Here and There- I'm terrible at post titles

 Our recording sessions wrapped up this week with great success. My favorite part was having one of my friends, Heather, come to town. We got to play together and most importantly eat together : )
The kids love how she calls them each a nickname.  Chloe is her "sack of potatoes" and always gets a lift and some tickling. Colin is a "sack of sweet potatoes" and Hannah is a "sack of onions." It sounds like Hannah got a raw deal here, but Heather says it's because Hannah has "layers." That's the truth!

 For this week of school, the kids focused on finishing up some badges. Hannah completed Magic, Chloe did Cooking, and Colin finished Dinosaurs. I'm often tempted to direct them toward particular badges, but then I remember this is a chance for them to choose whatever they learn about and I want to keep their enthusiasm and independence going for that. We also caught up on a few things that were left off from weeks past. We tried making potato chips for Idaho. We were going to compare the taste and see if different potatoes yielded better chips.

 

But....as you can see, they all tasted about the same. Burned. I will say I wasn't present for the end result and leave it at that- haha. Although, Hannah said she liked them that way and ate several.

We also went back to insects for a little bit. I've spent a couple of mornings catching pesky grasshoppers in the garden and tossing them over the fence, which may or may not do any good. I'm sure they just hop on back over through the holes in the fence, but part of me hopes they'll take advantage of the greenway behind the house and head for the park instead. I had tried insecticide because they're really eating up all my lovely plants, but they pretty much just hopped around in the white dust like they were playing in the snow.  Anyway, as I caught them in a glass vase, we were able to examine them pretty closely. We also listened to all sorts of instruments play Flight of the Bumblebee. Hannah was most interested in young kids performing it on piano.

 Colin has been into dressing snazzy lately. He loves ties. And he gets plenty of compliments on his ties when he goes out.  He wore this on our field trip this week.

We went to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Fort Worth. What a great place! The tour was free and we had good timing since they had some rare demonstrations out as well, like an antique spider press. No cell phones were allowed so I pulled these images from Google, but they are pretty much what we saw. Millions, billions of dollars being printed, sorted and packaged. 

An elevated, enclosed walkway gave us a bird's eye view of the entire process throughout the building. The kids were in love with the handheld speakers giving the tour. They loved finding the numbers on the wall and pressing them into their phones. We lagged behind our group a bit because the tour's explanations used some pretty big words and I wanted to make sure the kids really knew what they were seeing since so many big machines and processes were in action. I was most impressed that the workers down below took the time to look up, smile, and wave at each group to stop at their windows. The kids loved that.

It's hard to believe our "notes" come from a hand engraved original plate. That job requires a 10 year apprenticeship! Talk about specialized work. I had never heard of intaglio printing, so I learned a lot myself. I also learned this location makes over half of the country's paper currency. 

I told Dax it's so strange to look at so much money and then you get on the outside and we all scramble to get our own share, which we believe is never enough, right? I'm sure the employees feel that even more!

I was happy to find they had badges in the gift shop to add to our vests. I say "our" because of course I live vicariously when it comes to earning badges. I always wanted to do that when I was a kid. 

 

For a final little project, the girls designed their own money.  

The kids chose new badge topics. Jewelry making, pirates, and costumes.

We ran to the library today to pick up everything we needed for this week. This book was in the costume section for "80's and 90's"  haha! I didn't expect these descriptions...

Needless to say, I'm sure that's not what Hannah had in mind, so we left it there. 

I love so much that our kids get to spend their time in beautiful, peaceful places, one being our library. 

Today we walked out with our 4 armloads of books, got to the car, no keys. I knew I had left them in my chair but wasn't willing to drag all those books back in, so I stacked them neatly halfway under the van. If you know our kids, they had a nervous breakdown over this, convinced someone would come steal all those books about pirates and jewelry. And of course when I found my keys inside, Hannah was concerned that I was grabbing not my own keys, but someone else's that could have been left in my seat.

 

 Yay for date night! We went to a Rangers game and enjoyed sitting in the breezy high seats, eating treats, and relaxing without a care in the world for several whole hours!

 

 We texted in our "date night" photo but didn't make it onto the jumbo tron, so we made it happen ourselves.

Dax taught a class this morning in Dallas on how to be a church reader. There's a certain technique and style and it sounds like several people benefited from it since they asked for more classes. Now he's enjoying a break. 

 Here are some photos that describe what I love about having kids. Sure they're messy and a crazy amount of work, but a household is really pretty interesting when kids live there. You might catch someone practicing piano with Tinker Toys.

 You might come home to these shenanigans.

 Someone's obsessed with Samurai Power Rangers.

You might find that someone has tried to make the fish "cozy."

 

 Your toothpaste might be randomly standing on its own in the bathroom.

 You might find random glued paper notes on your nightstand that make you smile.

 You will run across happy artwork like this!

 "How and why is this here?" is a common call through the house.

 Your backyard is filled with play shoes for all occasions: gardening, rain showers, snowstorms, and rodeos.

Next week we'll learn about Kenya. Very fun!

KID QUOTES:

H- Uh oh. We're about to be passed by a truck with smoke coming out of its horns.

 Ch- Oh, I love this little leaf. I'll name her Leafy.
C- When you're dead, you won't see that leaf anymore.

 Ch- (seeing a sign for Sprint)  Oh yes, I love Sprite.
H- That's Sprint, not Sprite. You never believe me. I told you that already.
Ch-  I never believe anybody because they never believe me.


Catching Colin grabbing Chloe's arm and pretending to bite her making her scream.
He looks guilty and shrugs- "I did that for no reason."

Ch- Getting complementary star shaped glasses from the library. "I look fashion!!"