Young Cosplayer

Lukas starting working on a Sauron costume today, which is a character from his favorite video game (Lord of the Rings franchise).

Pretty cool!

Purple Science!

Today's home-school science experiment involved a one week old red cabbage from Walmart.

I don't know many specifics, but it made a nice purple dye!

Sunday Figure Drawing

We had another Sunday Figure Drawing session at Gearbox today.

Katharine is getting good..

really, really good!

It's Raining Goals

After almost 18 hours of continuous rain, all of the soccer matches were cancelled today except for the one that Lukas's new team played on a turf field at the FC Dallas fields (the same field that Lennon trains on during the week).

The rain was steady, but nine goals were still scored in the game. Lukas and the Sharks came out on the losing end, but are there really any losers when you are a kid and get to splash around and play soccer in the rain?

Standing Up On the Job

Here is what I typically look like at work. 

The desk is adjustable, but I barely ever use it sitting down. I like to sit down when I draw at home, which works out because I don't really have a choice there..

Charmed

Iria and Keira love their charm bracelets.

More Fall Training (than usual)

Lukas is on two soccer teams this Fall. We signed him up for a Frisco team in order to give him the opportunity to meet some more kids who lived closer to the house.

His Plano team (Blitz United) is a bit more experienced, while his Frisco team (Sharks) is newer and more casual.

Luckily there is only one direct game conflict and one back to back game, the rest of the schedule sorted out perfectly.

Should be a busy season between the two boys! 

Fall Training

Lennon's soccer season has started up.

He currently does skill training with Nipper from 2:00 - 5:30 Monday through Thursday, and then with Coach Che and his team on Monday and Wednesday nights.

One game a week on Saturdays, and he might do some futsal this Fall as well.

And me, I just try to find some shade and get a little rest..

King of the Shrimp

Lukas cooked garlic shrimp today. 

The girls did not care for it (more about it being shrimp than anything about the recipe), so that meant more for us!

Daddy/Daughter Sunday

I owed the little girls some time, and with Iria, Katharine and the boys gone all day we got all of the time that we needed.

A "Daddy/Daughter Lunch" is usually at the California Pizza kitchen, followed by a trip to a store to spend some of the cash that the kids have been collecting. We went to Joanne fabrics where Kassidy purchased a coloring book and Keira bought a bunch of calico swatches and a few yards of fabric. She uses those to hand sew dolls, clothes for the dolls, and quilts for the dolls. I'll post some pictures once she gets started on that.

After that we watched an episode of PBS's "Little Women", which I am currently reading to Keira at night. We have caught up to where we are in the book, so we will need to have to wait a bit until the reading is done before watching the final episode.

The girls did some painting and had a little tea party, We finished the day off by taking the dog for a walk and going to the pool.

Fun daddy/daughter times :)

Here are some pics:

Saturday Swimming

Kassidy finished off her Saturday swim classes this morning,

She went fro being very tense with no swimming skills, to swimming freestyle and rolling over on her back. And she did the last session with no goggles.

She plans to continue classes in the Fall. 

The siblingwho was most behind in swimming might end up being the strongest swimmer in the end..

Chef Lukas

Lukas has been taking an interest in cooking, and prepared the Sunday lunch for us today.

Yum!

Science

Katharine taught her siblings one of her Chemistry lessons. I figured, as long as the experiments are easy to  understand, they might as well participate. The first lesson was easy. All they had to do was figure out if air had mass. Katharine did a great job guiding  them through the experiment/ lesson.

As part of their Prairie Primer Science assignment, the girls had to learn about how roots work and how water gets from the roots up into the trunk and branches. It was hard to suck up water through straws that are taped together. They started with one straw, then added on more. They managed to tape 7 straws together and didn't get much water. This was supposed to help illustrate/ demonstrate osmosis, though I could not help but look for a  video that would explain things better. Yes, I found one and they watched that, too. They did have a lot of fun with the straws though.

Baking

 This cake mold is a minimum of 50 years old. It is the only mold I remember my Oma using to make her Ruehrkuchen or Marmorkuchen. It was one of the things I asked to have of hers when she died.

 Marmorkuchen with chocolate glaze.

The boys are studying the medieval ages, so we made a castle cake. Why not eat the architecture if you can? Katharine said it reminded her of Winterfell from Game of Thrones.

I had and angel food cake mix sitting around at home, so I made that, too.

Oklahoma City Field Trip

 On I35 heading north to Oklahoma City

 St. Joseph's Old Cathedral, right across the street form the Oklahoma City Museum and Memorial. This cathedral is being restored.

We visited  the Oklahoma City Museum and Memorial. On the grounds outside is the memorial, which are two identical walls, a reflecting pool and a field of chairs. The wall above has the inscription 9:01, the time before the bombing on April 19th, 1995, the opposite wall has 9:03 inscribed in it, the time right after the bombing. The memorial stands on what used to be part of 5th Street, which was decided to be turned into the memorial site. 

Here the kids are sitting in the shade of the Survivor Tree, an American Elm that is part of the memorial and has it's own special history. It was planted in 1920 in a front yard in the area. The yard was eventually turned into a parking lot with this tree being the sole tree standing in that parking lot. The tree miraculously survived the 40,000 pound blast. It was transplanted to the memorial site where it now grows and gives shade and quiet place for reflection. You can see and feel the burn marks on the branches and the trunk of this tree. It is a true miracle of nature and a truly beautiful tree.

This is the former record building where the museum is housed. You can see the Survivor Tree.

This is the view from the first floor of the museum over the memorial. Opposite is the field of chairs. This is where the Alfred P Murrah building used to be. It is the site of the bombing. There are a total of 168 chairs, each honoring a victim that died. 19 of these chairs are small, symbolizing the 19 children that died. The building housed a childcare center.

The kids had  the choice between visiting the capitol building or this museum. They all chose to visit this museum and memorial. They took everything in, thought about it, felt the pain and fear, tried to understand why anyone would do such a  thing, learned about domestic terrorism, but also learned how much goodness there is in us, despite the bad and ugly. 

 After our visit to the museum and memorial we walked to a nice restaurant just a few blocks away. We walked by this street. Seems like we cannot escape dance.

 One of the reasons we went on this field trip was to look at Greek inspired buildings as part of Katharine's civic's lesson. In civics, she is going back to the old Greeks this year. She will also study Greek literature in language arts, and 10th grade Math is all about geometry, so she has been studying Pythagoras.  As most capitol buildings are inspired by Greek architecture, I decided to go to OKC. Austin is a much longer drive. Like I said before, we ended up not visiting the capitol building, which didn't matter, because walking through the city we found  many buildings, federal and other, that had Greek architectural elements like this church.

Here is the main entrance to the county building with a quote by Thomas Jefferson. We found quotes of  Washington, Adams, Lincoln and Hamilton around the sides of the building.

Our next stop on our walk through central Oklahoma City were the Myriad Gardens:

 They found the one fan in the building to cool off.

 Frangipani blossoms. They are used in perfumes and to make leis in Hawaii.

I almost forgot to take a picture of myself with the kids. 

The flower below is a Beehive Ginger. It looks like it is made out of wax. I have never seen anything like it.

 Devon Tower

We had planned to go the museum of art and a homestead as well, but unfortunately the homestead closed early and we were honestly tired and sweaty and happy to get home early and beat rush hour traffic. We all agreed that we had a great day!

On our way home.