Golden ticket

Last weekend I went on an Easter Egg hunt in Pleasant Hill. While these are always fun, it was really my lucky day. Instead of getting candy or a toy in one of the Easter eggs I found, I got a golden ticket. The ticket gave me the big prize of an Easter basket filled with candies, games, and two stuffies. My new friends are pictured in their basket above.

Happy Easter.

School

I've been busy with lots of activities in school. I'm in the talent show, I've been getting better at reading and writing, and so on. Here are some highlights.

1. Counting

For some reason, I decided to see how high I could write numbers. I made it all the way up to 121. Here's sheet 1 of the counting list.



2. Letter of the week. A couple of weeks ago the letter of the week was "k". Now, this is a tough letter in that you have to come up with "k" words that you can draw pictures of. I disconvered an important research tool--the dictionary. It turns out that dictiionaries have pictures of some of the things the words describe as well as spelling. For "k", here's what I came up with:

Friends

Yesterday I went to Target with Mommy. Nothing unusual about that. What is unusual is that I actually bought stuff there with my own money. I bought a couple of Hot Wheels cars as well as a small stuffed bear. You can see him above. He's a really good friend.

Later that afternoon, we went out and played together. We went on the swing.



We climbed up the ladder to the sliding board and then slid down landing in the wod chips.





We went on the trapeze.


We even rode scooters together



He's a great friend.

Hit Down to Go Up

When my friend Chase was visiting this Sunday, we played golf out in the yard together. I found a finish line flag on a stick and poked that into the ground in various spots in the yard to be the "hole". I then picked out a spot for the tee box and off we went. There were some very creative holes including a dogleg left where you could either go the safe route and stay on the grass or take the risky route of a forced carry over the rose bush. (I elected the risky route and made the carry.)

Chase really hadn't played much golf before, so he was having trouble getting the ball to go very far. The secret, as I learned, is to hit down on the ball to make it go up in the air. I demonstrated my classic hitting down technique. It's sort of like the movie Cars where Doc tells Lightning that on dirt tracks he should turn right to go left.

It was a great golf tournament.

Off the DL

Well, I'm off the DL. After suffering through last week with coughs and fever, I'm finally starting to feel more like myself again. While I still have a cough, and I still have red marks under my nose from having rubbed and blown it so many times, I'm on the road to recovery. That road, apparently. leads to play dates. I had my friends Chase and Katie over during the weekend. It was lots of fun. Chase is especially fun to wrestle with.

Finally back to school, but still coughing

Well, I was out of school Monday through Thusday last week, but I finally went back on Friday. I still have a nasty cough, runny nose, and low energy, but the fever is gone and I am feeling better. I hate being sick!

Sick

I'm home from school today. I had a fever and sore throat yesterday. Today, my throat is so sore that I don't even have any voice at all. I've been trying to put my fingers in my mouth to get out whatever bad stuff is in my throat, but this isn't working at all. It's no fun being sick.

Artistic Weekend

It was raining this weekend. That made for a perfect time to pursue creative arts. On Saturday morning, we put together some cool shots of Hot Wheels cars racing around Tuscany. Do make these shots, we found a nice travel book of Tuscany for the background and then used th black foamboard thing for the road. Here is the best shot:



Later, we did some painting. Daddy got out a bunch of art books, and I found a painting by Monet that I liked. We tried to imitate this painting using tempera on the big easel. Here's the result:



Finally, today we made some really goofy clone shots. I decided it would be fun to play Candyland with my clones. Of course, I had to change outfits and hats a zillion times since my clones would not be wearing the same thing as me. Here's the shot:



Following this, I played Candyland a couple of times (and soundly beat Daddy thanks to the help of Queen Frostine). No clones were playing.

Lunar Eclipse

Lunar Eclipse 20th Feb 2008
Originally uploaded by fwwidall

Last night we got to see something really cool--a lunar eclipse. We went out every 5 minutes or so to see how the eclipse was going. It got darker and darker and soon the moon was completely gone. A little later we went out to see the moon start to reappear.

Using some of my play balls, Daddy showed me how the Earth cast a big shadow on the moon by getting in between it and the sun. It was very neat!

Painting

Mommy got out the tempera paints for an exciting session of painting. We made a number of watercolors last week, so this seems to be a recurring theme. I made a picture of a sliding board. Mommy's colorful picture consisted of a rainbow spiral of Archimedes type of thing.



I love the feel of the brush on the paper. I also love the bright colors and the texture of the paint.

Let it rain

While I don't normally like rain, it's pretty fun when you make your own rain. Daddy and I did a flower photo shoot yesterday at dusk. Since flowers kind of look nice in the rain, we decided to get out a watering can and make it rain on the flowers while filming the "rainstorm". This is the best kind of rain because you don't even get wet.



You can see the highlights from the photo shoot here.

The amusing thing is that the flowers in the shoot are all in vases from Valentine's Day. The dew is created by using a water squirt bottle. The rain, of course, is courtesy of my bee watering can. The puddle is from the aftermath of the rain. Photography can be pretty sneaky you know.

