geocaching, a bed of nails, the sun, and land art

Last week was another fun one - the title about sums up the variety...
I'm not going to recap the whole week in detail, just some highlights.

This post will be more pictorial - excuse all the scrolling but ... enjoy. :)

As some of you may or may not know, we've started a small collective where we gather with a few other families every Tuesday & Thursday, and often other days as well.  We mulled over what to call it, and I suppose we'll be calling it the Boundless Kids Tribe.  I also have affectionately referred to it in passing as the Free to Be Me Collective, but I think the vote is for the former.  And I guess it makes sense to go with the whole Boundless thing...

Some highlights from last week:
Last Tuesday, the older kids started the new session of the Homeschool Drama Club.  Melanie, Kazha, Phoenix and I picked up some goodies from the fabulous Lebanese Taverna & had a picnic outside on the grass where the older kids joined us when class was over.  Then we all went over to Hayes Park & the kids played for a couple hours.  My little daredevil Phoenix climbed up a chain link fence til his feet were almost as high as my head.  One of the older boys was spotting him.  Then he climbed back down.  All by himself.  Pretty impressive for a 2-year-old.

On Wednesday we went to the Maryland Science Center at Baltimore's Inner Harbor.  If you're in this area and haven't taken your kids there, go!  Super awesome!  We met our friends Kristen, Lucca, Marcella, & Kozhin there to check out their exhibit on geocaching & had fun checking out other stuff as well.

 As you can see, there are no strings on this harp - it has light beams!  And you could change the sounds that it made.  Fun.

Phoenix & Marcella were having a little face-off.  :)  They love each other, but as they are both used to being the youngest alot of the time, neither of them likes the other to tell them what to do.

If you don't know what geocaching is, go to geocaching.com for info - but in short, you use your handheld GPS device to discover hidden treasures near or far, whatever you wish!  Sounds really fun for family adventure.  The exhibit - eh.  That's how Kristen & I both felt about it.  It was very informative, but a bit dry for kids, too much reading, not enough hands-on.  I guess the idea is that you check out the exhibit about what it is & how you do it, then you could go on a geocaching adventure in the harbor area, but we didn't know that & didn't plan for it, so.... The kids had fun anyway.

 This is when we still had their attention, at the beginning, before they all went running off thru the maze to break the codes and find caches and figure this all out.

Phoenix got mad at me at one point & ran off.  He was laying on the floor pouting, until Marcella found him and broke that hard shell.

I'm looking at them through a fabric mesh, that's why these two images look strange.  Don't expect professional photo work here from me people.  The lighting conditions in this place were difficult to work with.

From there, on to some other parts of the Center:

Okay, this was definitely one of our favorite parts of the whole place!  There was a sheet of plexi that you first laid down on, with all the holes drilled in it for the nails to pass through.  Then, once you've laid down, the woman pressed a button and the plexi receded, leaving you on the bed of nails.  I tried it out too.  Totally comfortable!  Here is Lucca.

And Adobe...

 Kozhin...

Little Phoe...

  The next thing was pretty cool too.  Did you know that to your brain, cold + warm = hot?  There were metal bars, cold from one side, warm from the other.  When you put your hand in the middle, where you could feel both simultaneously, it felt hot!  Ooooh, trippy!

Optical illusion.... hypnotized!  One down...

And another one bites the dust...

Here are our cuties!

And next - ah yes, payphones!  Remember those?  Also known as Dial-a-Germ.

Phoenix's cave man side shows itself a little...

And this thing simulated your digestive tract.  If you could move that ball through the mesh tube, it made the gurgling sounds that your guts make!  Yeah!  (Sorry for the excessive use of exclamation points throughout the post; I'm just a bit excited...)

Next, of course Phoenix had to get on the Dial-a-Germ.  I had daddy in mind here; I knew he would 'love' this as he's pretty grossed out by germs in public places.

Not sure what he was listening to here, but he looks so darn cute!

Oh lordy, okay, I know it's alot of pictures, but wait, there's more!  I just wish blogger would let me format this differently so I could do a gallery with captions or something.  Wordpress can do that, but alas, I didn't like the interface!  So.... in the future, I'll try to whip up quick slideshows instead.

That's it for Wednesday's adventures.  We left, and the kids came with me to Oxon Hill where I teach tap on Wednesday nights.  Long day.

On Thursday, our little tribe met up at Alcova Heights Park.  The kids played, meandered in the creek, snacked; the moms talked, about all manner of things.

Alcova Heights, aka 'the Creek playground' is one of my favorite spots.  I've been taking Adobe there since before she could walk.

I suggested that today might be a good day to discuss Daylight Saving Time and the Spring Equinox, since one just happened, and one was about to happen.  (Yay Spring!)  What is Daylight Saving?  Why does it happen?  Who 'invented' it?  What exactly is the Spring Equinox?  What are some cultures whose New Year corresponds? etc... We discussed all this over a picnic lunch, and then we made some 'land art' together, inspired by the fabulous Andy Goldsworthy, who Melanie & I both love.  We collected sticks, branches, and leaves to make a sun, in honor of the longer daylight hours bestowed upon us by the Equinox, & Daylight Saving (sort of - well at least it's light later in the day...)

Yes, that's Phoenix sitting in the middle of the sun - Adobe put his hair in piggy tails, and everyone was calling him a 'she' all day.

Skyler is approving the work.

 Beautiful momma Melanie...

Sweet Amman at this point then asks if he can sing a song, which turns out to be, "You Are My Sunshine..." Awesome!  And everyone joins in as they continue working. 

Kazha says 'hmmmm, what else does it need?'....

Placing the final touches... momma Stephanie, and the girls.

At this point, I video'd everyone holding hands and singing the song again - so cute!  Don't have a way to share that here, and haven't uploaded it anywhere...

Here is Melanie in fetal position inside our sun.

That was fun!

Friday, we handled some business at home and then met the tribe and other folks at the park.  Phoenix was so beat that he fell asleep around 6:30ish and slept straight through til the next morning.  Saturday, first day of spring! - it was nice & warm.  We busted out the kiddie pool, the kids played, we did yard work, picked up mulch, I trimmed the rose bushes, and stuff like that.  Sunday, more work outside, making the front and side of the house look all nice.  I rescued our violet tree (or whatever it is) that was being suffocated by ivy - pulled it all off, which was quite a job, and Atom took out two thorny bushes on the side of the house (huge job), and we did a bunch more stuff.  Hard labor.  Fun.  No, seriously, I like it.  I know it's not as fun for Atom since he does hard labor at work all week.  But it's different when it's your home.  Therapeutic.  More pictures to come.

And if you've stuck around til the end, guess I'm not doing too bad, cuz I know this was a long one.  Thanks!