busy, busy

Wow, what a busy week!

Wednesday was one of those days that the kids just wanted to experiment all day long! It was great! Calista painted and blew up her volcano. Of course, we couldn't just do it once, we did it over and over until we were out of vinegar. She wanted to know how volcanoes "really" blow up so she checked out a National Geographic video this weekend. Then the kids started playing with cornstarch and water, one of their favorites that we call oobleck. Calista wanted to see what happened when you cooked it, so she made pancakes out of it. We learned that it makes a glue, of sorts. You will notice in the pictures that Calista was too busy to even get dressed, she just wore her jammies all day.

Tristan LOVES to cook so he started getting a bunch of ingredients out to make some things. He had seen someone eating chocolate covered raisins so he thought he would experiment with different ways to make them. They put the raisins in with a bunch of chocolate, in the saucepan, while the chocolate was melting. That didn't work so well but they thought it was pretty tasty. They also made some chocolate chip pancakes. Tristan has been doing quite a bit of experimental cooking lately. One of the things he made last week was eggs with cheese, green onion, and celery, it was actually quite good and we have eaten a lot of them this week. Maybe we will have a chef in the family :)

Calista has been into running businesses. In the last couple of weeks we have had a mail order business, a video rental, a bank, a restaurant, and a coffee shop. She takes it quite seriously, there is no pretending! Cash register, money, adding machine w/receipts, packages that are wrapped and taped, menus, real food, the whole nine yards!

Kevin has 1 1/2 weeks of concerts starting yesterday. They gave a concert at the Anchorage Museum yesterday afternoon. They had the choir lined up the grand staircase overlooking a pool thing. It was a beautiful concert and a beautiful setting. They have two school tours, another concert that is part of a nativity celebration, and three full concerts (three hours long). In between they have rehearsals, including a four hour one! It is amazing to me what these kids do but they love it. I will post pictures soon. I didn't have my camera yesterday but a friend of ours took a bunch so hopefully I will get some this week.

Martin's car is in the shop this week, getting repaired from a hit and run. Since he has to use my vehicle this week we will be able to do some stuff for Christmas. The kids and I are busy making little gifts and we plan on making a gingerbread house this week.