Great Fire of London

Well, Joe and Anastasia have learned quite a bit about the Great fire of 1666.

So, we decided to venture down to the hot spots :)

We started at Monument, ventured to Pudding Lane, St Paul's Cathedral, and ended with the London Fire Brigade Museum. We made a stop at the Borough Market near the museum for lunch-- it is really cool and great food. Tom and I discussed that we had seen the tube stop for monument thousands of times and never realized that it was the "Great fire of London Monument." You certainly learn something new every day.

More experiments....

We had great weather and the outside portion proved to be lots of fun. Our yard is now pink and smells like vinegar, but tomorrow the forecast is... you guessed it-- rain! to view the video, simply click on the arrow.

7th b-day Mad Science party!!!

For Joe's 7th b-day we took lots of ideas off of the net. We started out building towers out of cheese puffs, tootsie rolls and gummi bears. More was eaten than constructed.

Then we divided up and began experimenting. At table #1 we made slime and dyed carnations- notice: this takes longer than we realized to dye the flowers. We may post pics in the morning :) Table #2 had the eggs that were sucked into the bottle and the dancing raisins. Table #3 had the identify the small magnified piece of the picture and the static balloons. Most people were able to roll soda cans with the static and get their balloons to stick to the wall or ceiling. Outside we gave each kid a Ziploc to make a bubble bomb. That was exciting. Then we performed the volcano, elephants toothpaste (thank you ladies at the barbershop for the good hydrogen peroxide) and the finale was the coke explosion!! We had fun, got messy and finished up with cake. Here is a look at our big day. Thanks to everyone who helped out!!

Hughenden Manor

This is nearby in High Wycombe. They are currently filming the Agatha Christie Ms. Marple series for BBC. They have also used the manor house in two "Bond" movies and the Jane Austin movie. We glanced at the manor and then the kids went to play out in the creek and green way. The church and small village appeared in one of the older Bond films. Please notice that our children at least kept their underwear on- some of the Brits went totally native! When in Rome...

Enjoying the springtime

Well, it has been quite nice for about 3 days, so we think that spring is finally here. We went camping in the back yard- complete with tent and fire. Anastasia even brought out the paddling pool. It was a pretty nice few days.

Camouflage

Tom returned from Germany with bags of gear for Afghanistan. The kids decided to help him with all of his piles. They even went as far as trying on uniforms and camo paint. Can you see any one in these photos??

Easter Bonnet Parade

Joe sported the Birthday had made into Candy land wear for this event. Notice, the pieces are Pokemon cut in the shape of gingerbread players. Anastasia had a simple pink bonnet with bunny ears and real flowers. They lasted which was a great treat. Both kids had fun and neither fell off of the stage.

Here is each of their 15 seconds of fame on the cat walk!