Earth Day 2007

It’s Earth Day today! We took Rodney and David to this years Earth Day Festival at U of M’s Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We met up with our scout troop and enjoyed the afternoon of 80 degree and sunny weather. We could not have chosen a better day.

The boy’s all got to enjoy all the exhibitor tables. They had stations about the environment, about recycling, about wild life and conservation. Some of the tables were handing out all kinds a free stuff for the kids, some gave out free food, and others had crafts for them to do. This was our 2nd year going and we all enjoyed our selves

Here is the rest of the Images click to enlarge.

Rodney's 1st grade musical

Today after school Rodney had his 1st grade musical up at the school. They did three Billy goats gruff. All of the kids had a small part in the musical and all of them sang together many of the songs. Rodney was one of the narrators. At the end all of Rodney’s class did a polka for everyone’s enjoyment. It was the cutest thing I ever saw. To have Rodney interacting with other kids and dancing was a big step for him. It made Amy and myself very happy too see. It really shows how far he has come, over the past year. Rodney dancing with the girls in his class!

Carcassonne

Many of you may already know I love to play board games. I meet up with a group of guys every Monday to play our board games. I did a blog on Settlers of Catan Back in August of last year; witch was my obsession at the time. Later I stared playing Dreamblade witch is a Miniature based game that has some of the same mechanics as chess. Now the new came I like to play is Carcassonne.

Carcassonne is a heavily fortified French medieval town in the south of France. Carcassonne the board game is a tile-based German-style board game for two to six players. The game board is a medieval landscape built by the players as the game progresses. The game starts with a single terrain tile face up and 71 others shuffled face down for the players to draw from. On each turn a player draws a new terrain tile and places it adjacent to tiles that are already facing up. The new tile must be placed in a way that extends features on the tiles it, (roads must connect to roads, fields to fields, and city walls to city walls.)

After placing the new tile, the placing player may opt to station a follower piece on that tile. The follower can only be placed on the just-placed tile, and must be placed in a specific feature. A follower claims ownership of one terrain feature—road, field, city, or cloister—and may not be placed on a feature already claimed by another player's follower. However, it is possible for terrain features to become shared after the further placement of tiles. For example, two field tiles which each have a follower can become connected into a single field by another terrain tile.

The game ends when the last tile has been placed. At that time all features (including fields) score points for the players with the most followers in them. The player with the most points wins the game.

The game has a few expansions that change the way the came is played in subtle ways. I bought the Carcassonne Big Box; witch combines the base set, The River, Inns and Cathedrals, Traders and Builders, The Princess and the Dragon and The Tower.

The best part of the game is that it is simple enough from Rodney and David (who are both 6) to play yet complex enough for adults to enjoy as well.

Pete Puma

When I was younger Looney Tunes and Bugs Bunny were my favorite cartoon. As kids we all watched it every Saturday morning form 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Even as a teen and early collage student I would get out of bed just to watch it. My good friend Chris, My cousin James and my self had one favorite; Rabbit's Kin featuring Pete Puma. We loved it so much we even did the voice of Pete Puma saying thing like “Oh give me a whole lot of lumps” or “Tea gives me a head ace” “well what do you want?” “coffee, yuk yuk EEeeeeeeeee…”

Now my kids are starting to watch some of the shows but the only way for them to see them is on the internet via YouTube.com. I showed them Rabbit’s Kin featuring Pete Puma a few months ago and now they do the voices and say the lines. Just today I asked David how many lumps he wanted and he said, “give me whole lot of lumps"