Looking Back - June 2011
We kept busy all summer - from beginning to end. Here are a few pictures from our June adventures.
Nick took a business trip to China, where he visited
Hong Kong,
Shenzhen and
Shanghai. This is a shot of the Shanghai skyline from
The Bund. The Bund is an historic waterfront area, very different from the view across the river.
When my parents came to visit, we all went down to
Philadelphia for a day. It was our first time down there, so we took a bus tour. Later we went to
Independence National Historic Park, and saw the
Liberty Bell. Brandon discovered that the park rangers carry trading cards with various historic people and places on them. In order to earn trading cards, he had to answer questions posed by the rangers. He collected quite a stack that day, and learned some history in the process.
Laedyn celebrated her 4th birthday on June 7. She requested a Tinker Bell cake. I managed to work Tinker Bell into a caterpillar cake I'd been wanting to make. The caterpillar cake was baked in a specialty mini cake pan from William Sonoma, which I'd been looking for the perfect time to use.
One weekend, we stumbled upon
Daniel Boone's homestead. He lived on this property until he was 16 years old. The building in this picture is a barn, added by later owners in a style seen frequently in this area.
Later owners of the property dammed the steam and ran a sawmill. It looked like they run sawmill demonstartions on the site. We might need to go back to see that sometime!
The kids and I took a trip to
Ashtabula to visit my parents. While we were there I was roped into helping run a massive garage sale in Mom's backyard. Brandon said he loved the garage sale because it was a great place to "buy stuff you don't need."
While in Ashtabula, we spent an afternoon at the beach. The lake was still pretty chilly, so most of the day was spent playing in the sand and hunting for beach glass.
We also went to the river out at my grandmother's farm. The water was just right for the kids to collect crayfish, tadpoles and minnows in their buckets.
Back at home, I finished organizing my studio space. Mom found wooden CD racks at
IKEA which are perfect for holding the smaller sheets of glass that I use in my glass fusing projects.
The kids started swimming lesson at the YMCA in June and continued those throughout the summer. Lessons were four days a week in two week sessions. The both progressed significantly.
Nick made a couple of photo cut outs. I chose a couple clip art pictures & he projected them onto large foam core boards and traced them. He also added little handles to the backs so the kids fingers wouldn't show when we took the pictures. They turned out great!
Laedyn, our little hooligan, had a great time making silly faces at me...
I had mark blow up a bunch of balloons and stuff a high bounce ball in each one - we called them comets... The kids had to try to throw them thru the hoola hoops. The balls inside the ballons made them fly in unpredictable patterns. The kids had a great time.
Brandon decorated a piece of PVC pipe to look like a rocket for a ring toss game. We used glow in the dark bracelets for the rings, and then the kids got to keep the bracelets.
I made an earth pinata. It didn't take long for the kids to destroy it. Lesson learned about pinatas? Don't use a teeball bat and don't forget a blindfold! It only took four hits. I don't think anyone was too horribly disappointed beacause there were a ton of goodies in that thing.
