tawbubby

Wow, this is awesome!  Amelia’s taking a cartooning class in her after-school program.  She draws with them every Tuesday.  They are great art instructors…they pull a lot out of Amelia.

I took Amelia to VCU tonight to see Astronaut Kathryn Thornton speak.  She flew on four missions in the late 80s and 90s.  She was a guest of the VCU student chapter of the American Nuclear Society…who had a few interesting announcements at the beginning, and free pizza (AVJ was thrilled, because she’s always hungry!).  Amelia was the youngest audience member, and watched her slides (mostly pictures of spacecraft, parts, hubble, life in space, etc.) and took in a lot of the information while she drew pictures of space stuff.

And drew some pictures.

“Her” (note NASA patches on her arm)

“Other symbols”  That polka dot oval on the right is an asteroid.

Astronaut Thornton talked about how the solid rocket boosters use liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen as fuel, and then they take off create a lot of water vapor, noise, and thrust.  I wrote this on Amelia’s notepad, and she added “KaBoom!”.

Then Astronaut Thornton told a story about what it feels like to take off- it’s like you’re strapped in the bed of a pickup truck, riding on some railroad tracks.  Now, don’t try that when you leave here tonight!  So, Amelia drew a pickup on railroad tracks with a circle & a slash over it.

When Astronaut Thornton said the shuttle slows from 17500 miles/hour to 60 miles/hour on the runway, by use of the brakes and a parachute.  I wrote those numbers down for Amelia.  She wrote “5 numbers” and “2 numbers”.  “The answer is 7.”

Amelia asked me to ask her “What was your favorite food in space?”  The answer was a surprise- dehydrated shrimp cocktail.  And vanilla pudding with dehydrated strawberries.

Amelia got a picture taken with the astronaut, will post when we get it!

She’s a scientist.  She was invited to a costume birthday party.  With a moon bounce and all the stuff that keeps kids busy, including Amelia.  But, at one point, two moms and I watched her go off towards the graveyard with her ‘lab notebook’ and start writing or sketching something.  She didn’t want to share, and so I didn’t peek. She was engrossed for a while, and then a friend joined her while she wrote/sketched some more.  Maybe she’ll be a field ecologist, archaeologist, anthropologist?

We went to Colonial Beach with Fafa and his dog Ginger last weekend.  It’s a beach on the brackish Potomac, before the Chesapeake.  Lots of fun!

The water wasn’t too cold for these girls.  Actually, the air was probably cooler than the water.

A swing on a tree in the yard was a favorite thing.

Daph HAD to wear her bathing suit, sometimes with her sweater to keep warm.  I love this pic.

The sand was very fine, almost felt velvety.  Amelia really enjoyed playing with it.

Cool bird house post chair at the wharf.

A happy crew after lunch.  Our house is across the bay behind everyone.

We always try to visit the local park when we travel- this one was great!

Ginger got a good brushing, with a little help from Daphne.

I’ve been wanting to play Connect 4! with the girls, and luckily this house had the game.

And Amelia played her first game of chess with me.  I was a bit rusty, but managed to win. ; )  Deep Blue is next.

It was a really cool set.  The glass pieces were easy to see. Frosted vs. shiny squares on the board were hard to see.

The last birthday excitement was a party at Mad Science yesterday.  She invited a pile of her friends and they had a great time.

Here’s Amelia with her hands on their 200,000 volt Van de Graaff static electricity generator.  It didn’t work as well for her as for other girls (with straight hair), but I  have to share gorgeousness!

(Daph wouldn’t try it)

Girls getting ready for the 50-second challenge to clean up all those magnetic building pieces.  They did it in 46 seconds.

The Mad Scientist was showing them several electricity themed tricks, and the girls, being girls, were squealing.  Here is one time when several hid in a line behind Daphne to protect themselves.

Amelia turned 7 on October 6th.   Here are a few things we took pictures of…starting with the birthday girl, of course.

Her Bebe got her a beautiful set of dress up scarves.  She, Daphne, and our neighbor Lili have played with them every day.

Her Aunt Penny made this beautiful dress.  I hope we get a really warm day before fall sets in for good!  (Penny- otherwise it looks good to fit in the spring and through next summer.)

She went shoe shopping with Bebe, and picked out these awesome shiny black boots!  Sorry Daph isn’t too happy in this photo.

And requested Red Robin for her birthday dinner.  We went a couple weeks ago with the Martin-Lyons and Lyons for cousin Jackson’s birthday.  He’s sitting next to Amelia in this picture.  Amelia was so impressed by the wait staff’s happy birthday song, and Jackson’s ice cream sundae…that she requested the same thing.  And her cousins were able to come back with us!  You should have seen her eyes when the waitress put a second drink cup down in front of her, half way through the meal.  Amelia said “What is this?” and the waitress said “It’s a refill on your rootbeer float.”  Wow!

I’m really excited about 7.  I love her sponge of a brain and how clever & creative it is.

she scores!

We finally went to this event.  It was really cool.  Kids get to climb all over a huge number and variety of trucks, helicopters, rescue vehicles, earth movers, buses, etc.

Amelia in a cherry picker bucket

Daphne is climbing down from the 2nd floor of a fire house.  There is fake smoke upstairs that billows out the window when the kids open it to climb out to the balcony.  Pretty neat.

We went to Carter Mountain apple orchard with her kindergarten class.  We had apple cider, apple donut, and apple school!

Daphne is 15 apples tall!

She really enjoyed the hayride…

And picking apples, of course.

I really enjoyed some time with her on a gorgeous day. ♥

Can you believe when we got back to her school, she wanted to stay and play with her friends instead of going home with me!?

The next day, we made apple pies!  Each girl made three small pies.

And really enjoyed eating one with vanilla ice cream!  (I think they ate about half…)

Amelia got a sewing machine and a whole bunch of supplies from Grannie, for her birthday.  We opened it a few days early, while we had some quiet weekend time.

Wow there was a lot in the basket.  Amelia has all the supplies she will need for a long time.

This is the sewing machine I learned on when I was 5.    It’s a hand operated chain stitch machine.

We got the machine threaded, and she sewed one line up and back on a scrap from her pillowcase.  She loved the “backing-up” button on my machine, that is used to finish off the end of a seam. This little machine doesn’t go backwards, so she made a U turn, and then came back up the length of fabric.  We had to imrovise a new spindle for the thread spool, as the one in the machine broke during shipping.  We used a wooden grill skewer, trimmed.  A tiny pony tail holder was wrapped around it, just under the spool, so the stick doesn’t fall too far into the machine, and prevent the mechanical parts from working.

Grannie sent each girl a 9-patch quilt block.  Daphne”s is red, Amelia’s is blue.  We laid it out to show Daphne how each piece fit to make the pattern.

She sewed one seam of her block!  She really enjoyed it, and it was easy for her, too.

We have materials waiting to make a purple skirt!

These are terrible quality because we don’t have a scanner.  But, here’s me using that machine a loooooong time ago.