Easter Eggs.

 For a rainy day project, I picked up some eggs and dye to make our own Easter Eggs. We have had plenty of rain lately so yesterday we boiled our eggs and got to it. Christian had a lot of fun putting the eggs in and making up different color combos. They actually came out pretty awesome! AND we didn't get dye everywhere. Even better!

Soccer.

Christian has really enjoyed watching Daddy play soccer over the last few months; so much so that we signed him up for a soccer skills class to get him started. Our biggest obstacle is to teach him not to touch the ball with his hands. He'll get there.

Last week was his first class. He seemed to really enjoy himself until the end. The class is at a gymnastics center so they utilize some of the gym equipment for his soccer class. One of them is the foam pit with the trampoline runway. Everyone had to dribble the ball down and them jump in the pit. Christian came to a complete standstill and refused to jump in. When I asked him about it after class, he said he didn't want to jump into the FIRE pit. "buddy! there's no FIRE! It's just soft!" "I don't want to go in the fire pit mommy." Today was his second class and he did much better handling the ball without stopping it with his hands and even jumped into the fire pit!!

I tried to take pictures but the parents sit out in the lobby behind windows so they came out blurry...but you can get the point.

One thing that I discovered today when getting Christian ready for class is that he HAD to wear his yellow soccer shirt. It probably has to do with the fact that Rich's goalie shirt is yellow and he wears it for every game. Just like Daddy :)

Photoshoot at the park.

Rich and I are constantly trying to get nice photos of Christian. As soon as the camera comes out he starts grimacing or running away. It was such a nice day out last week that I brought the camera hoping to get at least a couple good pictures. Bribery was involved to get the smiles and there are a bunch of pics of him hiding in the tunnel to get away from me and peering through the peekhole. Here are some of the good ones...

Blue Sky Power Outage!!!!

We got a big surprise last week. Because of all the rain and the tree damage around here, there were some power outages all over but more importantly at Rich's office. We got a mini-vacation with beautiful weather. On Tuesday nights, Rich always has soccer so we stuck around the house for the most part but we got out for lunch at the Irish Pub down the street. Apparently that is the day to go for St. Patty's day if you don't want to be there for the crazy festivities. Pretty much everyone in there was wearing their green; there was a big table of ladies and gents from a senior center or something wearing green beads and shamrocks.

On Wednesday we took Christian to Dinosaur State Park in  Rocky Hill CT.  We packed a picnic and ate when we got there. The museum was very cool! The park was created because they discovered this HUGE piece of ledge with HUNDREDS of dinosaur tracks on them. There were lots of things to check out about how the rocks create fossils and tracks and there was one skeleton replica and a full scale model of the kind of dinosaur that was most predominant in the area, the Eubrontes. Christian got a little freaked out in the room with the big dinosaur; there was a recording playing with the sound of an approaching dinosaurs footsteps and roaring. He was ready to get out of there after a few minutes. We took a nice walk afterward on their nature trails. We saw ducks, frogs and even a snake. I took off running while Rich and Christian took pictures. We also hit the gift shop and the boys got t-shirts and Christian got very cool models of a T-rex and a Triceratops. Rich figured we had to get the Triceratops so that the T-Rex had something to eat. So far that forward thinking has paid off!

Here are some pictures from our picnic and the museum. The first few were from a silly photoshoot. Christian looked like he was miserable at an Olan Mills shoot; so Rich and I had some fun. I think Rich's is the best!

Steppingstones.

 Back on the weekend of the monsoon, we decided to use a library pass and go to a museum. They had the pass for Steppingstones Childrens Museum available so I grabbed it. Then on Saturday morning, when I was looking up the address for the GPS, i saw that it was their 10th Anniversary so admission was free! So this means it was a somewhat wasted effort in getting the pass AND it would be crazy busy. Well, we got there and it was crazy busy but Christian had a lot of fun in the Waterscapes room; we could barely get him out of there. It was good we had two shirts on  him; he got his longsleeves SOAKED and his jeans were wet from the bottom of the smock down to his feet.  The last few pics show him at the steam table. Someone had brought a plastic ear of corn in from another room and he placed it in the center of the table so that he could steam cook it. He would get visibly aggravated when other kids would move the corn. It is still all about cooking with Christian.

Christian the Photog.

 

On Saturday after breakfast,  Christian said "I want to go to the Bronx Zoo". We thought it was a good idea and decided to do it on Sunday so we could get an earlier start. On Sunday morning, Christian told us that he wanted to take his own pictures at the zoo. So, armed with our old digital camera for Christian plus our own, we headed out. Christian took some great pictures; he was very serious about it. At one point, we were watching the gorillas and we ended up being seperated from him as he was up at the front and a crowd of people wanted to get close too. He kept right on going and shooting a few more pics before we pulled him away. Here is a sampling of his first day out with the camera...

Christian's first snowman!

So we FINALLY got barely enough snow for Rich and Christian to build a snowman. I guess we are lucky to have not gotten a boatload of snow like some of our friends but our three year old has been seriously disappointed. The two guys went out and armed with shovels, moved enough snow around to make a snowman that christian still calls "too small".