Parque Bicentenario again

Yesterday we went to Parque Bicentenario again, and this time the water park was open. here is a picture of Ruth and I going down one of the slides:The slide is very big, but you can't see in it for most of the time, so we only got a picture of this section.

Frog thingys and other thingys

There is some sort of competition going on where people make little frog things. Here are a few of my favourite ones:

Graffiti Frog

Sphinx-Frog

Bull-Fighting Frog

A frog is all you need to fly.

Frida Kalho Frog

The Sixth Day

Weird frog

Chocolate frog

This one is all candy wrappers on the outside
This a picture of the inside of our house:
And this is a picture of Pancho the cat:

Parque Bicentenario (or something)

A couple days ago we went to an amusement park called Parque Bicentenario (or something). I didn't get any pictures, sorry. So we went to the amusement park, and we did the bumper cars (which mom didn't like), a water ride (which mom didn't do), a roller coaster (which mom definitely didn't do), and a big swinging pirate ship (which mom didn't do). When we went on the water ride we thought it would just be one of those wet rides that you just got splashed a little, so we just went in our clothes. Well, when we went around a corner, there was this big ol' waterfall that we went under, and we got really soaked. My watch and dad's cellphone survived, though. the pirate ship was fun; but it sort of just swung back and forth. the one real roller coaster they had was the best thing. It had a upside-down loop and a corkscrew. Ruth and I got to sit in the front car once. Here is a picture I didn't take of the roller coaster:And here is a picture of the pirate ship:

Mexico Monopoly

A couple of days ago we got a version of monopoly called Mexico Monopoly. It's just like normal monopoly, except the properties are called things like Castillo de Chapultepec and Palacio de Bellas Artes. I like monopoly a lot, and mom and dad are willing to play it with me as long as I do it in Spanish. here is a pictire of a game I played with dad. (I won.)

Mexico Movie

Yesterday we went to a movie theatre and watched "Ice Age 3" in Spanish. It was about a kind-of stupid sloth, a pair of woolly mammoths, a saber-toothed tiger named Diego, and two possums. They were live in the Ice Age, and the sloth found some dinosaur eggs and then the mommy dinosaur came and took away the sloth and the mammoths and the tiger and the possums had to rescue him. It was very funny.

Culture Center

Yesterday we went to the Culture Center, which is this big building that has science exhibits, a playground, a hedge maze that little kids run around in, a library, a kids library, Foosball tables, and some other stuff. First we went to the kids library, but then we saw a sign that said "No prestamos libros", which means you can't check out books. That made us leave pretty quickly. We played Foosball a little, but you have to pay, so we decided it wasn't worth playing more than one game. We spent most of our time in the science exhibits, where they have fun things like echo tubes and tracks that you roll balls down. There were also these big bubble blowing things that you could make enormous bubbles with. Ruth and I had fun making big half-bubbles around each other.

Mexico!!

We are in Mexico! You probably already know that my parents are doing a program for Westmont College that involves going to Mexico for four months, but if not, now you do. I've been to Mexico twice before, but not for nearly as long as four months. I'm not saying I don't think it's going to be fun, though. We are renting a 400-year-old house, and it's really cool. It's in a strip of houses that are all connected, so from the street it just looks like a wall with a door. On the inside of the house there are two patios that are surrounded by house but don't have roof, which are fun to sit on, like I'm doing now. There is a cat that lives in this house named Pancho that's walking around getting petted, but instead me petting him, he likes me to just hold my had still while he rubs against it. The house is also within walking distance of some good eating places, including our favorite Panederia (bakery) and Churreria (bakery that just sells churros). I might have some pictures of our house soon, I'm not sure.

Durango

7/17/09 (I made this blog entry on a text editor in the airport 3 days ago.)

We're in the Durango airport waiting for our plane right now. I'm sorry I didn't make any blog entry s earlier, there was just so much to do. We were visiting my mom's parents who live in Durango, Colorado. For some reason I call them "Nana" and "Papa". They live in a big house about 13 miles from town. They have two barns, a greenhouse, and a tree house with a bed, a bathroom, and a shower. Ruth and I usually sleep in the tree house when we go to their house. Oh, and by the way, it's my birthday. We always do lots of things when we go to Durango. We went horseback riding, we visited my great-aunt (Nana's sister) and swam in her little lake, we went camping, we hiked, and we went canoeing. Ruth and I have been taking horseback riding lessons in the previous years that we came to Durango, and this year we just rode with Papa. I rode a horse named Hershey, Ruth rode Maple, and Papa rode a very slow horse that I forgot the name of. My great-aunt lives by a little lake that we like to play in. When we visit her we like to ride in the rowboat and swim around on inner tubes. This year we also made s'mores. We went on a camping trip near Purgatory Ski run and had a great time. We sang campfire songs, played in the river, and went on a hike. We also went canoeing at Lemon lake, which is a bazillion times bigger than my great aunt's lake. I never went inside the canoe, though; I was towed on an inner tube. That was very fun. Oh, and one more thing. Papa taught Ruth and me how to shoot a gun. We got to shoot his .22 at a log in the backyard. Yep, going to Nana and Papa's house was really fun.

