brickworld 2009

for father's day we drove half an hour south to check out brickworld 2009, the annual lego convention. absolutely stunning!! i was expecting cool things - we'd heard about it from the guy who designed a massive 10,000-piece environment at the indianopolis children's museum - but it really was beyond words. here is the link to my photo album; i'm highlighting a few here, but took over 85 pics, and would have taken more had my camera not run out of batteries!

highlights include:

- a robotic car that you activated with a magnetic "key" labeled with the candy of your choice; these candies were in 1 of 4 color-coded areas, and the car would sense where it was and trigger a conveyor belt to release the candy, then it would go to another area and dump the candy out into a bowl where the kid could grab it.
- a series of conveyor belts / motorized ladders / pistons / wheels / gears moving a collection of small lego-size soccer balls along
- huge displays with scenes from indiana jones and star wars
- smaller displays featuring lord of the rings and jurassic park
- 10foot high to-scale renditions of the sears tower, the spire, and various other skyscrapers
(right next to their 1-2 foot also to-scale renditions)
- pirates taking over miami beach - note the fleeing sunbathers. also featured a starbucks boat in the midst of all the pirate rowboats.
- lego "paintings"

this one's for you, rosemary!

definitely an annual must-see!

needlefelting

seattle was great! unfortunately i dropped the camera just after i took a picture of the happy couple, so the lens won't retract and i'm unable to retrieve the pictures at the moment. i have a cardreader at home that will hopefully be able to do it later.

today is our last day in charlottesville. boo will be sad to leave - grandma and daddy have built such cool toys over the last few weeks. a spectactular wooden treehouse, a pirate ship, and many fischer-tek construction vehicles, among others.

tried needlefelting for the first time this morning. my MIL bought us little pumpkin kits. so cute! i will have to post pics when i get to a working camera. the idea is that you take wool in its most elementary form, called roving, put it in the shape you want and blend it with other colored roving for the colors you want, then poke a needle into it to make the fibers knead together and hold. it's a lot of wrist movement with just one needle, so it's kinda slow going. it's fun but not sure i'm loving it yet.

travelling

haven't blogged much because we've been travelling - last week we went to the outer banks, where DH + his siblings + his dad caught almost 200 pounds of tuna! boo, his grandmother, and i hung out on the beach, where he happily scooped and dumped away the hours. pictures to follow.

now i'm taking a quick trip to seattle for a girl's weekend of sorts - flew up last night for a wedding tonight - and am catching up with old friends. thought i was going to totally love a break away from boo, but i felt vaguely nauseous and apathetic all yesterday - which i'm attributing to a subconscious dread of being away from my little one. either that or it was the tuna.

minneapolis

where else can you find a bookstore with roosters and ferrets roaming free, an aquarium in the bathroom mirror, and a chinchilla? while DH was interviewing for a virtual job (a work-from-home-at-night job, but the headquarters was in MN), boo and i checked out the Wild Rumpus, an awesome kid's bookstore with all sorts of creatures. he had a great time chasing the crowing rooster. we also checked out the nearby lake.

the point of this little excursion to the linden hills neighborhood was not to check out a fabulous bookstore, toy store, or lake, but to check out a couple of yarn stores. i found a fabulous yarn to make a table runner out of: noro aurora. the beautiful intense colors of noro with a little extra shine that makes it great for a gift. i'm using the multidirectional scarf pattern, which is so much fun i'm going to make a normal scarf out of some different yarn when i'm done with this. i've got to knit fast, though - this wedding is in the beginning of october!

the next day we wandered a bit in the sculpture garden. i definitely want to go back there someday.







and, of course, the mall of america. the highlight for boo were the lego dinosaurs. how much more perfect does it get, he was probably thinking.

madison

back from minneapolis... the highlight of the trip were the stopovers in madison. not only is madison a much cooler town than ours, it also is the home to DH's cousins and their adorable 2 year old. here she is with her new present, our old cell phone. her mom tells me that she cradled it in her arms as she was falling asleep and the last thing she said was a sleepy "don't take my phone away ..."


her kitchen was a big hit with boo. here he is making a meal for her. a good precedent, i think.


also a hit was the toy camera. he knew how to advance the film somehow, even though i don't believe he's seen a non digital camera. a natural, i like to think. i'd been thinking of getting a camera and kitchen for his birthday, and this cements it.


we stayed overnight in a nearby hotel with a fun waterpark, which was enjoyed by all in the morning despite being a bit chilly. even with blue shuddering lips, boo wanted to go on the waterslide again and again.

schooner days

last week we rode a tall ship! it is perhaps the last social event for adam's group before they get taken over by the evil aurora conglomerate, so they rented the denis sullivan schooner, a real great lakes schooner that docks at milwaukee's discovery world. it was a perfect day for it ... except that the wind that let us go fast also made the boat a little tippy. my constitution was not built for boats, and i'll just leave it at that. here's a picture before i started getting a little green.
afterwards we dined at the coast restaurant. the appetizers were the best - they just kept coming with them during the cocktail hour, i think we must have sampled the whole menu. my favorite was a little endive leaf with a dot of goat cheese, walnut, fig, dried cranberry, and something else i can't recall at the moment. here's a picture of the art museum with the wings folded that i took on the sunset-lit walk back. there were a ton of wedding parties taking pictures.

jc's wedding pics

here are some pictures from my cousin's vancouver wedding ceremony i went to recently. my nephew was the ringbearer (there he is, walking in front of my cousin R, who is the groom's sister) and another cousin was the flower girl.

reception pics to follow. boo was wearing the cutest little blazer and bowtie - heirlooms worn originally by one of A's brothers! unfortunately, i don't have a great picture of him in the blazer, because it was so hot we took it off fairly soon. there are some pictures of him to follow with the reception. he had to exit the ceremony fairly precipitously with A, because as soon as everyone quieted down after the procession and the pastor started to say a few words, boo proclaimed in his loud 2 year old voice: "All done? All done? Clap hands now?"
i thought the bouquets were really unique and gorgeous. check out the bamboo in the bride's bouquet!

returning

just got back from seattle! more on that later. it's been a bit chaotic. piles of mail and stuff halfway unpacked, everywhere. been trying to get my last real workouts in before the tri this weekend. biked 12 miles yesterday followed by a 1.5ish mile run; today, i'm completely wiped out, i'm getting short of breath just going up the stairs. what happened? i tried to run about every other day in seattle, even ran around greenlake a few days ago (about 3 miles). hopefully it's just getting used to the heat. even though it's not that hot yet here.

speaking of getting used to the heat, dixie's been beat. it's not even that hot yet. on today's attempt at a run, she would seriously slow down and pull back on the leash at every shady spot. she even sat down once in the shade and didn't want to go on. i think she's probably feeling out of sorts - i'm thinking she has kennel cough, despite a recent vaccination. poor thing sounds like a foghorn.

till i have a chance to go through more pictures, here's a family picture taken at the windermere club on lake washington:

visiting friends

DC friends! here we are with my friend matt, who i know from a high school science camp and college. he has just started working for the state department's foreign service.

my friend cindy, who i know from another high school science camp, flew in with her family from chattanooga to hang out with us (among others). ella is a scant 2 months older than evan, and probably a full inch taller. the picture of the 2 of them is the moment right after evan has given her a kiss. her expression is priceless! :)

fala is the favorite

while i was attending my conference, DH, his parents, and boo went on a tour of the tidal basin. they went up to the top of the washington monument and walked to the FDR memorial. boo's favorite was Fala, FDR's dog.





















uncle graham joined us later in the week; here's a picture at the naval memorial.