Taking the Scenic Route

Zach went back to work. YAY! The unemployment was over and we had to adjust to regular life again. He is now an application engineer for a balloon company. The best part of the job is that it is really close to us, which allows him to come home for lunch and, since it is across the street from where the kids get ST and Zora has preschool, he is able to drop her off when she has school so that Zane and I can eek out a little more time for school without Zora underfoot.

The other big surprise was the sheer volume of stuff sent to us for Zane’s school. He is enrolled with Lawrence Virtual School (public school district in Lawrence, KS) and doing the K-12 curriculum. I was expecting a shipment of a few textbooks, but was shocked when I got several big boxes including everything from art supplies (paints, brushes, modeling clay), science stuff (pulleys, levers, graduated cylinder, a rock collection that shows the hardness scale, magnifying glass, thermometers), math manipulatives (gram cubes and bars in a different color than ones we own, wooden 3D shapes, a balance scale exactly like we have so both kids can do their own thing with a scale, and some connecting unicubes), and maps, inflatable globe, and books. LOTS of books. Science books, art books, and every language arts book we will need during the semester. It was like Christmas. It took us a while to even open everything. We don’t have to return any of it.

A few days later I went to a meeting and picked up the laptop and nice case that we get to keep as long as he is enrolled in the class.

Making the Salad Dressing for Supper

Sweetness

Some Art by Zora

When he plays this music, he usually turns it on, then runs to his mini-trampoline and jumps on it the duration of the song, often singing along.

It all started with this:

Then evolved to these:
with various video games spliced together, and some Japanese “sing a long” highlighting.

and now with an orchestra

and another variation that includes some live action mixed with a portion of the above song

and, finally, he is starting to stretch out. He loves the part with the two characters dancing where it sounds like they are saying “dan-joe” (especially the second set of dancers). For the uninitiated, these are all anime versions of Nintendo characters.

I am not a huge fan of Japanese Music, but I have a feeling I am going to be hearing a lot of it in my lifetime.

The kids wanted Dad to help them make paper planes. They started with normal, simple planes, played for a long time, but by the end of it the kids had lost interest and Zach was making things like this:

Terrible picture, but I loved watching them. Zora has on a swim cap for no reason that we could tell. lol.

Zora’s fascination with Dragonflys lead to Zach finding some to photograph. I just love this shot.

Given pieces of chalk and a sunny afternoon, this is what my nerds do to “play”
First, Zach explains the concepts

Then Zane plays with them

(very basic algebra concepts for those who are not math nerds)