Lake Michigan

6/23/09 (I should have made this blog entry earlier, but I never got around to it)
Yesterday we went to my Grandad's house, which is about an hour from my Grandma's house and right next to lake Michigon. My Grandad has two small black dogs named Scarpa and Ladoux. They like to bark, eat, and play fetch. (Not much else) I played hide and seek with Ben, and then we went to the lake. If you wade out a couple yards into the water there is sort of a sandbar that is underwater but shallower than the water right next to the bank. Ruth and I found some nice big peices of driftwood that we played with for a long time. We pretended that mine was an aircraft carrier and Ruth's was a cruise ship. We also found a rubber dog toy that looked like a baby fish and pretended it was a monster.

Improv Play

6/20/09 (I should have made this blog entry earlier, but I never got around to it)
Nick and Muriel are improv actors, which is like being an actor, but you make up the play as you go along. We didn't get to go to one of their shows, but we went to one, and it was fun. The one we went to was a kids show that had "audience perticipation". At the beginning of the play, the narrator asked the audience what their favorite place was, and one kid shouted "Navy Peir!". We got to dress up the actors, and sometimes they would call kids out of the audience to be a character in the play. It ended up being about a indian boy who went to Navy Peir and had to follow his destiny which was to become a ballerina. At one point one of the main characters in the play, a tourist from Shomberg said somthing like "Chicago ain't no place like Shomberg" and Ben shouted out "That's a double negative!". So later the actors called Ben up to the stage to be the ghost of rules. Ben did a good job of it and Mom cracked up.

Ben

6/19/09 (I should have made this blog entry earlier, but I never got around to it)
Did I mention that I'm one of ten guests at my grandma's house? Let's see, there's my 26-year old cousin Muriel, her boyfriend Nick, my 8-year old cousin Ben, my mom, dad, and sister (Ruth), Ben's parents (Aunt Lora and Uncle Tom), Aunt Liz (Muriel's mom), and Me. 11 guests if you count Uncle Craig, who doesn't sleep at Grandma's house. Nick, Muriel, and Aunt Liz sleep in the basement, Ben sleeps in the studio (Grandma's an artist), Mom and Dad sleep in the front room upstairs, Ruth sleeps in the attic on a cool day, and on a hot day waits for Ben to fall asleep in the hallway and then sleeps in the studio. (Ben says I'M BOERD loudly until he falls asleep, preferably with the light on.) Aunt Lora and Uncle Tom sleep in the guest bedroom (Lucky!), and I sleep in Grandma's bedroom. It is a very lively house. My cousin Ben, as I mentioned eirlier, is only 8 years old, but he's already even more of a nerd than me in some ways. Right when Ben got here he told us that he figured out the fibinocci numbers in base 8. (Don't ask me to explain the fibonacci numbers to you) Then he went upstairs to "Check out the book situation". He sounded just like his dad when he said that. He can also be annoying at times. If you interrupt him in one of his "speeches", he jumps up and down screaming EXCUSE ME EXCUSE ME EXCUSE ME I'M TRYING TO TALK TO YOU!! It seems like he can't raise his voice without yelling. He's a nice kid, though. He really likes playing a game we call "Weakneses" in the basement. I got the idea for it when we found to old broken phones in the basement, the kind with the spinning dials. The game had lots of levels, and on each level Ben had to deafeat an evil Andy. The evil Andy would always had a weakness, and Ben could dial "operator" to get hints on what the weakness was. Then, useing that weakness, Ben would try to deafeat me. For example, on one level Andy's weakness was that he loved Ice Cream, so Ben put a small beach ball on top of a cup and gave it to me. I pretended to think it was Ice Cream, so while I was distracted, Ben hit me on the head and deafeated me.

Making Masks

Well, this is our second day in Chicago, unless you count the half day at the beginning. It's sort of a tradition to make clay masks at my grandma's house, and so she has a whole bunch of neat homemade masks made by my relatives hanging on her dining room wall. Ruth and I each made one last year, but we didn't like them that much, so this year we're making new ones. I just finished making mine, but I haven't painted it yet. I was going to make a evil guy, but it just turned out to be a chubby guy with a mustache. Grandma's house is way more interesting then ours. She's an artist, and she makes lots of great paintings and hangs them on every inch of wall she can find. She has been living here for a long time, and if you dig around in the basement you can find all sorts of cool stuff. I found an old-fashioned shock ring that vibrates when you shake someone's hand, the change machine my dad used when he ran an ice cream truck, and treasure like that. I've been petting Grandma's dog Zoey a lot, as usual, we went to the art institute yesterday, and we ate lunch at at a little park next to the art institute form the same place we ate at last year (the same park, even!), Max's takeout. Here is a link to the blog entry I made last year when we ate at Max's Takeout: LINK

