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Entries in Iris (126)

Monday
Jun252012

Where the week went.

Better late than never. Here are some favorite moments from last week.

The past few days, or maybe the past week, we have been gearing up for a camping trip. It will be our second, but only sort of, since the first was for a single night and only a half hour from home. This time we are headed north to Wilderness State Park to rediscover the beauties of our home state. This trip will be a three-nighter, so still just a warm-up, really. We'll spend one day on Mackinac Island and another hiking or on the beach, hopefully, and we're pretty excited. Preparations have included research (mainly looking up lists of camping needs and wants), list making (of our own lists), and shopping (i.e. garage saling). It has been a fun exercise in "what-ifs" and "best vs. worst case scenarios", and Calvin is certainly developing a knack for contingency planning.

We finished the multiplication talbes this week and broke out Totally Tut to celebrate.

We learned about water animal life at Nature Thursdays and Calvin practiced his swimming in Independence Lake. It's fun to see how far he has come, and I'm looking forward to watching him play like a fish while we are up north.

Of course our one butterfly eclosed and went on his merry way.

We watched a spider weaves his web in the window of Calvin's playhouse, and then we watched him spin it again the next evening, and then the next.

We ate our first strawberry, and made kale salad from our first garden harvest, but we're still waiting on the rest of the plants.

And we went garage saling! We found so many fabulous games for around $1 each that we are still trying them all out. We also brought home a pretty descent Etch A Sketch.

See you in a few days on the other side of the camping trip, assuming we're not eaten by bears (this is one contigency for which I do not have a plan).

Thursday
May242012

Fishing for magnets

Calvin got a magnet set for Christmas and after some imaginative play with it a few months ago, it was rediscovered this week with a renewed vigor. So we jumped and skipped a bit in BFSU, got a book or two from the library, and today we went fishing with magnets.


Materials art, after the experiment

We had plenty of help.

Friday
May112012

Downtown, the beach, and more

Lunch at New Holland, a must do tradition.

Watching Dutch dancing in the streets...an unavoidable tradition.

The carnival...a new tradition? Ugh.

Back on the beach.

And after bedtime for the little one, we watched an old favorite: Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Wednesday
May092012

On vacation

Wednesday
Apr182012

It's a silent battle

Who will win the afternoon sunshine?