Games, games, games

Daddy and I played a whole bunch of games on Saturday: baseball, golf, mini golf (although I didn't play well), and croquet. I had the yellow ball to show that I was the Oakland A's while Daddy had the red ball (for the Boston Red Sox). The way we play is that I get three shots to Daddy's one shot. In the first match, I built up a decent lead, but Daddy managed to come back at the very end for the win. The second game was pretty much a rout---I tore through all the wickets and finished the course while Daddy was still only about halfway done.

The Marshmallow Project

To celebrate the 100th day of school, we had to do an important building project--we had to construct something out of precisely 100 toothpicks and marshmallows. This seemed like a huge amount of work, so I tried some smaller versions as well as sketched some plans earlier in the week. One of my small projects was a porcupine with a marshmallow body and toothpick spines. This seemed promising since you can add spines until the total number of things adds up to 100. I sketched a marshmallow and toothpick Aidan on my whiteboard. I even attempted to create eyes, nose, and mouth by writing on the marshmallows with Sharpie marker. While this was great in concept, getting an actual marshmallow Aidan to stand up proved difficult.

Finally, yesterday was the big day for creating the full scale model. Mommy and I worked together on a marshmallow house. This was working out nicely until the roof collapsed and destroyed the whole structure. Since it took the better part of an hour to make the house, we were both very unhappy.



Eventually, we went back to the porcupine idea and built that. However, we found that the porcupine looked more like a turtle at scale, so we changed it to a turtle. At last, the marshmallow project was complete. I used 60 marshmallows and 40 toothpicks in making the turtle.

Here's a documentary video.



Here's a link to some photos of the project in progress.

Cool Structure

I built a very cool structure with my magnetic building toys. I consists of a whole series of interlocking triangles. Inside a bunch of the little pyramids, I place Hershey's Kisses to complete the look. I like it.

Super Tuesday

As you know, there was a big bunch of elections on Tuesday. My stuffed animals also had elections as well. I picked animals to be each of the candidates. Barack Obama was a tiger, Hillary Clinton was a leopard, John McCain was a puppy dog, and so on. I used my whiteboard to post the election results. In the primary, Barack Obama manged to defeat Hillary while Mitt Romney managed to defeat the others. Then came time for the general election. The election board I made is shown above. On the left is Mitt. you can see that I tried to spell his name (Mit Rone) and drew a picture of him. On the right is Barack. I abbreviated his name as simply "B". Since Barack is black, I used black market to draw him (except for his hair, which is blue just like Romney's). Up above are the party labels--R for Republican and D for Democrat.

The final tally--Mitt got 5 votes while Barack triumphed with 8.

Wheat Painting

In church school yesterday, we did a fun art project, painting with wheat sheaves. Apparently, long ago these were the standard paintbrushes of the time. They're pretty hard to work with. In fact, one of my pictures has a bunch of wheat seeds embedded in it. It was a lot of fun painting with these odd brushes.

Rainy Season

We're in the midst of rainy season, and I was dying t0 get outside. Finally, there was a break in the rain, so Daddy and I flew paper airplanes out in the backyard. Paper airplanes sure don't survive well when landing on wet ground. Still, it was a lot of fun building and destroying them. I also splashed about in various puddles with my trusty dalmatian boots.

Super Bowl Sunday

It was a very exciting Super Bowl played today. I was rooting for the Patriots since the Giants eliminated my beloved Packers two weeks ago. Sadly. despite a great effort from the Pats, it wasn't to be. The Giants won in the closing seconds of the game. I've been very into football this weekend. Daddy and I did lots of blocking drills. I also posed for a photo session with my various helmets. We used Daddy's new black background to isolate the subject of the portrait from all background.



(Apparently, Daddy used this for his roses shots as well.)

Anyway, many of these turned out great. You can check the shots out here.

Talent Show

I'm trying out for the Alamo School talent show next week. I hope I get in. For my tryout, I'll be singing the song "Take me out to the ballgame." I've also worked out a bunch of fun hand gestures to go along with the song. Naturally, I'll be all dressed up in A's gear to complete the look. Wish me luck.

Mythbusters

We invented a new game earlier this week--Moon sand Mythbusters. In this game, you use moon sand to create "bench test" characters to test various myths. Just like the crash test dummy on mythbusters, I named my moon sand guy, buster. We've tested a lot of myths using Buster. For instance, if I hold Buster up to my knee level and drop him, he falls without incident. If I hold him up to my chest and drop him, his head falls off from the fall. So the myth that you can fall from a 20 story building and survive is totally busted in the bench test. You can, however, survive a fall from a 5 story building.

Watercolor

Today, we got out the watercolor paints. I forgot how much fun this is since we hadn't done it in a long while. I made a lot of cool stuff. An American flag, some houses, a picture of our fireplace, and a volcano. I always make sure to sign my name when making a picture so everyone knows who the artist is.