Magic Mountain

I know I haven't made a blog entry for a million years, it's just that there's so many other things to do. I apologize to anybody who might be reading this. Yesterday Dad and Ruth and I went to Magic Mountain. I had a very good time. It was basically the first amusement park I've ever been to, unless you count the time we went to Disneyland when I was 3. The first thing we did was bumper cars, and and it was so empty at first that when our turn ended we just started a new turn without getting out of our bumper cars. Then we did Superman, which is a roller coaster that just goes straight for a little bit and then goes up really high, and then goes backwards once it gets to the top. It was very noisy. We also did the Gold Rusher, which was the first roller coaster that I've ever been on that didn't just go straight, and the first one that we went on that went upside-down was the first roller coaster that ever went upside-down. (It was called the Revolution) We also went on the log ride and the other log ride that you don't ride in log-shaped cars, both of which had a big drop at the end where it takes your picture. The big roller coasters that we went on were Viper, Goliath, Scream, and Batman. We went on Viper twice, and I liked the second time better. Goliath was HUGIE, and it had a REALLY HUGIE drop that went into a underground tunnel at 85 miles per hour. We went on Scream later in the day, when I was more used to the roller coasters, so I didn't scream very much. My least favorite parts of the hugie roller coasters were the parts where you went slowly up higher and higher and higher and you knew you were about to go on a hugie drop. My other least favorite parts of the roller coasters were the twisty upside-down loops that went slowly and you felt like you were going to fall out. Oh, and I forgot to tell you, Dad didn't notice the part on Goliath where you go underground because he was closing his eyes. And another thing I forgot to mention was on the ride called ninja we were waiting in line behind this girl and her dad, and whenever the recording of the guys voice said "Have a fun ride on Ninja. Hiyaah!" the girls dad said "HIYAAAH!". When we got on, the recording said "hiyaah!" and the guy said "HIYAAAH!" and the workers said "hiyah!" and the guy said "HIYAAH!" again. I bet that girl was embarrassed.

Winter Camp Part 2.5

OK, I'm taking a break.

Zoo

Today we went to the Washington Zoo. It was really neat; my favorite animals were the beavers and the llamas. The beavers had this idea that they had to make a dam, as if they were living in the wild. It was so fun to watch them try to get the sticks up their little fake river, I felt as if I could watch them forever. The llamas were very active when we saw them, running around and tying their necks together. They were just climb all over each other, scrambling up someone's neck or trying to ride on each other's backs. We also saw a big ol' honkin hippo that would do nothing but eat, a scary tiger that was roaring strangely the whole time we were watching it, and some really pretty peacocks. There was a group of wild deer that you could see from the zoo, two fawns and about 6 does, that were fun to watch.

Washington D. C.

Well, we've been out here in Washington D. C. for about two days now. (We arrived Monday, at nine-o-clock) The 3-hour time change hasn't affected me as much as I thought it would.

Mom and Dad and Ruth and I are staying at this great little bed and breakfast hotel with creaky wooden floors and nooooo elevator. If you opened the door to our room and started to walk in, you would be in this sort-of long doorway with a ladder built into the wall leading up to the attic. Take one more step and there would be a sink to your right. the doorway opens up into a large room that has three beds in it. At the far end of the room there are a closet and a bathroom. It's fun to use the bathroom because there's no sink there so you have to go way over to the doorway thingy when you're ready to wash your hands.

Yesterday we went to the top of the Washington Monument and to the Natural History museum with Mom.

The natural history museum was really cool, We saw crinoids that were three feet long, a big tank of tropical fish, and a sculpture of a giant jellyfish in the sea section. We saw the real Hope Diamond, the largest blue diamond in the world, HUGE quartz crystals, and too much more in the endless corridors of the minerals section. We were all getting museum-itus by then.

The views from the windows of the Washington monument were spectacular. You could see so far, even when it was as foggy as it was then.

Today we went to the Air and Space museum and saw really cool things like the first plane that ever flew or the actual thing that landed on the moon. We saw this very interesting airplane that seems like it's made of toothpicks and plastic wrap. It's completely human powered, and the video of it shows it going about the speed of a bike three feet off the ground.

We also went to the Capitol building, but it's time to go to bed so Bye-bye.

Family Reunion July 2002

Here's some pictures I took of our photo album we made after we had our family reunion in 2002.

It was a long road trip.
The aquarium


Glass Beach







Redwood Forest



Picking blueberries

And eating them.
Blue eye!
My cousin Ben
Come see my sandcastle!
I'm the sandcastle queen!
Mom reading Ruth, Ben, and me a book called La La La
Playing in the woods


The lighthouse!
Aunt Liz's bug


Playing with a pink thingy


Flying a kite

Making crafts
My doogie machine!
Dad and Great Gran (Great Gran is my great-grandmother)
Dad makes a speech
Examining grandma's treasures
GRAND zip line!


Hmm... I wonder if Ben is having fun.
Swinging on Grandma's bench swing
Bye-bye Ben!
The museum
Deadly lions!
Cacti


Zzzzzz