Yesterday was the last day of school here. Always a sad day for me. This year however, I was distracted from my self-pity-fest by the fact that I was driving my children home on the last day of school…in a snow storm! About four inches so far. More on the way today.
On Tuesday we were sweltering in a record-setting 95 degree heat (35 Celsius). Yesterday it was 35 degrees (1.7 Celsius). A 60 degree drop in two days. Impressive!
My son’s birthday party is today. His real birthday is in about 2 weeks, but this year we are having his party early before people depart on their summer adventures. I guess we won’t be picnicking in the back yard as planned. Will the party be snowed out or will we be having snowball fights?
I told my little boy to take a good look out the window because this might be the only snowy birthday party he has in his life!
Green was the theme for this week’s Unplugged Project. When I thought of green, I was planning on being clever and doing a “green” (ie. recycled) project, instead of one involving the color green. I had a plan…but I won’t divulge it, we’ll just do it another week.
The weather was so lovely today that the children wanted to take a “kids’ walk” (a short walk that I let them do by themselves down our quiet road and back home on the golf course cart path - total time en route: about 5 minutes). Rather than keep them inside for a project on a day like today, instead I suggested they bring along the camera and take pictures of everything they saw on their walk that was green.
Kids love cameras and digital cameras are perfect for kids. Children armed with cameras take lots of pictures and most don’t come out too well, but there are often a few great ones in amongst the blur. Even if you buy an inexpensive disposable camera, why pay for processing a bunch of fuzzy photos? Especially when very simple digital cameras are so inexpensive nowadays.
If you do buy your children a camera, I have one word of advice (learned from experience): buy one with a rechargeable battery. They will take LOTS of pictures, forget to turn it off, etc. Most cheap kids’ cameras have regular old batteries that will last about half an hour under such conditions. This could either turn into a very expensive proposition, or you’ll never want to let your kids use their camera because of the cost of batteries! So - spend a tiny bit more for the camera and get one with a long-lasting, rechargeable battery they can actually use.
End of digression.
Here are the best results of their green scavenger hunt (7 out of 25 photos a success - see what I mean about the value of a digital camera for kids?). Because I realize that my kids’ photos of pine needles may not be quite as fascinating to the general public as my children might like to believe, these 7 pictures are in slide show format that you can choose to view or not. The point is, that a Photo Scavenger Hunt of any kind, can be great fun for children, especially outside on a lovely day!
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If you took part in this week’s Unplugged Project then please put your link in Mr. Linky (plus comment in case we lose Mr. Linky for some reason) .
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Next week’s Unplugged Project theme will be:
Newspaper
I hope to see you all next Monday! What can you do with the theme Newspaper?
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Most people don’t associate Arizona with snow, but here in Arizona’s mountains, we have “real winters.” Yesterday we got our promised snow (about 6 inches with a chance for more today), and here it is!
(I took these photos this morning in our yard)
…a 60% chance this weekend. Hooray!
Last night our rain finally turned to snow and we awoke to about half an inch of dry, grainy snow. The children were ecstatic and my 5 year-old son wanted to immediately go out and build snow tunnels. Well, half an inch is not quite enough snow for that, unless you are an ant…but the kids did have fun.
I was relieved to see it turn to snow since this is what the playroom looked like yesterday:
Hooray! I was even able to take some drops rippling water “art shots.” The photo below represents the infinite connectedness of all beings and the earth as symbolized in the ripples of a drop of water from my playroom ceiling. I call it- Life:
Life
Oh well, if you can’t laugh, you have to cry, right? I have had this leak before, and we have had many roofers and contractors over to diagnose and attempt to fix it without success. It only happens about once or twice a year when the rain hits the house at a certain angle. I think this time we finally figured it out though, since even the upstairs bedroom carpet was soaked near one of the bedroom windows. That window must be the culprit. It looks like we are in for a new window.
Today it is sunny and I am cleaning up this mess. While the kids and I work on the playroom, we’ll take the opportunity (I hope) to weed out some toys to donate.
Thank you all for your concerned comments regarding my leak. I just hope that we actually can fix it this time, otherwise perhaps we’ll just have to buy an ark.
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