Depression Meal

Gideon is studying the American Great Depression in History class right now.  One of his assignments was to purchase the ingredients and prepare a meal for our entire family with a budget of $6.  This is what he came up with:

Not bad.  With the state of the economy these days, deadlines looming and childish congressmen refusing to compromise...we might need these Depression lessons soon!

International Friends

A package arrived in the mail today from the exchange student who stayed with us last Summer.
It was full of Valentines goodies and covered in brightly colored stamps.  That's a lot of postage!

This package arriving today, of all days, felt like a Good Omen of sorts as I decided today to pursue a job opportunity I was offered several months ago.  The job involves finding families to host exchange students from around the world.  I am excited about it and looking forward to making many new international friends!

Dinosaurs and Butterflies

     Several months ago Gavin discovered the movie "Jurassic Park" and dinosaurs immediately became his favorite thing in life.  Since then he has been begging me to take him downtown to see the dinosaur bones at the Natural History Museum.  Our schedule is generally pretty full and we had to plan a few weeks out to find an available day, but we put it on the calendar and he's been anxiously counting down the days.  Yesterday the big day finally arrived!
     We took the train downtown.  I decided I didn't want to deal with midweek parking and managed to overcome my train insecurities.  I figure maybe if I take the kids on the train more often it won't be as nerve wracking for them as it is for me.  The truth is that the reality is never as bad as my fantasies--the schedules and fares are actually pretty easy to understand and my children have never once wandered off and fallen onto the tracks.  Maybe someday I'll remember to select forward facing seats and discover that my motion sickness isn't so bad either.
     In any event, the boys loved the train experience.

 The train was incredibly convenient and deposited us right on the Mall.  Which necessitated a couple obligatory Mall Photos.  Someday I would love to compile all the pics of my kids in these iconic spaces all in one place.

It turns out that Tuesday mornings in February are the very best of all times to visit the Smithsonian Museums.  The usually madly overcrowded Natural History Museum was practically vacant.  The museum itself has free admission every day, but on Tuesdays they also offer free admission to their butterfly habitat, which is a remarkable experience.

Jasper was quite terrified of the butterflies, but Gavin was in Heaven.  To be fair, some of those butterflies are huge and I found myself ducking and cringing as they dive bombed me.  Of course, they were only interested in landing on Jazz and me, not Gavin.

We also visited the mummies, the mammals, the ocean exhibits, the Hope Diamond and other gems and rocks and, of course, the DINOSAURS.  Gavin was disappointed with the fact that they don't have a Velociraptor  but pleased with the presence of real live Scientists.

All in all it was a fabulously successful trip.  The boys were beautifully behaved, the travel went smoothly and we made it back in plenty of time to get the Big Kids from school.  I have decided to schedule similar outings for the first Tuesday of every month.  Looking forward to many more adventures!