Photo Overload! We've been busy.

This will be a lot of pictures from several larger and smaller happenings in our busy little family. I'm posting the pictures at small size, but you can click each picture to see it enlarged.



For starters, we went to the Grand Rapids Public Museum again this weekend, specifically to see an exhibit on Leonardo DaVinci. It was spectacularly cool! It was a room full of working models of machines and devices designed by DaVinci, built to his specifications, using his recommended materials, and meant for people to touch and manipulate! An entirely "Please Touch" exhibit, filled with nifty gadgets!!



Below, you can see a pillar-lifting machine, a mechanical man, and a crane.

There were lots of activities based on DaVinci's ideas too - a bridge-building set, a gear kit (they were supposed to make it so that a crank on one gear board would turn something on the other board), and other gadget-building sets.

Here's a nifty thing used to measure distance. If you click on the middle photo, you can see how it works. Henry is demonstrating how to set it up and Lily is showing how it works once it's ready for use.












After we had seen the DaVinci exhibit, we were on our way back to the car when the most astonishingly gorgeous weather enticed us to take a stroll across the Grand River on this nifty, artistically decorated foot bridge.













Astonishingly, I was able to make dinner straight from the garden this weekend. We were doing some fall garden clean-out and I found these things out there waiting to be gathered. I had planted carrots, but thought that none had grown. I was wrong. We had ONE carrot. And some beets, a couple very small cabbages, and some onions. We had borscht (as you can see from Henry's red chin)!








Also this weekend, we did a little house decoration. In an attempt to dampen some of the gymnasium-like echoing that happens in our (oh-so-noisy) house, we got some area rugs and some window shades. The shades are so far only installed in one room, since we weren't sure that they would work or that we would like them... but room by room we will get additional shades. And in these pictures, you can see the area rug in the living room. I didn't have paint chips with me, but the color match between the green and blue swoops in the rug and the green and blue paint on the wall is exceptional!



We have been having AMAZING weather for the past few days. The kids have been taking full advantage of the nice days. In these photos, you can see Gregory giving Henry a wagon ride. He pulled Henry from our house down to the farm house and back again, then AAALLLLL the way to the end of the driveway and back again. That adds up to the better part of a mile! Henry was a little pre-nap drowsy and just sat all glazey and mellow for the entire long ride.

With the weather being so unseasonably lovely, Henry and I made a morning trip to the zoo yesterday while the big kids were at school. We had SUCH a nice time. I just followed Henry around and let him look at what he was interested in. We spent a long, long time looking at this bronze bear, a good long while watching the chimpanzees, quite some time watching some construction men making rennovations to one section of the zoo (don't YOU go to the zoo to see the bulldozers and bobcat tractors?).




This picture is for you, Baby Miles! Henry gave it a few good whacks for you, little guy.


Henry wanted to go look at the lions. We saw them, then he was done with them. Off to bigger and better things.

We never get tired of looking at this grounchy-looking eel.