Golf Ball Civil War

Lately, one of my favorite games is golf ball civil war. In this game, Daddy reads selections from Shelby Foote's Civil War series and we act out the battle using golf balls to represent troop formations. The yellow golf balls are the union while the white golf balls are the confederacy. One great thing about golf balls is that they roll nicely, so it's easy to simulate charges and retreats. We also have golf balls representing the main generals leading each side.

We recently replayed the Battle of Murfreesboro (or Stones River if you're with the Union). The leading general on the Union "team" was William Rosecrans or "Old Rosey" as he was known to the troops. We found a pink golf ball for him. I also have incorporated a couple of horses from my Thomas set to represent the cavalry on each side.

We've done a bunch of these battles including Gettysburg (1st day), Chancellorsville (2nd day), Haines Bluff, Murfreesboro, and a cavalry raid by General John (Hunt) Morgan.

Aidan and the Alligator

One of the best things about downtown Walnut Creek are the variety of animal sculptures that I can perch on. As you know, my favorite is the cougar. This past weekend, I spotted a very nice alligator to sit on. This was especially appropriate since the letter of the week in school was "A". The "A" poem was Allie the Alligator.



Check out the complete slide show here.

An "A" for Effort

One of the trickiest letters to write is lower-case "A". I can never remember which side of the circle the line goes. This is really troubling since this letter is in my name, Aidan. To get around this problem, I've taken to using a capital A in all circumstances, so when I sign my name it's "AidAn" or, sometimes "AidAN". While this sort of spelling convention seems to work well for dot-com firms (like eBay), it doesn't wash in Miss Nelson's class.

As a result, Mommy put into place a cunning plan. Every time I successfully make a lower-case "A", I get a penny. Yesterday, I made 4 "A's" and, as I proudly shwed Daddy that evening, this netted me four whole cents. While I used to view making this letter as quite a chore, it's a whole different ballgame when I get paid to do it. This morning, I talked about my day with Daddy. I told him

Today I'm going to make a thousand lower-case A's. How much will I mkae for that?

I learned two things from this conversation: First, one thousand A's is worth $10 and second, if I actually did this, my hand would be sore for a week. Maybe I'll stick with smaller amounts for now.

Christmas Morning

It was a wonderful holiday. I got lots of great presents. Since we had Christmas in California this year, I thought I'd try to give you something of the flavor of the gift-opening festivities.

Opening presents:


A crab puppet:


You can see the slideshow here.

New Orleans

Daddy just came back from New Orleans where he was at a conference. He intended to take some pictures, but few of them came out well. Click here for the highlights (such as they are).

Snow!

I was very lucky when I went to wilkes-Barre this holiday season. It snowed! In fact, there was one terrific morning where there was a whole bunch of freshly fallen snow. We made two snowbears. (I don't like snowmen since they're human--only snow animals).



We also had snowball fights.







Here are some orderable photo highlights:

Snowy scenes
Snowball fights

Triceratops

We went to build-a-bear workshop today. While there are many bears to choose from, I opted for a triceratops. If you'll recall, the first stuffy that was allowed to sleep with me was my little triceratops (known affectionately as "Tri"). I decided that she needed a friend.



I'm really happy with my new bigger triceratops. I carried her around with me all day and went to sleep hugging both her and my original Tri. I had Daddy take some pictures.

Putting on Ornaments

Today, we put some of the ornaments on the Christmas tree. Since I'm very strong, I helped Daddy cary some of the boxes out of the garage and into the house. Then, I put up some ornaments. It was very exciting to pick out the ones I like. The balls are really shiny, and I like these a lot.



I also picked out a number of others as favorites, including the Christmas shrimp and a very pretty trumpet.



I don't really like the nutcracker ornament, but Daddy and Mommy do, so it's on the tree.



We left the high parts of the tree for Mommy to do since she's taller than we are.

Daddy note: These "improbable" Christmas photos were taken using a tripod and a really long exposure time (30 seconds) with no ambient light. The long exposure creates the twinkles in the lights---it's not a Photoshop trick. In fact, there images are straight from the camera. Click on the image to view, download, or order prints of the big size.

O Christmas Tree

Well, we finally got a Christmas tree today. Its been super busy with my birthday party and other things, so the Christmas tree got pushed back. Because of the lateness of the season and the rains, we ended up getting an artificial tree this year. Mommy was ambivalent about this, but I like the "machinery" of the tree. It looks quite nice. Both Daddy and Mommy commented that artificial trees look a lot less artificial than they did when they were kids.



This evening we put the tree up, tomorrow we add the ornaments. I worked on the bottom branches.



Hooray for Christmas.

Christmas Cards

After Mommy finished with the gift wrap processing, she's turned to the next big Christmas job, writing the Christmas cards. While in past years, she signed the cards for me, with my new writing skills, I'm signing my own name to all the cards. There are lots of them, but I'm pretty quick at signing. I hope you like the cards.