would enjoy it too.
Alex just had this to say about the day:
“I enjoyed riding on Thomas and I’m sure everybody did. I ate corn dog for lunch there and for dessert I had a funnel cake.”
Andrew’s hand caterpillar he made at school yesterday.
I’ll spare you the details of the actual study but it turns out there isn’t anything wrong with my sleep. I do stop breathing at night but apparently it’s only one time more per hour then what they consider normal. Something like 5 times an hour is ok and I averaged 6 for the four hours of sleep I managed to get.
Since they didn’t find anything one of the strategies the doctor suggested to combat the tiredness was to make sure I wake up at the same time every day, including weekends. Unfortunately for me I go swim before work some days which means I’m getting up early those days and the days I’m not swimming I need to get up early as well.
As a result it looks like I’m going to have some free time to fill and this morning I used it to get the pictures from our New Orleans trip together and posted to site.
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Alex’s school had a bit more damage with part of the roof missing and a number of windows in he common area that got blown out. They didn’t get the day off school since it was just the roof covering but no one was given tardy slips for not getting there on time. All the houses around the school were in much worse shape then the houses in our neighborhood.
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Just down the road from us the intersection has been closed for the last two days because the power and telephone lines had all been blown into the street.
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