Evening at the BioPark

We took the kids to the BioPark one Thursday evening. In the summer there are muscial acts there on Thursday nights. However, we actually went specifically to see the the Clan Tynker. Bruce had seen them for the 2nd time at the Summerfest the previous week. He loved them. He was upset when they had to stop because the sun was setting. I imagine I'll be following to other events to watch their performances with the kids. Their website is http://www.clantynker.com/ and they are 5 siblings that have just a great little circus/magic/dance act. Serendipity (one of the 2 sisters) was blowing bubbles at the BioPark and every once in awhile a real bead would appear in a bubble. The children were ecstatic to get magic bubbles to take home. They still play with them.

I'm not sure what Bruce was doing. Kind of looks like dancing though.

Mommy and Bruce firebending. We eventually moved on to water, earth, and air bending as well. I'm not exactly positive what element we were manipulating at the moment. Bruce doesn't like to watch the Avatar cartoon all that much but he sure loves the concept of element bending. He does a lot of bending, especially fire and water. Earth bending does occur as well ... the rocks outside our apartment he calls "bending rocks."



You can't go the BioPark without visiting the children's garden and climbing over giant carrots and onions and climbing into a bird's egg.

Randomness

Cousin Janie brought back this beaded headdress from Jordan (think it was Jordan). Juniper adored it when I pulled it out to show her along with other sparkly bellydance things. This was what she insisted on wearing all day.

We had a workparty at Colt & Gillian's a few weeks back. This is a picture of the view from the back of their yurt. It's so beautiful out there.

Juniper cuddling up to an Ohm. If you haven't seen Studio Ghibli's film Nausica, it's worth the rent. Cousin Kaiya adores Nausica so Gillian made an Ohm for her to love. Apparently Ohm's are loved by all little girls.

At the Explora museum Juney found the bin full of plush microorganisms. Quite humerous. This is Juney helping the mommy MRSA hug her baby MRSA. Just what we want ... nurturing of MRSA. If you aren't in the biology or medical fields then this probably isn't nearly as funny to you as I think it is. I will find a way to incorporate this photo into one of my lectures.

Boy's Birthday (con't)

The rest of the birthday party .... The first gift opened (at the beginning of the party before guests arrived) was from his auntie & uncle. This stomp rocket thing. Completely adored by all children. A huge hit.


Aiming for the Clouds. No really, that is exactly what he said he was doing.

Get ready for way too many pictures of the cake. You will wonder why so many. I was just so proud of Bel's creation and I was proud of the continents. I actually cut those out of fondant. I am so not good at that sort of thing. Completely free hand. Can you recognize Florida?



I really did mean to bring a cake knife to the party. I forgot and can you believe we didn't even have plastic knives! But Uncle Colt saved the day. He carries a machete in his vehicle. So machete was the tool of choice for cake cutting. A bit cumbersome, a tad sloppy, but it worked.

The "earth" was make of cereal treats. They were very tightly compressed so it almost felt like you were trying to bite through a rocky inner planet.

.... and Gillian let the kids try the sphere.



What was left of the week long creation ...

Jerry CLine Park has some great trees for climbing. The tree the boys are in overlooked the cake table. Bruce actually made it almost to the top of a pine tree before we realized it. Mommy just about had a heart attack.

It's not often you get a picture with three sisters...

Presents ... many more pictures of this. Most of them a blur or of children's backs darting in.



The big finale was a spaceship pinata. If you hadn't noticed the theme was space, spaceships and the planet earth. Originally Bruce said he wanted a birthday cake that was a "tank of the Earth." As in the Earth inside a fish tank. None of us are sure of the origin but we think it was some kind of space habitat he saw on a cartoon. Of the pictures I took, only the two little girls weren't a blur. The big kids swung so fast!


Bruce was very excited to control the pinata rope. It took some doing to keep him from being obnoxious or banging the spaceship against the tree limb in his enthusiam to jerk it up and out of the way of his friends.

Nice thing about a birthday just after the 4th of July .... sparklers.