Happy St. Patty

The Leprechaun came to our house last Tuesday. Instead of a pot of gold, he left us some "dough" of the play variety. He brought the girls some mint scented (homemade) playdough. To sweeten things up, he also brought some gold "bouillon" which just happened to be chocolate when unwrapped.

The girls had their rainbow parfaits for breakfast. This has become a tradition now. Madeline was pretty excited about these- can you tell??

I didn't trust Owen with a parfait glass, so he got to eat rainbow fruit salad. Really though, he mostly just ate the gold bouillon. It made for a very happy breakfast.

Urban Glass

The beauty of home school, is that I can plan activities that I have always wanted to do- in the name of my children's education. This trip to a glass blowing studio here in NYC, definitely falls into that category. For this trip, we headed off to Brooklyn, to check out a glass blowing gallery/studio/school known as Urban Glass.

Protective eye wear was mandatory. The girls were down with that.
Here we are learning all about molten glass. Did you know that molten glass reaches temperatures above 2000 degrees before it is ready to be blown? Glass starts to firm up around 1000 degrees, so the kids watched the presenters dance between the oven and the creation table quite a bit. The room was incredibly hot, and we were about 25 feet from the ovens. I can't imagine working right near one of them.
Here we are learning about how they color the glass. He is rolling the molten glass into various shades of pulverized colored glass.Here he is placing the molten glass back in the oven before he blows it....I think he had to put the glass back in the oven to reheat it about 15 times as he made our groups' creation.

This is glass blowing in action. He is blowing through this metal rod like a straw, and the molten glass bubble is slowly inflating. Admittedly, I was a little afraid at this point. There is nothing like a 2000 degree molten bubble being blown within 10 feet of your offspring.

Here he is shaping the blown glass. He will continue to blow the glass until it is about twice this size. Gotta love this guy's tattoos. Very child fieldtrip friendly :).

These are shaping tools. Kind of looks like an archaic surgeon's table.

This is, unfortunately, the best picture that I have of the finished product. He made a smiley face vase for the kids. You can see him putting the smile on here. It ended up quite cute, but my pictures were all blurry. The kids were quite happy with it.
While we were at Urban Glass, we also became acquainted with the glassmaker's torch. This torch allows for very intricate work to be done. In this picture, our tour guide is melting down a glass rod. These rods can be melted down to make things like small beads and.....

Spiders! Yes, these are the product of the glassmaker's torch. Why anyone would want to own a glass spider is a mystery to me.....but the girls sure did get a kick out of them. Eva was especially a fan of the glass cockroach.

This is more torch footage. I cannot believe how close he let his fingers get to that flame. The children were mesmerized. It was amazing to see the glass go from solid to liquid in a matter of seconds.

I know you are all wondering, "Now, where is Owen in all of these photos?" Thankfully, I had the foresight not to bring Owen along on this trip. I am really not sure what his favorite part would have been: the glowing hot 2000 degree ovens, the "blowing" sticks with molten glass attached, the glassmaker's torch, or the glass-filled gift shop with very expensive one-of-a-kind vases just 6 inches off the floor. Sounds like 2-year-old paradise, doesn't it? It truly would be for him. You saw how he was with the torch at Marc's party. I can only imagine the level of delight he would have attained at this place.

Central Park School

As I have said before, we are home schooling this year. With Central Park only about 15 minutes from our house, we try to incorporate this beauty into our schooling as much as possible. Luckily, there are a myriad of programs available all over the park. Some of Maddy and Eva's favorite, are the classes at the Central Park Zoo.
The zoo offers so many amazing classes during the regular "school" day. They have studied penguins, polar bears, sea lions, tropical birds, hedgehogs, and bats- to name a few. The zoo also offers photography classes- where the subjects are of course, the animals.

Here is one of the pictures that Madeline took during her last photography class. Very cooperative goat, I must say. By far, their favorite class offered at the zoo has to be the Zoo Keepers class. This involves getting to the Zoo in the wee hours of the morning (this is not my favorite class BTW:) to help the Zoo keepers get the animals ready for the day. Last week Madeline didn't stop talking for hours after we came home from the class. I got to hear all about what she prepared for the Polar bears to eat. Dog food, Cheerios, carrots, apples, and salmon- just in case you were wondering.

