Lately: Books Baseball, and A Big Decision

I haven't done a lately post in over a month, so here's a look back at some of what's been keeping us busy since February.  

March Book club!  We read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, and Gene helped me put together a feast -- including caviar and homemade blinis! 

Someone thought everything looked really tasty...

You can't read a book set in Moscow without having a bottle of vodka...

Henry finished his chapter book challenge at school. He read 10 books from 10 different categories. The Simon Thorn series was one of his favorites!

I took the boys to Levy Park on Sunday morning. 

 Henry's Neptune project for school

This was my Flat Stanley project that we sent to cousin Leo in Vermont.

More projects -- we had the exterior of the house painted and got new sod and had a lot of work done in the backyard.

The boys' Junior Ranger badges from Guadalupe Mountains National Park arrived. 

More books! Author Drew Daywalt visited our school last week to talk about his hilariously funny new book, The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors.  

Just a few of my wonderful library volunteers -- plus our librarian, who dressed up as Rock, Paper and Scissors.

We had to go to the bookstore last week to spend some of Henry's birthday gift cards on new releases -- Tapper Twins for Will and Nathan Hale's newest for Henry, among others.

We took the boys to the car show last weekend -- Henry was in seventh heaven.

It's baseball season again! Visiting lawyers from Singapore invited us to the game on Sunday afternoon. Let's go, Astros!

10th inning rally cap! We left after the 10th inning, but the Astros pulled off a win in the 12th! 

And finally, the big decision! After much thought and endless discussions and some sleepless nights, we finally made our middle school decision. Will had some incredible choices (all private, as our public school lottery numbers were crummy) and Henry did too, as he was accepted at the schools to which he applied. Will did shadow visits, we made our lists of pros and cons, and finally settled on Kinkaid for Will. We somehow didn't even think to apply Henry to Kinkaid, so he'll continue on at our neighborhood public school for the time being. I know it's *just* middle school, but after a year and a half of visiting schools and filling out applications, we had some strong connections to these places and it was much harder to make a decision that I would have ever guessed. 

I made this surprise for Will on decision day.

 

In the end, he loved multiple schools, but we think we've made the best decision and he's thrilled to be a Kinkaid Falcon!

And sometimes, after a hard decision, you just need some levity.

If this goofball doesn't make you smile, I don't know what will!

Summer Break: Week Eleven

This week was a pretty quiet week for us. We were still recovering from our travels, it was brutally hot outside most days, and we were prepping for Will's ninth birthday party, so most of our activities were inside, at home. Here's a peek at some of what we did this week:

Drawing with Dad

Legos, Legos, Legos

We checked out the new and improved play structures at the school playground.

The verdict? They are awesome!

We stopped by Gramma and Grampa's house one day and enjoyed hot cocoa and cookies. Henry insists on this mug every time we visit. It reads, "Not only am I perfect, I'm Danish too!" 

Building with the Lincoln Logs at G&G's. 

And check out how civilized we're becoming at the dinner table.

One more week of summer break until the busy school year starts up again!

Summer Break: Week Eight

What a fun week we had! We got out and explored our city and had a blast. Here's a recap of our summer adventures this week:

Monday: The boys love to visit the downtown library (so many books!) so we headed there in the morning. On the way, we checked out three of the Houston Zoo's gorilla murals (there are five in Houston). These three are all located in downtown or midtown and they were commissioned in the spring to welcome the zoo's new gorillas to Houston.

Mural #1 by Anat Ronen, located at Richard's Antique, 3701 Main Street.

Mural #2 by Mario Enrique Figueroa, Jr., aka GONZO247, located at the Downtown Food Park, 1311 Leeland.

Mural #3 by Nicky Davis, located at 3100 Smith Street.

After filling our bag with new library books, we had a picnic lunch at Gramma and Grampa's and spent the rest of the day reading. Will just finished all four books of the Adventurer's Wanted series and now has Henry hooked on reading them! The two of them talk about books nonstop and I love listening in on their conversations.

Tuesday: The boys and I headed to the science museum first thing in the morning. They love pushing on the Kugel Ball, which weighs 5000 pounds!

Inside, we toured the energy and Egyptian halls and watched The Great Planet Adventures in the planetarium. We also saw this cool new clock with a grasshopper escapement.

After a couple hours of museum fun, we hopped over to the MFAH for lunch with Gene and to see Shadow Monsters again. 

Wednesday: We had an amazing half day adventure in the Heights! After a much-needed visit to Penzey's Spices, we checked out the last two gorilla murals.

Mural #4 by Michael C. Rodriguez, located at Jenni's Noodle House, 602 East 20th Street.

Mural #5 by Sebastien "Mr. D" Boileau, located at 2119 Washington Avenue.

If you haven't had a chance to check out the gorilla murals (or the gorillas at the zoo), they are definitely worth seeing. Henry's favorite murals were #1 and #5.

After seeing the last mural, we ventured into Glenwood Cemetery, just down the road. Glenwood Cemetery was established in 1871 and is a typical nineteenth-century romantic garden cemetery. It's funny to think that the setting was rural back when it first opened. It is a beautiful, peaceful place and many of Houston's prominent families are interred there, including the Staiti family (the Staiti House is located at The Heritage Society in Sam Houston Park).  

By this time, tummies were rumbling, so we headed back into the Heights to have a picnic lunch at Donovan Park.

I've driven by this park numerous times but we had never been. The boys absolutely loved it! It's a unique park with castles, bridges and lots to explore. We can't wait to go back again, maybe in cooler weather!

After the park, we visited the Art Car Museum. Who doesn't love art cars? They change their exhibits every 3-4 months, so it's definitely a place to revisit.

Our final stop on our funky art tour was the Beer Can House, decorated by John Milkovisch. There are some 50,000 beer cans used on the house! It is unlike anything we'd seen before and definitely worth a visit.

We ended our adventure with some frozen yogurt at Yogurtland.  

Thursday: We headed back to the Houston Food Bank for another volunteer shift. 

This time, we were repackaging brown rice into two-pound bags from a massive 2,222 pound bag! It was different from our experience last year but the boys enjoyed it just as much. We even got to wear super-fashionable hairnets this time around!

Behind the boys are some of the boxes we filled. The volunteers on our shift filled 289 boxes, each with 16 pounds of rice (8 2-pound bags), which is equivalent to 4624 meals for Houstonians in need. Wow!

We enjoyed volunteering so much that we are already signed up for another shift next month.

Friday: By the end of the week, we were all pooped, so we deemed Friday a "Do-Nothing Day," a term borrowed from Phineas and Ferb. The boys played games, read, played together, and relaxed. We didn't leave the house once! In the picture below, they were pretending to be robots and did whatever I asked them to, from drawing pictures to solving some complicated math problems.

Sometimes, after a busy week, a "Do-Nothing Day" is exactly what you need!