Lately: Scouts, Art Night, Stargazing and Some Ninja Moves

Here's a peak into what we've been up to lately:

Will earned his Bear Badge in Cub Scouts this month and received it during last week's den meeting. He was one of the first Bears to complete the badge requirements this year and it was a lot of work! We are so proud of Will!

Thursday night was Art Night at school. The boys worked on all sorts of art projects.

We've also been putting Henry's new telescope to good use. We checked out the moon's craters on Friday night. Both boys rushed in the house to tell me all about it! 

And finally, check out our little ninja. Henry has been wearing his costume non-stop, and he loves to practice his ninja moves.

 Up next: pics from Henry's ninja party! 

Summer Break: Week Six

Shhh... don't tell the boys, but summer break is more than half over! Only five more weeks til school starts. How can that be? We are so enjoying our summer days. They are full and fun! Here are some of this week's highlights:

The boys played tennis at the Little Gym this week.

Even though we have many favorite recipes, I am constantly pulling out recipes from magazines that I want to try. This week, we happened to have all the ingredients on hand to make orange-ricotta pancakes, a recipe from the January issue of Better Homes and Gardens. My sleepy boy helped me, of course. The pancakes were so good! We made a huge batch and have been gobbling them up all week.

The boys took an art class with an outer space theme at the Glassell Junior School this week. They loved it and made some awesome art! We got caught in the rain walking back from class one day and had to break out the umbrellas. Check out Henry's art umbrella!

After art class on Thursday, we discovered this awesome book sculpture by Joseph Havel outside the Contemporary Arts Museum. It's called Endless and is a stack of books made from bronze and resin. Kind of reminds me of the stacks of books in our house!

Speaking of books, my big reader earned his blue ribbon for reading 50 books this summer. I think he's read closer to 70 (chapter) books by now.

We visited the MFAH for their summer art detective program again and this time made golden linguist staffs like the ones on display from Ghana. 

When Gene got home from his 6-day trip to Indonesia, the boys showed him all the space aliens and rocket ships that they made in art class.

I love that they described in great detail their outer-space worlds! 

My happy boy.  

Daddy also brought the boys some big bugs! 

Are you surprised that our bedtime books were about bugs that night? We love bugs!

 It's been another great week of summer!

Space Center Houston

We were back home from Maine all of one day before we decided to hit the road and visit Space Center Houston. The boys have been wanting to go for ages, so we went! They loved it. It was a little too theme-parky and crowded for my tastes, but hey, we weren't going because it was something I wanted to do.

The boys compared their weights on different planets. On Mars, Henry would only weigh 13.8 pounds!
Gene and I got into the space shuttle simulator and tried to land our space shuttles but instead managed to blow them to smithereens twice, even on the easy level. Henry climbed into the astronaut suit and checked out what the Apollo spacecraft was like. Daddy built machines with his boys. Will was in heaven. The little boys slid down the enormous slide over and over again. We toured a mock space craft,where we inspected the looand real astronaut suits, which look just like our dress-up ones. Henry tried on a space helmet and then it was time to head home. We'll go back, and next time, we'll even ride the tram and see the rest of NASA!