Outer space

Owen continues to really love drawing and creating. He recently drew this really cool picture of outer space which we are using for the invitations to his birthday party. He fills his drawings with so much great detail. I recently listened to an interview on Wisconsin Public Radio with Lynda Barry who is a cartoonist and author. She was talking about creativity and drawing and why we start drawing as kids and why we stop. She said that when we are young, a piece of paper is a place and a pen or pencil is how we move through this place. When young kids draw something, it is the feeling of that thing. A kid goes to a piece of paper to find something. At some point, we start to go to the piece of paper to put something in it that we already have in our mind. And we start to realize that the chair we drew doesn't look like that chair over there. And that other people realize it too. Watching Owen draw has helped me to have fun drawing again to. I love that he loves to draw. I hope it is something he holds on to.

Kindergarten

It's been almost 2 weeks since Owen's first day of school at Emerson. He was so excited to be starting school that he woke up at 5 am! We waited outside with him and walked him up to his classroom - he was so ready. I thought I might get teary but I really wanted this be nothing but happy for him so I gave him a big hug and told him how excited I was for him. He said goodbye and dove right in. And he hasn't looked back yet. He seems to be really enjoying things so far. We got to spend the day in his classroom on the 2nd day of school and his teacher seems really fantastic. After being there the whole day I have a whole new level of resepect for kindergarten teachers.

Zora has been adjusting to not having her big brother around as much. When Owen got a new backpack, she took over his old one and now she rarely goes anywhere without. She wants to do everything her brother does. And I know that all too soon we will be sending her off to kindergarten too.

UP part 2

On the Big Lake

A little late posting about our trip to the UP back in August. I'll late the pictures speak for themselves. (And I just noticed that a couple of posts I wrote back in July and August were still saved as drafts so those are up now as well.)

Blooming Butterflies

We went to Olbrich Botanical Gardens for the Blooming Butterfly Exhibit. The butterflies were great but we especially had fun exploring the outdoor gardens on our quest to collect stamps in our butterfly passports and earn a free ice cream cone at Michael's Frozen Custard.


The butterfly explorer. Not sure how he can see any butterflies.

Taking notes.

The fruits of our labors.

Letting Go Is Not That Easy

Owen recently took over the care of our neighbors tadpole while they were away on vacation. I came home from work several days ago and Owen was so excited to tell me all about the tadpole that had come into our possession that day and how only a couple of hours after we took it in, Owen and Ken thought it might be dead (apparently while Ken was upstairs with Zora, Owen had taken the tadpole out of the house to show the mailman and in the process had spilled all of the water out of the little tank). But while Owen assured me they had managed to save it, Ken shook his head and mouthed silently that it was, in fact, dead. I was a little concerned that within hours of our neighbors entrusting us with their tadpole, we had managed to kill it. Later, I asked Ken when he was going to tell Owen. He wasn't sure. And then I went over and shook the tank and lo and behold, it moved. Barely, but it moved. I guess it was just traumatized but not, in fact, dead. Over the next couple of days it continued to not alone be alive, but actually grow legs and turn in to a frog, much to Owen's delight. After a few more days it was out of the water full time and we decided it was time to let it go. So yesterday Owen, Zora and I went down near Lake Mendota and found a nice spot to let the frog go. Owen was a little melancholy about the whole thing and said that now it would be lonely without his pet frog and he was worried if it would survive out in the wild. I assured him that the frog was where it was supposed to be and would be fine. As we walked back, he looked at me and said "It is just so hard to let it go into the big, wild world after taking care of it for so long." And I looked back at him and said, "I feel the same way."


The tadpole survived the trauma to become a frog.


The frog in it's new home.

Bathtime for Zora

Like most toddlers, Zora gets a big thrill out of making people laugh. She has a silly streak a mile wide and all it takes is one little laugh from someone and she goes into performing mode. That's what happened the other night when I was giving her a bath and she dumped a bucket of water over her head. For the next 5 - 10 minutes she dumped one bucket after another over her head as everyone in the house came in to see. She couldn't have been more pleased. And thanks to Mike and Ginney, who loaned us a camera, I was able to catch some of it on video.

Summer's Bounty

Look at the great haul we received from our CSA yesterday! Up until now we have mostly had greens with a few other things like onions and broccoli but this week it looks like the season is in full swing. Broccoli, carrots, green beans, sweet corn, tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, cucumbers, fennel, onions, cabbage. Wow. Now to find some recipes to use up all this amazing produce.