Another favorite class in Central Park is the Park Rangers class. These classes are led by an actual Central Park Ranger. Each week the girls study different subjects. They have studied everything from the geological rock formations (there are a lot in CP) to "the clues of animal skat." That involved walking around the park looking for animal excrement. Fun.

Here is a waterfall in Central Park that we discovered during one of the classes. Owen was absolutely delighted by it.

He also is delighted by the many fallen trees in the park. They make great horsies.

Daddy's Little Girl

Eva is always writing Marc little love notes. She loves her daddy. When ever there is a spare moment in the day she takes the time to make a little token of her affection. This one was especially cute, so I thought I would share.

Apparently, Marc is "the best dad ever in the hole wiy world." I had to laugh when I looked closer and saw that she had erased the correct spelling of "wide" and changed it to a more fitting but less used "wiy."

Here is her accompanying drawing. She is really into giraffes lately. We are all in the image of giraffes- flying ones, in fact. Except Maddy, who was quite offended that she wasn't included in this giraffe family.

Happy Birthday Marc!

Marc became "one year older and wiser too" last week. He decided he wanted me to make him an apple pie instead of a normal birthday cake. I would take pie over cake any day, so of course I agreed. Yes, Owen has no pants on in this picture, and yes, he is holding the flame gun. I promise that it has a child-proof feature on it. My kids believe that it can "sense" when an adult is holding it (because that is what I told them) and it won't work if a little kid tries to use it. In reality, it is just really hard to use dexterity-wise, so you have to be about 21 to have the physical capacity to squeeze a flame out of it. It brings a smile to my face to watch them look for the "kid sensor" on it though. The joys of parenting :).

As you can see, Owen was quite disappointed that we didn't really let him light dad's "cake" up. To add to his disappointment, dad only wanted to put 6 candles on his cake. Two columns of three to signify "33." Owen was hoping for something a lot more spectacular. He knew how old dad really is.

Here we are, singing the birthday song. Owen has cheered up now. You can tell Maddy and Eva are really into it.

You can't really tell who is having a birthday in this picture. Eva looks absolutely delighted to be in front of those candles.....AND she is turning six this year. I will have to be careful to archive this one correctly :). Candles are lit, and we are ready to blow them out.....

Once again, Eva's birthday? Marc's Birthday? Hard to tell. After the pie festivities Marc and I were off on a hot date. We went clothes shopping for Marc. He still had not spent a Brooks Brothers gift certificate that I bought for him for our Anniversary last year, so we were looking for some new work garb. We had no clothes shopping luck (they respectfully told Marc that his sizing is so "unusual" that we should have his clothing hand tailored :), so we went to the grocery store! I know, what a fun birthday treat. But truthfully, it was fun just to be out together sans children....even at the grocery store. Thanks for taking the birthday pictures and watching the children Maria!

Friends in Town

The Hansen family came to visit NYC a few weeks back. They are good friends of ours. Marc was on the track team with Jeff Hansen way back in the glory days of BYU. The Hansen's brought along their adorable daughters. Here, the girls are paying their respects to Balto in Central Park
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Eva had Maddy loved having some playmates to sight-see with. Unfortunately it was freezing, freezing cold for part of the week they were here.


Here we are, all together enjoying some Patsy's pizza. I think it is hilarious that all of the kids are on one side of the table, and all of the parents are on another- a fact I didn't realize this until I saw the picture afterward. I think after a long day of sight seeing, we needed some distance :).

The whole family, all together. The kids are gulping down their bounty from the M&M's store in Times Square. If you are looking for a cheap place to buy M&M's, this would not be it :).

In all, we had a great couple of days together. We took our kids to a college/professional track meet in Manhattan. Owen absolutely loved watching the pole vaulters. The girls liked watching the races and cheering for BYU.

Valentine's Day 2009

We made some heart decorations to hang from our dining room lights earlier in the week.

We woke up really, really early. To see how truly photogenic my little ones are in the wee hours of the morning, click on this picture. The kids were tired because we had to have our Valentine's Day breakfast before Eva had to leave for her test at 8:00. Yes, Eva had a test on Valentine's Day. I bet you didn't think the Dept. of Ed. gave tests on Saturday. We are living proof to the contrary.

Then we had breakfast! Heart pancakes. Heart Marshmallows in our hot cocoa. Heart shaped strawberries.

I love these people.