A Nature Walk, Tortillas, and Sewing

We only met three days this week. Mirek was not feeling well on Monday and Lynni went out of town on Friday. However, we managed to get plenty accomplished.

On Tuesday, we went to the arboretum. It was Lynni's first time to visit.

It was hot.

 There were tons of love bugs.

 Cooling off.

 Lunch at the park.

 On Wednesday Lynni's mom taught all of the kids how to make flour tortillas.

 I helped the girls sew a pillow.

I'm at home now on a Saturday night all alone! I had to mention that. It's so weird. My husband took the kids to a birthday party and I went to clean my sister's house. I am done and they are still partying into the night! I had to wake up at 4:00 AM this morning to get Eaden ready for her gymnastics meet in Galveston. It was at a convention center and we nearly froze to death. It was torture. She did not do well and told me it was because her muscles were frozen. I was a little surprised that she was not more upset with her performance. She did very well at her meet last week and her expectations were high. However, all she said was "mom, did I do bad on bars?" I told her it wasn't her best but that I'm sure she will do better next time. Then I told her she got an 8.8 on floor and she said "WHAT!!! But I did good!" She had previously not scored below a 9.3. I said "yeah well your muscles were frozen and thank goodness gymnastics is not very important in the grand scheme of life." This is so important to remember when all around us people take the sport so seriously.

Quilt and Creamery

Eaden has taken a love to reading lately. Yay! She has asked to go the library multiple times. Finally we just got many many books to last for some time.

Here she is curled up with a good book under her new quilt courtesy of Grannie Annie.

She finished her first chapter book (the entire thing) on our 45 minute - one hour drive to Blue Bell Creameries.

These are Blue Bell flowers for which the Creamery is named.

 We went on a tour of the factory but cameras were not allowed...

 We did not plan on going to Blue Bell. I had planned on a trip to nearby Washington on the Brazos Sunday, but there is a 90% chance of rain. We wanted to see Bluebonnets so we took a last minute trip to Brenham. However, I took zero Bluebonnet pictures! I don't know what is wrong with me. We saw plenty but I kept not stopping because we were headed to the same field we went last year where there are millions (and it's not right on the side of a busy highway...well it is but it's huge and you will not get hit by cars). Anyway, the field had almost no Bluebonnets... maybe we will go back to the area in a week or so...Or maybe it will not rain Sunday!...

Secret Spy Agent Mirek.

Last week the kids discovered their now favorite playground where Naia had softball practice. They happily played for over an hour and a half.

 This thing Taven is on spins around!

 The last 45 minutes or so was spent in the sand volleyball court.

Bring Back Pluto!

I got around to making Taven a marker roll. He has finally started to show some interest in drawing/coloring.

 But still prefers paper airplanes.

 We checked out a pretty awesome book from the library. It is called Thunder Birds: Nature's Flying Predators (by Jim Arnosky.)

 This next one is called Island by Jason Chin on The Galapagos. We love all of Jason Chin's work.

 Also a neat book from National Geographic on Darwin. There are quotes from his journals.

 Some science experiments.

 And a new fascination with Pluto.

 My sister is a 2nd grade science and math teacher and she gave us this old model of the solar system. Pluto is represented as a planet. However, Eaden was not willing to accept that Pluto is no longer a planet and is instead a dwarf planet.

 The kids take the solar system everywhere. It talks and tells all sorts of facts about the planets.

 Because everyone was so upset with the treatment of Pluto by scientists, we decided to make shirts.

Next, we are planning on writing a letter requesting that Pluto be reinstated and we will be taking it with us when we visit NASA in the near future.