Free Museum Day!

Do you know about Museum Day 2009, when you can get free admission to museums just by printing off an admission ticket from the Smithsonian magazine's websitesite, right here? No, not just the Smithsonian museums- yeah, I know those are always free. If I lived in the DC kind of Washington we'd be there all the time. But we don't. We live in the other kind of Washington. Where Seattle is. Hey! Speaking of Seattle, the Experience Music Project is there, and guess what? They're participating in Museum Day! Uh, not that I'm going with the little ones, but it's a perfect kind of big kid and Papa rock and roll thing to do. For free, instead of the usual $15 for each ticket. Check it out- even if the EMP isn't your thing, there's lots of other Museums around the US participating.

I'm Just Sayin'

In honor of the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, which is happening this week, a little unspiration from the hopeless, demotivatating folks at despair, inc. But I'm warning you now- you shouldn't be sitting in your nicest chair, 'cause you're gonna pee your pants laughing. I'm just sayin'.

Letterboxing (In Less Than 20 Steps)

We just recently learned about letterboxing, and have been waiting for an opportunity to try it out. Today, with a suddenly empty afternoon ahead of us and nappable time abandoned, we decided to give it a go. Here's how it went:
1) Check this map for locations near us and the clues.
2) Drive to the craft store to find the cutest tiny notebooks, one for each boy.
3) Realize I've forgotten the paper with the clues written carefully down.
4) Drive home, get the clues.
5) Drive to a particular park-like area on the other side of town. In rush hour.
6) Realize I've forgotten the bag with our stamps and ink at home.
7) Decide not to go back for it.
8) Try to talk the kids into a trip to Dairy Queen instead.
9) Get denied. In no uncertain terms. We have a mission, Mom. Jeesh.
10) Follow the clues, one by one, til we come to the spot where the box is hidden. Guarded by an army, navy, and air force of vicious blood thirsty mosquitoes.
11) Fight through like the men that we are. Find the box.
12) Run, screaming, like the children that we are, with the box, halfway across the park-like place trying to get away from the swarms of mosquitoes covering our bodies. Biting us through our clothing.
13) Give up. Stop. Drop to the wet grass and dump everything out. Quickly stamp our books with the hidden stamp and the hidden book (with our thumbs, since we haven't got our stamps, and they are at least a personal reflection of who we are, right?). Dump everything back into the box, swatting mosquitoes all the while.
14) Send the 9 year old soldier back to the front lines, so that he can hide the box back in it's exact same location.
15) RUN! to the car, pile in as quickly as possible.

16)Realize as we're driving home that there are no less than 10 mosquitoes in the car anyway. Biting our ankles as we go. Why do they love ankles so?
17) Drive home.

18) Realize that in the flurry of the stamping and attcking you wrote the wrong date in the hidden book. DO NOT GO BACK TO FIX IT. Sorry, girl scout troop. I was only 4 days off.
19) Count mosquito bites. Give up after 20. On one kid.
Amazingly the baby seems to have only gotten one bite. The rest of us are covered in swollen itchy welts. In the 8 years I've lived here I've never once been bitten by a mosquito in town. Until this spring. They're awful. AWFUL! This isn't Alaska after all. It's supposed to be one of the perks of living in the desert, for crying out loud.

Letterboxing, though, seems to be super fun. We're excited to go again, to find all the hidden little places around here, and to hide our own boxes. It's like a scavenger hunt. Like geo-caching for kids. No GPS required. Though we do want a GPS unit, and to try geo-caching too. If, you know, you have a unit you want to give to a poor deserving family. So we can take it far, far away from where the mosquitoes live.

Radio Wonderground

Is our favorite! We used to listen to Northwest Public Radio ALL the time (like, turn the radio on at 7 am and don't turn it off until bedtime), but for some reason lately our reception isn't good on the kitchen radio, which is where I always listen to the news- out of the kids' ears and attentions. Besides, only having classical music all day would be lovely, if they played a bigger, more diverse selection of classical music. I mean, really, is there a reason to hear "Pomp and Circumstance" any time other than graduation season? Really.
So now we listen to Wonderground Radio, streamed through the computer, when we need to change it up. This station plays a mix of "kid" music and grown-up music, folk and rock, indie, jazz, blues, but it's all appropriate for children and not so saccharine sweet or "cute" that the grown ups can't take it with wanting shred stuffed animals with their teeth. If you know what I mean. And best of all, in the evenings, they play wind down music, perfect for background sound for baths and quiet play, evening chores and teeth brushing.
Check it out!

(Not My) Family Photos

In honor of my recently deceased camera: so many awkward family photos I can't take right now. We're enjoying other families and their photographed moments. Take a peek- you won't be able to stop looking, I bet....

Vimeo

Vimeo is my newest time-waster. I love it! It's like you-tube but cooler, and all the videos are user created. They're artsy and funky and fun. Way too fun. Check this out- my two favorite playthings at once- vimeo and tiltshift! We've been waching it over and over.... it's kind of like schoolwork, right?

Fun Stuff~~Shadow Play

This is the cutest idea. The kind of thing I love to do, but rarely manage to ACTUALLY do. Besides my husband broke my camera this weekend- who knew you weren't supposed to WASH digital cameras to get little boy smears off the lens? Who knew? Anyway, enough about me- what's your shadow doing? Check it out!

Fun Stuff ~~ Tiltshift Maker

Tiltshift Maker is super cool!
This isn't the best example- I have a simple little camera and never take pictures of anything but my children, so I didn't have a lot to work with, but tiltshift changes the focus of your photos so that they kind of look like miniatures- check it out, their examples are cool, and, I'm excited to go tak pictures to try it out with.
Anyway, this is a photo my brother took, of some little town in Alaska-the focus of the original was the bay freezing up, but with tiltshift it becomes a little make-believe village. Well, look at their examples, and try your own photos. It's fun and its free! And besides, who doesn't need a new wa to waste time, and another reason to stay on the computer all night long. Really....
Here's the original- iced over bay, plain little village, buildings.

BBC Booklist

This is from http://findingbeautyinmosteveryday.blogspot.com/
Here is what you do:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize the books you LOVE.
3) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.

1 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations Charles Dickens
11 Little Women Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the d’Urbervilles Thomas Hardy
13 Catch-22 Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare William Shakespeare
15 Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia CS Lewis
34 Emma Jane Austen
35 Persuasion Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Louis de Bernières
39 Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh AA Milne
41 Animal Farm George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney, John Irving
45 The Woman in White Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies William Golding
50 Atonement Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi Yann Martel
52 Dune Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
62 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist Charles Dickens
72 Dracula Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory Iain Banks
94 Watership Down Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl
100 Les Misérables Victor Hugo

Only I don't know how to strikeout anything, so I made them tiny, the ones I can't stand. But still, even if I'm not capable of managing a blog in the style of others around me, I have read 67 out of those 100 books, which isn't that bad, I think! What about you?