Remember that tile I ordered for my fireplace during the first week of January 2012 that kept slipping the delivery date each month and was supposed to be in on April 20?
It is a really pretty, 1"x1" glass tile. Beautifully glossy, they look like square flat jolly ranchers.
As you may be aware, I did the demo work to tear out the old bland 12"x12" ceramic tile myself in late 2011.
Yeah, so my glass tile still isn't here. But May 29 is the new target to miss! woohoo!
Tonight I was excitedly planning to teach my kids to follow Lego schematics and we would have geeky family fun while I stealthily taught them an important lesson for their adult lives as Ikea customers. No, not the Get A Cart At The Entrance Or You Can't Find One Until You Get Past All The Furniture lesson. I wanted them to learn to break down a complex set of instructions into managable parts that they can accomplish easily if they don't let themselves get overwhelmed with the chaos of 166 pieces of plastic on the carpet. Oh, and do all of this with no written instruction besides sequential numbering of the pictoral instructions. I figured if I did this well, they would grow up and have no trouble assembling BESTÅ, and if I did really well my geek heart would burst with pride because they would choose to go into some geeky field of study like engineering or astronomy.
Yeah. I think they've pretty much got this nailed already.
She loves the Alien Head Hat too.
Allyson is half done building her 166 piece Alien Invasion craft and I haven't helped her at all. Christopher is 2 instruction pictograms from done with his Human Resistance vehicle to go with the Alien Vespa (108 pieces total in his kit). I've helped him not because he needed it but because he likes doing things with his mommy and I wanted to play too.
My kids have never shown any interest in Legos to me, either for themselves or as gifts for friends birthdays. I had no idea that they have a bunch of Lego kits at their dad's house that they love playing with. Dogs? Yes. Nintendo DS's? Yes. Legos? No idea.
As I was tucking them into bed Allyson told me she never mentioned Legos to me because she didn't think I liked them, and thought I might think she was weird for being a girl that likes Legos. The implication was clear that Legos are for boys. Of course I told her Legos are awesome and when I was growing up there were no "girl" legos or "boy" Legos. They were just Legos, and everyone played with them. Just like we all played with them tonight.
We are all so excited to discover this shared love. I see new toys on the near horizon! (Maybe I'll finally get that castle, with the catapult!!)
I recently read this great blog post by a mother about her 7 year old daughter's fantastic experience building a super cool space alien lego kit. It is absolutely worth reading, even if you aren't any of the following:
Reading it got me thinking about was the fact that legos were gender neutral when I was growing up. At least, I thought they were. I just knew they were awesome and I really wanted (but never got) the castle set. I wanted to play pretend Robin Hood and Camelot and King Henry and have a haunted castle at Halloween. I wanted lego knights on lego horses to fight lego dragons (and occasionally lose). I wanted to lock prisoners* in the oubliette and nowhere in any of these imaginings were there any princesses.
no, these aren't Duplos.
*the intended prisoners were my younger sibling's Fisher Price Little People (<--read this, very funny), who back then were actually little and not the size of a small apple. In hindsight this might have been rather genocidal of the Little People race and I can only apologize for my insensitivity and be thankful I didn't get the castle lego set I coveted for so many years as that surely would have led to decades of therapy later.
Anyway, I have now realized that my kids have no legos at my house, and the experience of following a schematic to build something complex is a really great gender-neutral learning experience. Plus, did you read about the Alien Head Hats in that blogpost? That right there is reason enough to buy a set. I'm gonna get my kids some legos this week and we are going to learn to build stuff and then play with them. And while current day lego castles are even more awesome than the one I wanted growing up (they come with a catapult now and you can get a medieval village to lay siege to!) I'm going to have them pick out a kit with a space theme leading into our upcoming trip planned for the Houston Space Center, they are pretty excited about it (and I don't blame them, I went in May and LOVED IT, it was SO TOTALLY AMAZING!)
PurposeFairy is back with another great post about happiness. I've blogged about a PurposeFairy post before - some very good stuff can be found there.
The new post is 15 Powerful Things that Happy People Do Differently. If you are choosing to seek happiness and joy in your everyday life, this is another good list to familiarize yourself with and reflect on from time to time. Are you putting into practice the things you need to do to be happy?
Remember, happy isn't always easy. But it is always worth it.
Between May and October, I walk to the Redmond Farmers Market each Saturday and spend the morning wandering about the vendor booths and then Redmond Town Center a bit (unless it is raining, in which case I'm a sissy and drive over, quickly get what I need, and get back home before I melt). The kids love to go on the weekends they are at my house too - I let them pick out flowers for the house and last week they discovered that Kettle Corn is superior to regular popcorn. They love the market even more when it is berry season, last year the two of them plowed through 4 pints of berries before we were done shopping.
Last weekend for Mother's Day we went and the kids picked out fancy tulips and daffodils, and I picked up fresh eggs, starts of lemon thyme and rosemary for my planter garden (to be built this summer) and finally treated myself to some pretty swarovski crystal jewelry from Bright Hauser after two years of admiring her work each weekend.
First Endorsement: The Gem Garden
Bright is the designer behind The Gem Garden, a Ballard based jewelry studio. In addition to making beautiful jewelry she is super nice and engaging. We had a blast chatting while she made a minor modification to the necklace I was buying to accomodate my clasp preference (which she did at no charge). I've been wearing the pieces I bought for a week now, and absolutely love them.
Second endorsement: Sky Valley Farm
Last weekend's fresh chicken eggs were so good, I went back for more this weekend. That is when I discovered that Sky Valley Farm also offers pork sausage. So I picked up a pound of breakfast links, hoping they would be good. I was not disappointed. In addition to being incredibly tasty, they were far less greasy than the sausage you typically get at the store or from a restaurant. This made cooking them a little tricky, I didn't anticipate that they wouldn't deep fry themselves and that a light misting of olive oil in the pan would be beneficial. Still, they turned out great and I know the kids are going to love them. Sky Valley can expect me back for more eggs and sausage every weekend. Sorry I don't have any good photos of today's breakfast, I ate it all before I thought of taking photographs. :)
This week's flowers: Peonies. They smell so wonderful... And yes, the vase is from the Farmer's Market too. Ali's Crafts.
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