Kids and Fuse Beads! Then more Fuse Beads! Then more…

Don’t know if you’ve heard of this craze called Fuse Beads but Kate has the bug. They are small, hollow, colorful plastic beads that you place in the order you want in a pre-shaped mold. When your design is complete you iron the beads to fuse them together. Since the lovely Pacific NW weather is not always conducive to outside activities, Daddy decided to pick up some supplies for the times when indoors is best. And Kate signed up to show little bro how the whole deal works. Voila — the tutorial.

Everyone so happy with Saturday morning, jammy time fun.

Jake really took to the Fuze Beads like gang busters. His style is very colorful and pointillist.

Kate’s color palette is diverse but her placement style is very orderly and mirrored.

Time for their close up, Mr. DeMille! Kate’s work ready for the iron.

 

Time for Puss… In Boots

Saturday morning and time to try another trip to the movies for Jake. By the age of 4 we’re really hopeful that he will be able to sit through an entire feature film. However, to date we’ve not been successful. The last attempt was with Shrek 4, and Jake ended up melting down about 1/2 way in.

This round we’re trying Puss In Boots. We brought along reinforcements in the cats from Kinectimals. Kate told Jake that the cats really want to see the film so that maybe he will watch the whole thing.

Kate decided that tiger was going to attack panther. ROAR!

Pre-show hijinks complete, popcorn and snacks were purchased and we made our way into the theater. Joyful day, Jake made it through the whole film without complaint. Now we know that films are back on the list for potential entertainment with Jake.

Math Night at Einstein Elementary

Kate’s school puts on an annual, family event to reinforce all the fun you can have with math at home every day. Grandma Roo is now doing all the Bulletin Boards at Kate’s school so I thought I’d include her much applauded Math Night homage.

At the event Kate, Grandma Roo, and I learned how to play 2 new math games. First was a dice game where we did our best to avoid rolling 1′s and could continue to risk rolls for more points until we hit them; the first to reach 100 points wins. The second was a card game, similar to war, but add a twist with multiplication. Once you removed all the face cards, you split the deck evenly among the players. To play, each player turns over their top card and the first to correctly answer the product of the 2 numbers wins the cards. The first player to obtain all the cards wins.

After all the fun with learning new math games, the school does a great job of reinforcing how much fun math is by serving ice cream and giving away estimation jar candy prizes. Who doesn’t love math when it’s served with sugar? Here are Kate and Grandma Roo enjoying the fun.

“Honey Badger Don’t Care”

In August there were back-to-back weekends where Candice was a single parent while Pete was hiking with Joe and then while Pete was celebrating Geek Paradise at PAX. After all the fun of those weeks, Pete recommended that Candice and Roo (Roo helped out with the kids during a bridge time where Candice had a conference to attend too — remember it takes a village) schedule a girls weekend to have some fun, kid-free time of their own. Roo thought it would be nice to spend time with both of her daughters and so Tricia was brought in to the fold.

A few different ideas were bandied about but the girls decided that being tourists in their town was a wonderful way to go. Candice set about coordinating the relaxing trip for early November with massages at Ummelina’s, dinner at Anthony’s Pier 66, and a hotel room downtown so that a restful evening and morning could be enjoyed doing whatever came to mind.

As the adventure kicked off, the girls settled pretty quickly on their theme = “Honey Badger Don’t Care.” The theme was well conceived and served it’s purpose through the whole trip.