Catching up again

Been having a lot of fun with the kids lately, and that feels good. In the past few weeks I've felt like I've been too much out of the picture, between working most of their waking hours, then having so many things to do over the weekend. It pretty much stunk. So I've been very happy these last few days because I've been able to spend a lot more time with my babies.

First, Wifey got to be a big-wig and go to an advanced screening of a new movie - Away We Go - on Wednesday night. While she was off playing with the other special people I took the kids to Lake Artemesia for a walk, a picnic dinner, and hopefully we would see some ducks to feed. We were in luck, because we saw some ducks, geese, turtles, and even a beaver as it swam by. Everyone was so excited when a family of geese came over and enjoyed a TON of white bread for dinner.

And if those pictures didn't do enough to really bring you the whole experience...

Moving on... I had an amazing experience yesterday that allowed me to see a little bit of JAM in his natural environment. :) He invited me to speak at his school's career day and I loved it. I collected some pictures to show the kids some of what we do, then I had this cool activity planned where they were going to build soda straw rockets. We do quite a bit of rocketry work at the Lab so I thought it would be fun if the kids got to experience a little bit of that. I borrowed the activity from a course that we bring to the Lab once in a while, where actual budding rocket scientists take a course on missile design, then they have some fun and build rockets out of straws and shoot them off using this cool launcher connected to a compressor.

I did the activity with the first of the three classes I spoke to, but I quickly found out that there were some problems - the teacher was not ready for such free-wheeling activity in her classroom, she wasn't ready to actually help all that much so it took far longer to complete than it should have, and she had not prepared her students to work cooperatively in pairs because these kids had no idea how to work together at all. Her response? "These aren't really 'sharing' kids." Nice. After that, I realized that we would need a lot more time to do the activity well in the second and third classes (including JAM's), so I bagged it and asked to be invited back where I'll run them through it without such a time crunch. Normally JAM would have been crushed at not having things go according to plan but he had built a couple missiles with me the night before so he took it really well. Without that previous experience, and with his expectation being built up all morning, it would have been a bad situation had we not been able to work together the night before. I was proud of him though, he was great and it was wonderful seeing him in class.

After I was done at his school, I came home and hooked up with Wifey and the two little ones at Wifey's new playgroup at the new playground just down the street. D, C and J actually joined us (which was a great surprise for me as it gave me someone to talk to :) ) and we had lunch and the kids played really well. There was one issue with a swing where a local kid had wrapped it up around the pole on the swingset. Usually you just swing it back the other way and it is all fine again but this one was tied in a knot of some kind. So, D picked me up on his shoulders (yeah, all 215+ pounds of me) and I somehow clambered up onto the top bar where I tried to unwrap this thing without falling and breaking a wrist or a leg.

Witness...



Yup, that's silly 'ol me hoisted 10' above the ground trying to fix the swing. In work clothes nonetheless. *shaking head* Really, it seemed like a good idea at the time. You want to know the kicker of it all though? It didn't work. Turns out it would have required two hands to unknot it and there was no way I was letting go with both hands to make that happen. So, it'll stay that way until the HOA comes to fix it.

Finally, today was fantastic so far. Wifey had another opportunity to go out, this time to a writing workshop down in D.C. so I borrowed the Dab's bike and two wheel bike trailer, we packed a lunch and JAM's bike, and we went back to Lake Artemesia for a bike ride, some playground time, and a picnic lunch. So much fun...

I forgot to pack the camera though so these were all taken with my phone then I emailed them to myself. Don't tell Wifey though, we're one of the few people left in the country without a texting plan so those cost us like $0.25 each. :) But, DAMN! Don't they look amazing together? I hope our friends don't get too mad that our kids are so much cuter than anyone else's. I'm sure they've come to grips with it by now. lol

Off to pick up Wifey from the Metro for a quick trip to IKEA, then some meatballs for dinner, then, maybe if one of them haven't ruined it all with a tantrum of some kind, maybe some Rita's for (as Red would call it) a'zert.