For Aberdeen Daze we enter a float in the parade. It is mainly just an excuse for the kids to get to dress up and ride on the back of Grandpa Herb’s wagon. The kids all dressed up in Halloween costumes, with an emphasis on princesses and swords. They also threw tons of candy.
For me it is an excuse to see how much pop I can drink in a three mile parade route. It is usually in the 90s or so during the parade and we only have so much shade on the float so we pack a cooler full of pop and ice and I drink 85% of it.
Anyway, at the end of the parade someone stopped us and said that we had won third place–so that made the kids even more proud of what they had done.
The other day the kids caught a baby turtle. We’ve had plenty of turtles come through here, but never a baby one. I’ve actually never even seen a baby turtle before. At first they thought it was dead because it didn’t move for a long time. Finally it peeked its little head out and then the kids got all excited. It was really cute.
So the put it in a basket to keep as a pet for a while and fed it carrots and lettuce. I don’t know what turtles eat, but I think they would eat that stuff. After the first night it was fine; I checked it on my way to work. But somehow, later that morning, it climbed out of the basket and jumped off the countertop onto the tile floor. How it survived that, I’ll never know.
Then it took off, looking for freedom. Later, I looked all over for it, and Heidi looked all over for it too. We were worried that it would die in the house and start to stink and we wouldn’t be able to find it. But a day later, Heidi saw something on the kitchen floor and it was the turtle, who had been living under the fridge and was covered with lint. The kids were glad he was still alive but they had to let him go outside. He was an escape artist and we weren’t going to have him in the house.
Mason had this idea one day to write a book about dinosaurs. So he helped Heidi draw him some pictures, then he colored them all in. He worked really hard on them, and didn’t want to go to his friends house to play cause he was so busy working on his book.
We went to the beach last weekend. We’ve wanted to go for a long time, but didn’t ever have a chance until last weekend. The kids were excited to go, and had a really good time.
Mason wanted to find shark teeth and make a shark tooth necklace, so we spent quite a bit of time beach combing, looking for teeth. We never did find any. The water wasn’t too cold, but Whitney had been in it for about ten seconds when she got scared and ran out cause she saw a jellyfish. At first I didn’t think there were any and that she had just seen something else, but we looked closer and there were several floating around.
We moved further down the beach, where everyone else was swimming, and the kids went back out. Mason came back in holding his arm (you can kind of see it in the picture) but didn’t admit to getting stung by a jellyfish. He just got stung by a bee and found out that he is allergic to bee stings, so I think he was worried that if he got stung by a jellyfish he would have to go to the doctor. So he just toughed it out.
In the movie, Whitney is swimming with her head underwater. She can actually hold her breath for a long time, about 1 minute and 20 seconds.
We’ve been finding a few more animals here and there for the kids to play with. We found a skink that was running around out on the porch and I caught that for them. They thought that was pretty cool because its tail fell off and it kept wiggling around. They played with it for a while and then let it go.
That same night they found a rhinocerous beetle. At least that’s what we think it was. It was pretty big and had a “horn” on its nose. Whitney was very intrigued by it and played with it for a long time. But it was a little to scary for Mason. It had really sharp spikes on its lets, like super powerful Velcro. So whenever he held it he would feel the legs and think it was biting him, and drop it.
On another note, we switched church times a couple weeks ago. We used to not have to be there until 11:00 and now we have to be there at 9:00. So the kids have to get up a lot earlier. So last Sunday when we were getting ready and I walked out in to the kitchen I saw the kids had been overcome by their lack of sleep and just laid down on the floor.
We also have another “pet spider” who set up shot on our porch. So tonight we went out and caught bugs to feed to it. Mason caught a pretty big grasshopper, so he threw it into the web and we video taped it.
Mason rented a DVD from the library the other day. It was Popular Mechanics for Kids. It had lots of attractive things for small males, such as slimy worms, sharks and things like that. Mason loved it. One of the things it had was a recipe for slime. (See a video of the slime). He asked if we could make it, so Heidi said they could.
She helped them make some green slime. They had a great time doing it, and played with it the rest of the day. Even the next day, when it was starting to get less slimy and more rubbery, they kept playing with it. In fact, they made it into a family of tapeworms. I head these conversaions:
Mason: “Mommy, what are you doing?”
Whitney: “Just laying more eggs so you can have more brothers and sisters.”
Mason: “Mommy, my head just fell off.”
Whitney: “Well son, that’s what happens to tapeworms.”
Mason: “Mommy, can we get a pet dog?”
Whitney: “No son, we don’t have enough money cause we are tapeworms.”
They learned about tapeworms on the DVDs Mason rented.
For Aberdeen Daze we enter a float in the parade. It is mainly just an excuse for the kids to get to dress up and ride on the back of Grandpa Herb’s wagon. The kids all dressed up in Halloween costumes, with an emphasis on princesses and swords. They also threw tons of candy. 
