Sunday, December 30, 2012

A Cincinnati Christmas

By Ben

We had a Christmas in Cincinnati. Some of our presents were the last ones under the tree !We had a big dinner too ! After dinner and after a little break,we had dessert!Aunt , Karen ,Uncle   Jason,  Evan, and Bret came to    our     house. We also played with the new stomp rockets we got. We also played in the snow!

                                                This is Aunt Karen and us.

                                              This is Evan and Aunt Karen.

                                   This is me and Alex wearing our T-shirts that we got.

                                              This is one of Alex on the sled.

                                            This is Grandpa falling off the sled.

                                                    This is me on the sled.

                                  This is me and my brother falling off the sled.

                                     This is Uncle Jason when he got a new saw blade.

                                            This one I took.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Christmas Day in Baltimore

By Alex

Christmas  Day in Baltimore was  so fun! Aunt Karla stayed over for the night.  I was so excited when we opened presents! I was very very happy when  I saw what my presents were! Some of my favorites were the stuffed skunk, a stuffed goose, a few other stuffed animals, a snowy owl kite, and our new bikes. Many many other people came over for Christmas Day. I thanked a lot of people for my presents. After supper we played a lot with our cousins, Lucy and Eric. There was pie for dessert! Now I am going to stop because I want to play my new game, Ten Days in Africa.
 



                                            

Sunday, December 16, 2012

The Day at Lancaster

   
By Alex
All pictures by Alex except one

It was a very fun day when we went to Lancaster on Saturday . We  went to see an opera called  Amahl  and the night visitors .Our dad played the part of a king named Balthazar . Soon we found a parking spot .  First we went to the Prince Street Cafe . Soon we went to the opera . It was very fun and funny . Then we went to the market . It was beautiful .     

      








I took this picture out of the car window.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

A Very Fun Day

By Ben, and all photos by Ben

We had a very fun day today! First we went on a hike .Then we went to the Little French Market  for pastry! Then we went to buy a Christmas tree! Then we went back home again . Me and my brother played a bit . I had a lunch of Pink Lady Apples ,Cheese ,Popovers ,and some leftover pastry. The hill was steep ,but the thought of pastry kept me going.  I was so pleased that I got to take the pictures . I really liked taking pictures of all different kinds of things .






Tuesday, November 27, 2012

By Ben

On Friday, the day after Thanksgiving , we took a  hike in Gunpowder  Falls .With our friends. We hiked all the way to the dam.There we had our lunch.Then we walked all the way back again. Then we drove back home again. I was really tired by the end. I was really proud of myself at the end.
This is on a rock with dam in the distance.                          
This is mostly the same as the last one.
This is at the dam.
This is Isak on a rock.
This is us at the stream.

This is us watching as a fisherman catches a fish.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Editor's Note: The children are now writing the blog themselves.

By Alex

We had a great Thanksgiving! We went to our grandparents' house . Our cousins came too . Lucy and Eric's grandparents came too. Before dinner we learned how to play croquet . Then we made snowflakes.We made beautiful snowflakes ! Soon we had dinner .  It was so yummy! Turkey and stuffing and soup too.  After dinner we got tape and taped up the snowflakes . Soon we  had pie . After pie ,we stayed there for a long time . Soon we left . What a  perfect Thanksgiving for us!

Here is a picture of  our mother and us! Our father took this picture on Thanksgiving morning.


Friday, August 10, 2012

Olympic Athletics

Guess who's been watching rhythmic gymnastics?

 In costume as Daria Dmitreva and Evgenia Kanaeva (the correct memory and pronunciation of which was the actual impressive part of the performance, being more in the area of their natural gifts).


 Hopping in a circle on one foot. Don't try this at home.
 
 Almost 7 years without caring about gender roles. You go, boys!

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Science!

Our friends Steven and Allison sent us some books of awesome science experiments even kids can do (with adult helpers to mop up the vinegar). Today we kicked things off with some acid-base chemistry. Basically, with some vinegar for the H+ and salt for the Cl-, we totally cleaned the copper oxide off some old pennies.

Dig the old pennies:


















And the new pennies:


Well, maybe you can't really tell in the picture, but it was super-dramatic and also instantaneous. Awesome. Maybe this has something to do with why salt and vinegar potato chips taste so good, though further research needs to be done on this subject. Please send salt-and-vinegar potato chips.

The second experiment was much more like Actual Science, because it did not work at all. We put some baking powder in a packet of toilet paper in a glass and put some pieces of spaghetti in the packet. Supposedly, when you pour vinegar on this, the resulting carbon dioxide bubbles on the pasta shoot them up like rockets. Here's Ben adding the vinegar:
As you can see, we did not have any trouble making carbon dioxide. But the packet of baking soda kept floating up instead of staying under the pasta, even when we repeated the experiment by weighing down the packet with our beautiful clean pennies; basically, the reaction powered a toilet paper rocket instead of pasta rockets. We thought maybe our whole-wheat pasta* was too manly for the reaction to lift up, so we dug up some white stuff, but no dice-- just like science, repeating the experiment with brilliant modifications seemed sure to make a difference, but never did. Still, we made a big mess when the CO2 foamed out onto the table, so it wasn't a total loss.

*No, silly, we're not sacrificing taste for nutrition. (Remember, we're baco-vegetarians). This tastes BETTER than white pasta. This isn't that Healthy Harvest crap they have at the grocery store. It's imported from Italy (and it's still $2.50 a pound through our dry-goods co-op) and the best part is it still comes in packages of a pound. Remember when pasta came in pound packages?

Finally, we turned to physics, sort of, by making parachutes. Practically everyone has done this at some point, so you are probably familiar with the idea. We were supposed to use corks for the parachuters, but could only find one, so we ended up with one cork ("Steven") and one cardboard cutout person ("Allison"), who flew really well, especially after we cut off everything below her neck to reduce the weight. Steven's parachute was a little more symmetrical so he had better aerodynamics and often got carried impressively far laterally by the wind, but overall, Allison fell more delightfully slowly. Here they are being released from the tree house:

And Steven getting stuck on the tree house ladder:
And finally, two more releases, one from the tree house, and one from the guest room window (which they repeated about a thousand times).

Steven kept aiming for the hydrangeas and getting buried in those weird artificial-looking blue flowers that hydrangeas sometimes have, which was a pretty good strategy on his part-- I'd rather land in flowers than on the cement patio too-- but involved lots of untangling. Overall, science is pretty much how I remember it: messy, frustrating and awesome.

Monday, May 28, 2012

It was a hot, rowdy, fun, long Memorial Day weekend with cousins Lucy and Eric, sweetened by knowing they'll soon be moving nearby. We kicked things off with sprinkler fun, reading on the couch and of course, the treehouse (with some friends):


 Then jumping in a friend's pool:

 Sidewalk chalk fish by Eric and his Aunt Sarah:
 Then today we went splashing in a creek at Patapsco State Park, where all the kids got soaked and we spotted no fewer than five species of snake*, one of which Eric caught.




And finally, dress up. Awesome weekend!

*Ring-necked snake, Northern Water snake and Eastern garter snake, top to bottom. Queensnake and Ribbon snake not shown.