Pirates and Fairies

Last weekend our neighbor Kieran had his 5th birthday party. They recently went to Disney World so Disney was the theme and the kids could come dressed as a Disney character. Owen decided he wanted to be a pirate so we borrowed a costume from some neighbors but it was long sleeved and more suited to October 31st than July11. So we made a trip to St. Vinnies Saturday morning and picked up a few things and fashioned our own pirate costume. I think it turned out pretty good and we plan to use it again next week when one of the local libraries has a "Pirate Party". The birthday party started at 1 pm and Zora got up from her nap at 12:55. I didn't plan for her to wear a costume but just as I was getting her up I remembered that we received a box of clothes from my friend Melissa (passed on from her daughter Mia) this spring that included a brightly colored fairy dress complete with wings. I'm not sure of the exact Disney character she was dressed as but surely there are fairies in at least one Disney movie, right? Amazingly enough I actually found the dress in less than 5 minutes, fashioned a wand of a Tinkertoy and some tinfoil and we were off to the party. The kids had a great time and it just so happened that the party was also the debut for Ken's Red Tricycle Ice Cream Company. The bike was a hit with the grown ups and the ice cream was a hit with the kids. We went home hot, tired and happy and Owen and Zora wore their costumes for the rest of the day. They even wore them when, because I was too hot and tired to even think about cook, I took them to Noodles and Company for dinner and I'm sure they would have worn them to bed if I would have let them.

The Pirate and The Fairy

Owen VERY carefully takes an apple from the wicked witch

Zora shows off her fairy shoes

The Ice Cream Man cometh

Owen takes a whack at the pinata.

Red Tricycle Ice Cream Co debuts!

As many of you know, Ken has been spending a lot of time over the past couple of months restoring a 1950's Worksman ice cream tricycle that he found on craigslist. Well, it's finally ready. The last touch was having the freezer box custom painted with a funky design and lettering. Ken picked it up Saturday morning from his friend Brian's garage where he had been working on it. I hadn't seen the bike since he first got it. Although I have tried to be supportive of Ken's enthusiasm for this project, I have to admit I've been a little skeptical of the idea and wasn't exactly loving all the late nights he was spending over at Brian's working on it. But, wow! It really turned out great. I would post some pictures but unfortunately we have no camera right now (The trusty Canon we've had since Owen was born has been acting up more often than not for several months. I finally replaced it with a camera I bought from Woot.com a couple of months ago and that camera also stopped working after about 1 month so we only get pictures on the rare occasion that the Canon decides to work). But Red Tricycle Ice Cream Company debuted at not one but two events yesterday. First Ken rode it over to pass out ice cream sandwiches at our neighbor Kieran's 5th birthday party and then later yesterday afternoon he took it to a wedding in Allen Centennial Garden's to pass out fruit juice bars to the guests after the ceremony. Both our neighbor's and the photographer at the wedding took lots of pictures so hopefully we will have some pictures soon. In the meantime, you can check out some pictures of the bike when Ken got it and some pictures taken during the restoration on Facebook (search for Red Tricycle Ice Cream Company) and on the very-under-construction website (www.redtricycleicecream.com).

Fun on the 4th

Our 4th of July started out with an unsuccessful search for sparklers - who knew that most stores in Madison don't actually sell sparklers? Granted, we were somewhat limited in our search radius since our car was still not running so we were on our bikes, but still. The few people I asked suggested we head to a fireworks stand. For sparklers? Really?. Fortunately when we got home we saw our neighbors headed out and stopped to chat. Turns out they were on their way to Walmart and if any store is going to be selling sparklers, it's Walmart. So they offered to pick some up for us.

We decorated the bikes again this year (Shorewood - the little neighborhood that is actually a village right by our apartment has a bike decorating "booth" as part of the village 4th of July festivities) - though we missed the parade due to Zora's nap again this year.

But we did head back down in the afternoon and watched the water fights there. People in the village form teams and 2 teams face off with fire hoses, trying to move what looks like a small keg hanging from wire, across the other teams end. It's sort of a water push-o-war. It was pretty amusing to watch and with the wind we got cooled by a nice mist from all of the water coming from the fire hoses.

Enjoying our homemade blue popsicles - very festive, right?

Zora shows off her new blue face

And her swingy braids

We had watermelon and sparklers with our neighbors after dinner and then Ken, just home from work, took Owen and his friend Kieran to the fireworks.