Be

All I could think of was beauty, when the sun shone through the clouds. And the color of the sky,bright blue, spanning half the sky, bringing with it suggestions of park walks and pea plantings (finally).

And bushtits busy in the blueberry bushes, watching as I approached.

More pictures from our trip to Seattle

The kids had a lot of fun with the giant chess set at the Pacific Science Center-











Samuel at the top of the Space Needle.



All four kids (Samuel, Vivian, Eva and Sabine) in front of a Totem Pole at Seattle Center after the Harry Potter exhibit.



Butterflies in the butterfly exhibit at the Pacific Science Center.

guinea pig nail trimming

One of the challenging parts of taking care of guinea pigs for me is trimming their nails. When they do need to be trimmed, the guinea pigs and I can usually handle one paw a night. This obviously is not a hard and fast rule. And they make such a fuss, particularly Albert, who starts squeaking when he sees the nail clippers, that I am almost always behind. Their nails are consequently quite long most of the time. It's most often Eva's idea to do the clipping. She holds each guinea pig while I clip their nails. They struggle and then are given treats afterward.

I want to stress that while Albert is very upset in the following video, I swear I am not hurting him. Nail trimming can be a harrowing experience, even without physical pain, which is another good reason to do it as infrequently as possible. And you'll notice I only really got three nails trimmed and not even one full paw done. It's just too nerve wracking for me and the pigs.

gyroscope

So I caved and bought a gyroscope today. (For one dollar more than I could have bought it yesterday at OMSI, I might add. But who's counting. I am open to irony these days.) It seemed like a good omen, too, having seen it twice in two days {after learning about them yesterday}. Plus! I was seduced by visions of gyroscopic? tricks and hours (minutes?) of thrilling science fun. And- Samuel can be very persuasive.

On the instructions that came with the gyroscope, there are pictures on the back (the advanced tricks...) of the gyroscope resting on a pencil tip or spinning on a piece of string like a tight rope spinner. I knew those tricks would take a little time and expected a bit of a learning curve for us to get to that point. I didn't, however, expect us to not be able to get it to spin on the little stand it came with- a little black stand made just for gyroscope spinning. Who knew? But- after getting it to spin several times, we still have yet to be able to keep it standing on it's little stand, much less our finger tips. I am planning on leaving it on the table for a few days so everyone can have a chance to fiddle around with it a little more and {possibly} master the art of getting our gyroscope to stand upright. We shall see.

Here is a five minute video about the gyroscope. Our gyroscope does not yet do any of the tricks in this video. It does, however, do the part about dropping and falling over {so far}.

indoor sliding

Two videos of Eva's indoor slide she made yesterday from various supplies she cobbled together from around the house-

enough

I watched this Ted Talk by Brene Brown this morning and loved it. I was reminded of my own recent thinking about wholeness.

The talk is about twenty minutes and finishes up with the idea that the way to live life is to let ourselves be seen. Live by practicing gratitude and joy. And live by believing we are enough. {And know that when we try to numb out all of the bad things, we end up numbing out the good things too.}

Watch here now.

Ponytail Falls

The kids and I went on a hike with some friends to another waterfall today. This time we hiked up to Ponytail Waterfall near the Oneonta Gorge. There were a few other waterfalls nearby, both before the main attraction and after. I thoroughly enjoyed the walk, although I have to say that at 2.75 miles it may have been pushing the limit of what the kids will happily do {so far}. Still, these videos capture the happiness everyone felt when we reached Ponytail Falls.

Eva's video on how to make a boat-

wednesday

Eva takes most of the photos of Albert around here, except for the ones she asks me to take while she is holding him. She posted several Albert-photos on her own blog today. We were excited to see old photos of our much loved rat Charlie there as well. Eva was so happy to see his picture that she brought Albert over to share. We wondered about what Charlie and Albert would make of one another. For the most part, I think they would be friendly with each other. Their food preferences wouldn't conflict and I think with those guys, that counts for a lot.

The kids and I took a walk at Smith and Bybee Lakes today (without Jack, I am sad to say, though I am hoping to take him out later to make it up to him). While we were there they talked A LOT about what wild guinea pigs must be like. We all had fun imagining herds of guinea pigs running wild together, head butting one another to move out of the way, purring together, munching. In point of fact, guinea pigs like Albert most likely do not exist in the wild. They are probably domesticated descendants from other cavies like this one. I have mentioned this to the kids once or twice but it doesn't seem to stick. It is far too much fun thinking about Albert and his family roaming and blipping through the Andes mountains, wild and free.



Here he is all shmooped up (as Eva says- well, I guess now as I say too). She wanted a side and front view taken.

We saw a few herons on the water today and so many Woolly Bear Caterpillars running across the path. We took several photos, of course, and then we took a video (actually two, but I will just post one for now). I will have to remember this the next time we run across a nutria!

Eva and Owl flying

sand dance

Video of Eva doing her sand dance and Samuel adding silliness.