And today's activity was...

...making sun prints! I remember doing this in grade school and thinking it was so much fun. So today we took advantage of all the sunny weather we've been having and made some sun prints of our own on the deck. I sent Kellen and Addie in search of small objects, and they came back with things like leaves, flowers, confetti, a key, a paperclip, a crayon, and a bead necklace. Then we got to work developing our very own prints of these objects. Here's how it worked:

Kellen places his leaf on the photosensitive paper and we covered it with Plexiglas. Then we found a nice sunny spot to leave it in for several minutes.


Once the paper turned white, we removed the objects, which revealed blue images on the paper.


Then we placed the paper in a water bath for 1 minute to "freeze" the images.


and voila! Kellen and Addie have made their own beautiful prints!

Color went down the drain

Ellary has a hold on Kellen

I'm having fun playing with my new camera. Addie's getting tired of seeing it, but Kellen's happy to stop whatever he's doing and pose whenever he sees me with the camera. Even bath time was fair game for my new toy.

Fun perspective messing with focus

OH SNAP! It's my birthday!

Today I am officially 30. I don't feel much different than I did yesterday, aside from being very hot and tired after hauling around 3 little ones around the NC Museum of Life and Sciences to try out my new birthday present! No more quick snapshots with the point and click for me! My absolute favorite thing to do is take pictures of the things we do with our kids, and now I can REALLY take pictures. I have a lot to learn about the camera, and since I have very little free time it will definitely take me a while, but I had fun taking pictures on the automatic setting this afternoon. I did manage to do some playing around with the manual zoom and focus, so I felt a little bit professional. :)

Here's a few pictures from the museum that I thought turned out well for a first try!

Something new to look at...

Ellary noticed her toes for the first time last night. Pretty funny!

Can You Dig It?

This morning we met friends at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. The kids played a while in the Discovery Room, and Addie was particularly excited about digging through the box of dirt and finding earthworms. The girl loves creepy crawly things! Of course we had to visit the Terror of the South room to see the Arcanthosaurus and the dinosaur with the "giant boo boo." Addie love to see the boo boo and every time we visit the exhibit she asks when he's going to get a giant band aid!

When we got home, I had a fossil digging activity for the kids. Kellen and Addie each got to be paleontologists and carefully dig out fossils of their own. Addie unearthed a stegosaurus and Kellen found a triceratops.

Addie hard at work unearthing her dinosaur fossil

Kellen's taking a closer look, trying to figure out what he's found

Kellen shows off his amazing discovery - the never before seen Kellasuarus!

Trendy Baby

We're a Crocs family - we all wear them, mostly because they are so comfortable and the kids can put them on by themselves. Even Ellary has a tiny little pair (I mean really, who wouldn't want their infant to have comfortable shoes?). So today at the store we ran across some Jibbitz, the little charms kids decorate their Crocs with. Addie really wanted some butterflies for her green Crocs, so we said that would be ok. I put them on her shoes in the car, and after 1 minute she was crying, saying she didn't like them and that I needed to take them off (very typical Addie). She said she wanted them on my shoes, so I put two butterflies on my own shoes and two on the baby's shoes! Ellary is thrilled to be such a trendy little baby!

Ellary's "crocs" and new bling

Pleased with herself that she got such trendy hand-me-downs!

Career Planning

This morning Addie asked about the kinds of work we do. I told her Mommy used to do library work before Kellen, Addie & Ellary were born, and now she does Mommy work. Daddy does Blue Cross work. I asked her what kind of work she is going to do when she grows up. She thought for a few seconds and replied, "fireworks!"