This has been busy and rather draining week. I drove down to Orem for a puppet show for a company party that started at about 10:30 pm. It was fun, of course--when isn't it?-- but needless to say, I got home late. There have been several other late nights this week and I am feeling half dead. I should warn you, I could fall asleep at any minute. When you start exercising at around 5 am five to six days a week, late nights are tough. Yesterday I participated in the Utah Puppetry Guild workshops...I (well, mostly Ollie) participated in teaching a class on puppetry technique, along with Jon and Caitlin. I also sat in on a class or two on puppet construction. The guest performer this year was "The Stringman," an amazing marionette specialist who has worked on various films and TV programs (Beetlejuice, The Land of the Lost, and many others.) This man can make marionettes do things you wouldn't believe without seeing them...WOW!
Kelly and the kids came to watch the performances in the afternoons...all the kids enjoyed it, and Xander particularly cackled with glee at the classic "Punch and Judy" show. In addition to Maxed Out Puppetry's contribution "Stupid Puppet Tricks," Jon performed some mime...featuring a magnetized face. If you haven't seen it, you should.
In other news, we zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz........
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Easter morning
On this zoo visit, we saw one of my old friends—the peacock who maintains a territory near the Education office. He was prancing proudly, as usual, his tail feathers held high. After he decided to close up shop, I made sure he couldn’t see my mouth and then made a peacock call. He immediately called back and began to display again. (I had found, while working at the zoo, that the peacocks would mistake me for a peacock as long as they heard me, without seeing me.) My success prompted a small gathering of onlookers, many of whom tried to duplicate my calls. The peacock was not duped, so as we walked away, I gave one more call to set him off once more, for their benefit.
Isaac is doing much better, and has even felt up to practicing his sword fighting. In fact the other day I looked out the window and he was instructing Gwen on a few points of sword play. After that he would hide behind a pole and then jump out pretending to be the troll in the game. He would, of course, like the wonderful big brother he is, let her cream him thoroughly.
Xander came up with this theory for Easter:
“The Easter Bunny is a professional in behavior, and he just tells the parents if the kids have been good, and then they give them treats.” Hmmmm….
Laurelin is older all of a sudden again today. It’s amazing how they do that. Between one minute and the next they grow up just a little bit more. She looked older and so beautiful the way her hair was framing her face this morning…we definitely need to teach her some jiujitsu…
She is also having a great time practicing her dance for her upcoming recital.
Gwen continually cracks us up with the crazy things she says. I wrote just a couple down this week to share. One morning at breakfast Xander was pontificating on various types of creatures, and whether or not they can come on land. Gwen, thinking he was making a mistake said to him in a correctional tone, “Xander, things that live in water are AQUATIC!”
Then the other day she and Laurelin were having bananas (which Gwen says as “be-nanas”) for snacks. Laurelin’s had a mushy part to which Gwen exclaimed, “Nobody wants mushy be-nanas! Then how would you feel? YUCK-E! Yucky!!”
We all went to Jon’ parents house in Lehi to color eggs with Jon, Chastity and kids yesterday. His parents found a place with about an acre on it, with lots of out buildings and old barns to explore. Isaac brought his practice swords so after we had dyed eggs the kids set to questing about the property, jumping off things, visiting the chickens, and in Xander’s case seeing how high onto the roof he could climb, Jon showed the kids his trick of “hypnotizing” a chicken, which they all thought was pretty cool, and a good time was had by all.
Xander being a tiger
Easter morning
Gwen "Hatching"--this is one of her favorite imaginary activities. "Pretend I was a baby penguin hatching!"
A mourning dove that seemed unusually unfraid.
The gullible peacock in action
Isaac is doing much better, and has even felt up to practicing his sword fighting. In fact the other day I looked out the window and he was instructing Gwen on a few points of sword play. After that he would hide behind a pole and then jump out pretending to be the troll in the game. He would, of course, like the wonderful big brother he is, let her cream him thoroughly.
Xander came up with this theory for Easter:
“The Easter Bunny is a professional in behavior, and he just tells the parents if the kids have been good, and then they give them treats.” Hmmmm….
Laurelin is older all of a sudden again today. It’s amazing how they do that. Between one minute and the next they grow up just a little bit more. She looked older and so beautiful the way her hair was framing her face this morning…we definitely need to teach her some jiujitsu…
She is also having a great time practicing her dance for her upcoming recital.
Gwen continually cracks us up with the crazy things she says. I wrote just a couple down this week to share. One morning at breakfast Xander was pontificating on various types of creatures, and whether or not they can come on land. Gwen, thinking he was making a mistake said to him in a correctional tone, “Xander, things that live in water are AQUATIC!”
Then the other day she and Laurelin were having bananas (which Gwen says as “be-nanas”) for snacks. Laurelin’s had a mushy part to which Gwen exclaimed, “Nobody wants mushy be-nanas! Then how would you feel? YUCK-E! Yucky!!”
We all went to Jon’ parents house in Lehi to color eggs with Jon, Chastity and kids yesterday. His parents found a place with about an acre on it, with lots of out buildings and old barns to explore. Isaac brought his practice swords so after we had dyed eggs the kids set to questing about the property, jumping off things, visiting the chickens, and in Xander’s case seeing how high onto the roof he could climb, Jon showed the kids his trick of “hypnotizing” a chicken, which they all thought was pretty cool, and a good time was had by all.
A nudibranch that showed up in our marine aquarium a few days ago, likely a hitchhiker on the new corals.
All of us at the zoo, near the gorilla enclosure. (Gwen was unwilling to show her face, as you can see)
Xander being a tiger
Easter morning
Gwen "Hatching"--this is one of her favorite imaginary activities. "Pretend I was a baby penguin hatching!"
