Whoonu?

Summer is off to a great start, I'd say... Daddy got two extra days off for a great audit at work (attaboy!). He and Emilyn cleaned up her room super-good, with two garbage cans full of stuff thrown away! While I went to see "Indiana Jones" yesterday, Daddy and the kids went to the train museum and got caught in a bit of a downpour.

And we've been playing this great game that Emilyn got a couple birthdays ago, Whoonu.

It's neat! One player is the Whoozit. The other players get cards with items on them (for example: mayonnaise, nail polish, museums, scary movies, pineapple). The players are supposed to pick the cards with the items they think the Whoozit likes best. They put them in the Whoozit's secret envelope. Then, the Whoozit opens the envelope and, not knowing which cards came from which player, puts them in order, least favorite to most favorite. For example, in one group of four cards, Emilyn ranked "mayonnaise" as her most favorite. Because I was the one who put that card in her secret envelope, I was rewarded with four points!

The three of us know each other well, of course, and we've been blowing through the cards in this game for two days now. There's 300 cards, and we're almost done.

Once we get all the way through, we're going to play again, this time putting in the cards we think the other will hate the most. That's when "pineapple" and "coconut" become great for Daddy!

Third grade, last day

Holy cow, is our girl getting big. She's officially crossing the hall into fourth grade! Waaaaaay to go!

But first, there's the little matter of saying goodbye to third grade! (By the by, Mrs. Stasen really loved her DVD. She said it captured all her favorite memories of the year!) Friday was the last day of school, complete with the spring academic rally.

Emilyn won four awards this time around, including the Intermediate Academic Achievement Award, for receiving all A's on her report card. Hooooray! So, more trips through the balloon arch. And more boogie-ing by the Sorrento teachers!

To see all the photos and videos, click here.

Field Day fun

Watch Emilyn's triumphal anchor leg of the grueling third-grade obstacle course! You won't get these kind of thrills from the Beijing Olympics, I'll tell you that much! (And my commentary, of course, is better than Bob Costas!)

Way to go, Red Team! (They also had the best -- and loudest -- cheering section.) For the Octopus Relay, Stilt Walk and more, click here.

Central Park... West

Today we met Amy and the boys at Central Park in Chesterfield. Yes, it's really called that! We had fun playing, and it was a beautiful day. Lots of great photos! Click here to see them all.

Best train layout

Daddy came up with this one, and I didn't want to forget it, so I took a picture.

Clean, clean from the washing ...

MUSH-ine! (When we sing that, Allen always laughs. Unless he doesn't want to say that.)

Mother's Day bowling

Weather is pretty bad here for our usual Mother's Day-type activities... I always like to get outside, but it's 50 and drizzle and howling wind. So, we went bowling instead! At Brunswick Zone Lakeside.

We all did pretty well! Emilyn bowled an 80 (plus a 61 in a game she finished for Allen) and a whopping 121!! I bowled a 113, 148 and 129. (My elbow gave out somewhere around the beginning of the third game.) Daddy bowled a 115 and a 162. He was really in the zone there that last one.

Allen got to roll the ball down the ramp a couple times before he tired of the whole experience. Buying him some popcorn and a slushie brought him around, and he enjoyed watching his sister knock down the pins.

Dinner later, but I'm not sure where. We expect every place to be crawling with moms.

"Covered in goo"

We watch a lot of Discovery Health, Emilyn and I. Today we were watching stories of moms pregnant with twins who had twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. It's a disease in which the placenta has abnormal blood vessels that are shared, unevenly, between identical twins. One twin grows, while the other lags behind. The twin that gets more circulation is actually in danger, too, because the extra blood volume can stress the developing heart. The amazing thing, though, is that they're developing fetal surgery techniques that can stop or ease the problem, allowing both twins to develop more normally. Wow! Operating on babies in the womb! It's a miracle of modern medicine, and it makes you thankful every day for your healthy babies.

Anyhoo, that's not the funny part. We watched several women afflicted with this problem have their C-sections when the babies reached viable gestation (they have to deliver the babies as soon as possible for the best chance at survival)... Allen was watching, too.

Allen: "What's that baby covered in?"
Mommy: "He's covered in goo."
Allen: "Where's the goo come from?"
Mommy: "It comes from the mommy's tummy."

**pause**

Emilyn: "Do you believe that you were in Mommy's tummy?"
Allen: (thinks for a second) "I'm not covered in goo now!"

Happy Mother's Day, to all our favorite moms.

"Thomas and Friends"

Allen is doing a great job singing the "Thomas" theme song, and, to my great shock, he readily did it for the camera! Take a listen!

And, for those of you who don't know the song, you can play it here. When you hear it, you'll see Allen's version is right on the money!

20 years together

Steve and I have been together since May 10, 1988. Wow, that's a long time. But we're still fancy!

1988

1997

2007

Brownie fly-up

Emilyn and her troop have "flown up" from Brownies to Junior Girl Scouts. Today's event in the school library was rich in ceremony, pomp and pageantry (OK, but lots of giggling). And cake. And punch. Yum!

Click here to head on over to DropShots and see the rest of our photos and videos.

Bill's whirlwind tour

Wow! My cross-country trekking brother made a 10-hour visit! But it was really cool, and we packed in a lot of stuff.

A trip to the top of the Arch (plus the "Monument to the Dream" movie). A trip to the train store. A visit to Emilyn's school. Late lunch at Super Smokers. Trespassing at the Wabash, Frisco and Pacific train shed. Photo processing at Walgreens. Browsing Unique Toy and Game. Peering at the Betty Lou in the car...

And then he was off again, heading east. He's got somewhere he wants to be at lunchtime on Saturday. So... safe trip, Bill! Hope you come again soon! For all the rest of the pictures, click here.

It's done!

I think this on DVD will make a pretty darn cool teacher gift...

Toxic, but fun!

Yesterday, the third grade fired up the buses and headed out to the Weldon Spring cleanup and prairie reclamation site. Basically, it's a giant rock mound covering up decades of toxic waste left behind by a munitions plant. Great place for a field trip!

No, it really was fun. And not at all toxic. At least, I don't think so. And educational! We learned about prairie plants and animals, then made a butterfly feeder. Then, we learned all about rocks and minerals, and studied some up close. After lunch, we ran like mad outside the interpretive center for an orienteering challenge. And then it was time for a trip up the slag pile... The top is the highest publicly accessible point in St. Charles County! Plus, it feels like you're on the moon! Good exercise, too. Lots of wind, though.

Got some good pictures... Good for the project I'm working on: A musical montage DVD for Emilyn's teachers of the pictures I took all year. Got to get finished up with that! The last day of school is, no fooling, May 23.

Here's Mrs. Stasen and Ms. Rodenberg and the whole class. (There were three third-grade classes atop the mound yesterday!)



Click here to head over to DropShots and see the rest of the fun.