Georgia Aquarium

Donald, Emily, and I took a half day off from school today to take a visit to the Georgia Aquarium. What a great place to spend a rainy day! The crowd was not bad at all and the fishes were out doing all of their best tricks. We saw some amazing spectacles and Emily had a great time. She's even decided that she's changed her mind about being an acrobat or a tabby cat for Halloween. She's going to be an otter! We have the face mask, courtesy of the Aquarium's gift shop. Now, I'll have to break out the trusty sewing machine to whip up the rest of it. Hope I still have that polar bear costume pattern......Enjoy the pictures!

There's a photo for Daddy's desk.

Just arrived - so excited to see the giant wall of schooling fish!

Sometimes it's nice to view things from a different perspective.

A purple starfish - oh my!

Taking the penguin crawl.  A good idea on paper.  The reality was a little more....claustrophobic.

Slippery little suckers.

Spooky albino alligator

Emily's favorite - the otters!

One of my favorite pics of the day.

Trick or treat!

Student of the Week

Emily has been selected as this week's Student of the Week.  We worked on completing her poster, which will hang outside of the classroom door, and it was interesting to listen to all of the facts that she listed about herself.  For example, her future profession is......librarian!  She wrote me a letter the other day and told me that I was the one who "inspired her to love reading."   Hooray!  We must be doing something right! 

More from Callaway!

I think we spent three weekends in a row visiting Callaway Gardens and have throughly enjoyed ourselves every time.  There's always something new to see or do down there.  We always visit the butterfly center because that's Emily's favorite spot.  She has a really good knack for getting the butterflies to land on her.  We met several lovely butterflies, a turtle, a lizard, and a not-so-lovely snake curled up in the falls beside the chapel.  Watch your toes if you plan on going wading there!

Dr. Doolittle

An organist was performing a concert on the day we visited.  You could hear the music all throughout the Azalea Bowl  Incredible!

Mr. Snake was curled up just a few feet away.  I wondered why Donald was in such a hurry to get out of there!

Walking through the Azalea Bowl after a great picnic lunch

Very cool in her faux Ray-Bans.  I had a pair just like them in high school.

Tagging monarchs (almost) at Callaway

Last weekend, we spent a day at Callaway Gardens helping with the monarch butterfly tagging process.  Because the monarchs are migrating through the Callaway area toward Texas and Mexico, they invite park visitors to come and help tag butterflies in the hope of better understanding migratory patterns.  You can even track your own butterfly online, kind of like a Webkinz, just to see where it finally lands.  Very cool, if you are actually able to tag some!  We netted lots of different types of butterflies, but monarchs are notoriously difficult to catch.  They fly high on regular days, but on cool and windy days (such as ours was) they are almost impossible to locate.  We did actually see one, but the ensuing rush of kids with nets was enough to run me out of the park, let alone a butterfly!  Oh well, there's always this weekend!

Books to the Ceiling!

Emily is required to memorize a poem to present to her class.  She chose "Books to the Ceiling" by Arnold Lobel (of Frog and Toad fame, for all of you lovers of children's literature out there).  She did such a great job reciting the poem that we thought it would be fun to let all of you in blog-land see her performance.  Hope you enjoy!

Summer Swim Show (a little late)

As autumn is officially beginning tomorrow, I thought that today would be a good time to post the video of Emily's summer swim show.  Better late than never!  She worked really hard all summer and was absolutely fearless at the swim show, which earned her Ms. Betsie's award of Most Improved Swimmer.  We could not be more proud of our little girl!  Bless her heart, she had to go first out of all the students - we didn't know that was going to happen!  So brave!  She helped me design the video and picked out all the music, backgrounds, and transitions for her video.  Hope you enjoy it!

Apple Picking!

This weekend we traveled to Blue Ridge to our favorite orchard, Merciers, and spent the day apple picking.  What beautiful weather!  I'm so glad that it is finally starting to cool down a bit.  We had a great day picking apples in Merciers wonderful orchards and Emily seemed to have a grand time eating everything that didn't eat her first.  Although it is a long drive to get there (and a seemingly even longer drive home), Merciers is such a wonderful place that visiting there each fall has become a family tradition.  Happy (almost!) Fall!

First apple!

Quality control.

I want to live here!

Loves her digital camera. Be on the lookout for a new video from her!

Completely fake pose.

My favorite!

Ear love- she was getting tired and hungry, despite all the apples she'd eaten so far.

A little sugar makes all the difference.

The car picnic is a tradition and is unaccountably one of her favorite parts of the trip. Go figure.

Emily's First Video

We recently gave Emily a digital camera and told her she could collect some pictures and then make a video of them using Animoto. When we gave her the choice of picking where she went to take the pictures, she chose PetSmart! We spent some fun time at PetSmart taking pictures of kittens, puppies, fish, turtles, birds, and hamsters. The video posted below is her final masterpiece! She picked out everything from the pictures to the background to the music. Look out Steven Spielberg....

Happy Birthday - Part Two!

Ten little girls converged on our house this weekend for an afternoon of jumping, painting, and doughnuts. It was a little overwhelming, to say the least, but they had loads of fun chasing each other around the house all afternoon and eating cheese doodles during their improvised picnic in the living room. The impromptu pillow fight upstairs was apparently lots of fun, as well, based on the looks on their faces when I opened the bedroom door in the middle of it! They each created a lovely masterpiece to take home with them and it was neat to see what kind of artwork each girl made. Emily painted a yellow tabby cat wearing headphones with a peace sign border - very rock star. Thanks for joining us to celebrate our little girl's big day!

Sweet Baby Girl

Just wanted to share a few pictures of our sweet baby girl right after she arrived. It was a long night, but it was definitely worth it!