A mourning dove that seemed unusually unfraid.
The gullible peacock in action
The other night, I dreamt twice that Hiro the frog was singing. (Being a young frog, we hadn’t yet heard him do so.) The next day, to our great delight, he sang briefly, and now he has begun to manifest his vocal talents frequently…especially if I put my face near his aquarium. I’m including a short audio clip of one of his early performances for the curious.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Puzzles of all kinds
Greetings All,
Isaac had pneumonia this week. He started on antibiotics on Wednesday, and though he’s definitely not fully himself again yet, he’s improving.
Laurelin has turned out to be quite a little puzzle enthusiast. I received a couple of puzzles for Christmas, (yeah I know it took me while to get to them..) and she’s helped me put together both of them. These were normal “adult” puzzles of several hundred pieces, but she probably did at least one third of each puzzle all by herself. It’s really fun that the kids are getting old enough to do things like that together, and actually truly do them together instead of letting them just play with my puzzle pieces so they could feel like they were doing the puzzle.
She also lost her first tooth! The tooth fairy apparently had a little trouble finding our new house as she was a no show the first TWO nights, but that morning Rus helped Laurelin light a candle to tell the tooth fairy were we lived now and when she went into her room there were four quarters (I guess the tooth fairy pays late fees…) and a note apologizing for being late. Laurelin was quite satisfied.
We bought a new character for our little marine fish tank. He’s a bicolor blenny (I’m sure Rus will fill you in on him a bit more). We’ve decided to call him Roger the Shrubber, and he has quite a personality. Gwen of course is quite taken with him, and everytime he pokes out from his favorite rock she squeals with delight, “Roger the Shrubber is playing peek-a-boo with me!” For those of you who have ever seen Dave the Barbarian, Gwen did a funny impersonation of The Dark Lord, Chuckles the Silly Piggy the other day. Chuckles often disguises himself and Dave and crew eventually figure out that it’s him. So Gwen, doing as Chuckles did one time when he had been discovered, grabbed a pair of fairy wings (in lieu of Chuckle’s hat) that were laying on the floor, put them on and then off her head and said, “See? Hat, no hat-it’s not that tricky!”
At bedtime a couple of nights ago, Xander peered down at me from atop his bunkbed. In his characteristic crescendo, he asked, “Babbo…if we were playing hockey, and the puck suddenly turned into a bowling ball, and the hockey sticks transformed into live snakes, what would happen? WHAT WOULD HAPPEN?!?!” Where does he get this stuff? It’s like he has a little vortex of hypothetical occurrences somewhere in his head, inexorably pulling every little bit of reality in, subsequently extruding them in unpredictable combinations every few seconds.
Within an hour or two of polishing the outside of Hiro’s tank, I noticed the very conspicuous imprints of kid lips marring my recent efforts. I questioned the kids. Xander confessed, and when asked my he had done so, he replied that he was “trying to get Hiro the eat my teeth.” Oh, ok. If that's all it was...
Isaac had pneumonia this week. He started on antibiotics on Wednesday, and though he’s definitely not fully himself again yet, he’s improving.
Laurelin has turned out to be quite a little puzzle enthusiast. I received a couple of puzzles for Christmas, (yeah I know it took me while to get to them..) and she’s helped me put together both of them. These were normal “adult” puzzles of several hundred pieces, but she probably did at least one third of each puzzle all by herself. It’s really fun that the kids are getting old enough to do things like that together, and actually truly do them together instead of letting them just play with my puzzle pieces so they could feel like they were doing the puzzle.
She also lost her first tooth! The tooth fairy apparently had a little trouble finding our new house as she was a no show the first TWO nights, but that morning Rus helped Laurelin light a candle to tell the tooth fairy were we lived now and when she went into her room there were four quarters (I guess the tooth fairy pays late fees…) and a note apologizing for being late. Laurelin was quite satisfied.
We bought a new character for our little marine fish tank. He’s a bicolor blenny (I’m sure Rus will fill you in on him a bit more). We’ve decided to call him Roger the Shrubber, and he has quite a personality. Gwen of course is quite taken with him, and everytime he pokes out from his favorite rock she squeals with delight, “Roger the Shrubber is playing peek-a-boo with me!” For those of you who have ever seen Dave the Barbarian, Gwen did a funny impersonation of The Dark Lord, Chuckles the Silly Piggy the other day. Chuckles often disguises himself and Dave and crew eventually figure out that it’s him. So Gwen, doing as Chuckles did one time when he had been discovered, grabbed a pair of fairy wings (in lieu of Chuckle’s hat) that were laying on the floor, put them on and then off her head and said, “See? Hat, no hat-it’s not that tricky!”
At bedtime a couple of nights ago, Xander peered down at me from atop his bunkbed. In his characteristic crescendo, he asked, “Babbo…if we were playing hockey, and the puck suddenly turned into a bowling ball, and the hockey sticks transformed into live snakes, what would happen? WHAT WOULD HAPPEN?!?!” Where does he get this stuff? It’s like he has a little vortex of hypothetical occurrences somewhere in his head, inexorably pulling every little bit of reality in, subsequently extruding them in unpredictable combinations every few seconds.
Within an hour or two of polishing the outside of Hiro’s tank, I noticed the very conspicuous imprints of kid lips marring my recent efforts. I questioned the kids. Xander confessed, and when asked my he had done so, he replied that he was “trying to get Hiro the eat my teeth.” Oh, ok. If that's all it was...
Incidentally, Roger the Shrubber is named for a character from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." He was a shrubber, by the name of Roger.
Roger the Shrubber and some Green Star Polyp coral.Roger in action
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