"Tractors"

We recently had some major plumbing work done (don't ask), but the one advantage is we had a "digger" parked in our yard for a couple of days. First thing is of course to put Gracie in the bucket.


Jack has been loving "tractors", what he calls any construction equipment, and points them out with glee when ever we pass one, which has been quite often as all of Columbus seems to be under construction. So being able to sit in one was pretty cool.






Here is a picture Nora took and me and Jack sitting in it.


This is a picture from the July birthdays at Aunt Pam's house. Nora got a pair of binoculars which was very fortunate as they were fighting over the pair Aunt Pam had. Here they are looking for something together. By the way, both kids agree that Aunt Pam's house has "the coolest toys."

Special Day

Eleanor Kate is 4! To celebrate her birthday I took a day off work on the 13^th because that day there was a “Dino Madness” workshop for preschool kids at COSI. We didn’t tell her about the plan until the day before because waiting a few days can seem like forever to a 4 year old. When I told her Tuesday morning her face lit up and she was very excited about her “special day with my daddy.” It was the first thing she mentioned to me at pickup Tuesday and she said she had been telling all of her friends. The only sad thing was Jack, saying “Me too, Daddy?” when I was explaining the day to Nora, but I promised him his own special day coming up.


After we dropped off Jack and Mama, we swung back by home to get her first surprise, matching “Never Forget” dinosaur t-shirts. Then we headed to DK Diner in Grandview. It’s a great homey place with good reasonably priced food . . .oh and they make their own donuts. Nora did a good job eating her breakfast and picked out a donut with sprinkles. She didn’t touch the actual doughnut, except to lick the icing and sprinkles off the top.

We got to COSI and headed to the workshop room which was filled with all sorts of dinosaur books, several of which we own or have borrowed from the library. Nora picked out some ones we hadn’t read and we looked at those until the class started. The young girl/volunteer running the workshop was good with kids and friendly, but when it came to dinosaur knowledge she couldn’t hold a candle to Nora. She asked some basic questions (how big, carnivore/herbivore, what killed the dinos, etc.) and Nora, seated right next to her was firing off answers quicker than other kids could respond. I actually tried to slow her down so other kids could (incorrectly) answer some questions. One kid confidently proclaimed that “a cannonball” is what killed off the dinosaurs.

A couple of examples of our girl outclassing the teacher include:

Teacher: Was the T Rex a herbivore or carnivore?

Half the class: Carnivore!

Nora: So was Allosaurus, and giganotosaurs and carnotaurus and Troodons were sometimes

Teacher: I guess those are dinosaurs?

Walking into the exhibit is a flying reptile and the teacher mentioned it going in and out.

On the way in:

Nora: Pteranodon!

Teacher (unsure of herself): Or a pterodactyl . . .

On the way out:

Nora: A Quetzalcoatlus!!

Teacher: < looks at me>

Me: Had the largest wing span of any of the flying reptiles.

Teacher: Oh . . .

Nora also told the teacher there were dinosaurs who swam in the ocean and named Pleisiosaurs and Ichthyosaur. Technically not dinosaurs, but I’m pretty sure they were new animals to our teacher.

Back in the room they had some semi dino themed crafts for the kids to do. We buried a fossil in plaster in a Dixie cup and some other crafty stuff, but we ended up reading some more of the dino books we had not seen before.

After playing at COSI a bit after the workshop we headed to Wendy’s for lunch. While there I told her about what we were doing 4 years ago at that time, basically they were torturing Wendy for 14 hours trying to get Nora out. She enjoyed that story and asked about other things so I recounted her 1^st birthday and some of her old friends. One of the fun things as Nora gets older is we can have real conversations and she asks really good questions.

About 4 times during the day while talking to people at various stops she told them, “This is my special day with my daddy!” Not that they understood, but it made my heart swell every time. After a good lunch we headed home and fell asleep on the couch with her laying on my chest for a 2 hour nap. All in all just about a perfect “special day”. Now, where to take Jackie?

Never Enough ComFest

Here are some more pictures from ComFest: Here is Nora putting Jackie to bed in the wagon (because he is a baby), under the watchful eye of a little girl close to us who was fascinated by Nora & Jack's toys.

Jack about to jump from said wagon.

And laughing really hard when he hit the ground. He did this about 35 times.

It's hard to tell from the picture below, but it shows Eleanor's brand new baby doll that we had only bought 5 hours earlier, in a "nest." Nora protected her baby in its nest by prowling around and growling at innocent Comfesters as they passed. After enough strange looks and fierce growling, we suggested that she move her baby to a less traveled area, which resulted in greatly reduced growls at, and strange looks from, strangers.

She has been loving the show Wild Kratts on PBS where the Kratt brothers use special suits to have the "creature powers" of the animal they are studying. So her imagination in being animals has been fun and challenging at the same time. There are only so many times I can respond to a grunt or growl when I ask, "What do you want to drink?"

And, isn't this a great picture? I believe most of you know that Eleanor was named at Comfest 2007, right? I think this picture shows how deep Comfest runs through her and it's probably because she was there only 2 weeks before her birth and at every one since (oh, and her parents try and live the Comfest principles in daily life).

Yeah, it's a good life hangin' out at Comfest.

ComFest

We of course hit ComFest again this year and had a great time. Wendy and I got a sitter on Friday and took it in adult style and on Saturday we took the kiddos. The weather was perfect Saturday and our shift was about 5 hours.


The kids loved seeing all the sights and were very well behaved included carrying ketchup through the crowds following Mama to get back to our home spot near the Gazebo Stage to have some fries. Later in the evening me and the kids wandered up to the stage, it was a little loud for Jack but Nora and I had a good time dancing along with the music. I relish any time she is willing to dance with her dad.





We also had big fun with bubbles. I have a decent bubble wand, but "Mr. Bubble Guy showed up with a wand that made bubbles bigger than your head. Between the two of us we got quite a crowd of kids running around and popping bubbles.


Here is Jackson trying on my official "festival hat".