Bluebonnets 2017

This annual tradition just never gets old. I love seing him change and grow from year to year, but still at his core, my sweet, curious, loving little man.

Isaac's 8th Birthday

The force was with us for Isaac's 8th birthday party! Our padawans had a great time donning the robes of the Jedi, and training with blasters and lightsabers! Michael and I even dressed up this year!

Isaac was a big help in getting everything ready this year, from the TIE fighter cookies and lightsaber pretzels to the decorations, and LEGO scenes, he has been super busy helping me this past week!

My favorite part, though, was by far the cake! It's my favorite of all the cakes I've decorated over the years - and also the most challenging. But, when your kiddo asks for a BB8 cake that stands up, well, that's what you do.

Special Thanks to Claudia Chavez for the amazing photos, and Josh Grant with Jungle Movement Academy for the lightsaber training.

Camp Andrea 2016 - Dinosaur Week

I love my job! This is is the second summer that I've put together a couple of weeks of "Camp Andrea" for my kiddo and a few of his friends. This week is Dinosaur Week. We did Dinosaurs last summer too, with another friend, but Isaac loved it so much he asked to repeat it again this year and invite different friends.

For each week of "camp" the kids usually transform my library into a space that reflects whatever subject we're learning about, and this week was no different. We built a volcano tent from our Construction Fort Kit and it became a favorite place to read.

Every day we have a science and an art project, and we also do a variety of activities throughout the week to practice language arts, and math skills...although, to the kids, we're having fun, and that just makes it even better!

On our first day, the kids started work on adapting a story we read into a puppet show. They learned so much as we talked about the work that would have to be done to turn a story into a play. They created their own script, and then we had to cast the "actors" and adapt the script again to fit the casting decisions they made. They practiced all week, created their backdrop, and finally perfected their show enough to allow me to record it.




Another favorite activity later in the week was trying to figure out if we could outrun a dinosaur. We used a dinosaur that was about their size, ceolophysis, or CeeLo for short. We put footprints on the floor to show the stride length of CeeLo, and measured our own stride. Then we calculated and compared our stride length to CeeLo as well as other dinosaurs. It's probably not surprising that these kids can run FAST!



And it certainly made an impression on the kids because when we went to the Dino Park on Friday, they all recognized CeeLo right away!



We had daily science experiments, always a favorite with the kids. We made Dino Eggs (dissolving bath bombs, with dinos inside), and created our own lava lamps. Then we spent several days being paleontologists and digging for our own dinosaurs. We also had daily art projects, like fossil dough, ceramic painting, and plastic canvas magnets.

And, I may have had a little too much fun coming up with fun snack and lunch ideas for our dinosaur theme :-)