Scenes from Scotland

Here are some photos of scenes from Scotland (and a couple from Cambridge too). The hill dominating many of the landscapes is where Edinburgh Castle sits--right in the middle of the city. You can find the pictures here.

Scotland - Doors and Windows

Daddy posted up the first batch of Scotland pictures. These are of doors and windows. There's also a bright yellow VW bus that I especially like. You can find them here.

Calistoga 2007

While Grammy was visiting, Mommy and Daddy went on a trip to Calistoga. There, they saw the "Old Faithful" geyser of California. Here are some pictures from their trip.

Let's Go Oakland

Here are some photos from my trip to the A's game with Daddy's students as well as a cool video. Here's a link should you wish to order any of these pictures.

Green Balloon

This week, I'm attending Vacation Bible School at a nearby church. Mommy is also attending as a teacher there. We've already completed a couple of projects together. The first was a shirt with a picture of a hot air balloon on the back of it. I had to color in the balloon on the back of the shirt and then Mommy "heat sealed" it so that it will continue to look nice even after being washed. Naturally, my balloon is colored with my two favorite colors, yellow and green.

We also made a paper machier hot air balloon as well as a project. This was a pretty tricky project. First, you need a regular balloon, blown up. You then cover the regular balloon with crepe paper and a special kind of glue. I covered mine with lots of green and yellow paper strips. You then have to wait for it to dry and then pop the regular balloon, leaving only the now molded paper strips in the balloon shape. Finally, you have to add a dixie cup "gondola" attached with string to the underside to finish the balloon. It looks really nice.

Swimming, splashing

This summer, we became members of the Livona swimming pool association, which gives us access to two pools--a little pool only 2.5 feet in depth, and a big pool. Yesterday, we went over for a swim. As usual, I started in the little pool to get comfortable. Then I did something new and interesting--I started a splash fight with Mommy. Normally, I really don't like my head or hair to get wet (a difficult feat in a pool), but I thought it would be fun to splash around and I didn't really mind getting wet yesterday. Then we moved on to the big pool. I bring a floating rung with me for that pool so that I don't sink to the bottom. Again, we played lots of fun games including one of my favorites where Daddy is the submarine and I'm the torpedo trying to sink the sub. As a torpedo, I've learned how to use my arms and kick my feet to zoom around the pool. I'm getting the hang of the whole swimming notion I think.

Cars, cars, cars

It was a great weekend for cars. On Saturday morning, Daddy and I washed both of the cars and Windexed all the windows of the cars as well. We hadn't washed cars in a long time, so this was really fun. Later that day, we had a bunch of toy car races around the house including through the office, which has treacherous bumps that trip up many of the cars.

On Sunday, it was more cars stuff. I was looking forward to seeing the Nascar race (which was held in Sonoma). While we didn't go in person, we did watch on TV. It was a very exciting race at the end. I was rooting for the Shell car (driven by Kevin Harvick). He got passed by the Texaco car with about 11 laps to go. The announcers indicated that the Texaco car would have to stop for gas sometime in the last lap. Both cars drove and drove and, even in the end, the Texaco car had just enough gas to finish the race. The Shell car finished second, which was still very good.

Following this, Daddy and I had "gravity races" using the Hot Wheels orange track. Daddy organized a kind of tournament with cars competing in single elimination rounds. We each used our "announcer voices" to describe the action---this drove Mommy nuts. In the end, the Little Red Roadster managed to win the championship.

I love cars.