homeofthebudds

Forestry center field trip

Updated** - Oops...This has been sitting in my phone for at least a month waiting to post.

 

The kids and I managed to get out of the house today... Everyone was running around like crazy, so excited to be somewhere other than home.

Sleeping Beauty

I took the kids to a school group performance of a ballet today - Sleeping Beauty.

I'm afraid I'm definitely not a ballet person.

Ellen and Isaiah dug it. They were totally into it.

My pocket camera broke so we took Isaiah's but his turned out to be malfunctioning, too. So no pictures of the kiddos smiling from their theater seats or fun things like that.

I felt like I had more to say about this, but turns out I have nothing.

 

See? I told you, I'm not a ballet person. I can't even talk about it.

Zimba Marimba

This week we went back the Portland Center for Performing Arts for one of their free lunch time performances. This month the marimba band "Zimba" performed.They've been performing together for 13 years. That's impressive.

The lady over on the left was my favorite. Her face was lit up with a smile the entire time. And not a "I'm performing, I should be cheerful" smile. But in a "This is so fun!!!" smile.

The kids even got wild and pulled out a few dance moves.

zoo trip

Yesterday Lynette came over and we went to the zoo for a little adventure. We were excited to see this river otter, which was recently rescued and is only six months old. She looked full grown to us (although admittedly we don't know much about river otter size) but boy did she have the energy of a kiddos. She never held still. Ever.

Brennan thought this constant movement was hysterical.

We saw the bears. Brennan was very interested in how sleepy tired it was.

We screeched like the eagles.

We drove tractors.

We measured ourselves against the bears.

We visited the elephants at the same time the keepers did. I was pretty impressed Sam, the baby, was doing all the same behaviors the grown elephants were doing. Turns out this was new and the keeper was impressed as well.

Look, even Brennan was impressed.

I couldn't take it

Maybe I should just say expect a lot less pictures in the post? Here are three I liked from our zoo trip yesterday:

Our zoo has a new exhibit area featuring African predators. There are lions and spotted dogs and cheetahs and a few other things. I must say I was rather impressed with the way this area was put together. I'd still love for the animals to have more space - but the people side is pretty nice.

The cheetahs were fun as they kept walking around. Brennan and I were stationed at one of the glass lookouts (full sheet of glass the animals can walk right up to) and as this cheetah walked around the corner for the first time, Brennan got the quite the start. He backed way up and stood half behind me till he realized it was gonna turn and walk away again. After that he loved it.

This one's from the python exhibit in that same area - seeing through heat like snakes do. Can you tell that's Ellen holding up Brennan?

And finally, I'm not sure I was aware that giraffe's liked to cross their legs. Huh.

It was a really good day for an outdoor field trip

Sometimes, Isaiah puts on his Oregon Zoo shirt and says "Lets go to the zoo."

And sometimes, if it's gonna be warmish out, I say "That sounds like a fabulous idea. Let's go."

We always start with the train.

We usually go see the elephants and penguins and things, but this time we waved hello to the ducks,

made animal tracks,

stared at the ducks some more,

and was stared at by the bald eagle (and people).

more from when mom was here

We took Mom over to the Forestry Center when she was here - and this time I remembered my camera. Although all of the shots look rather subpar now that I'm used to what the other camera produces. Oh well.

There's a giant wooden xylophone which has a sign that says "Please play quietly." Brennan was of course respectful of the other patrons.

We went parachuting into forest fires to help extinguish them. Mom got the closest to her target on the first try.

Isaiah was a little off - but he didn't seem to mind at all. He was there for the view.

The kids looove to go white water rafting. Even Brennan loves to get in and jump all around (or be jumped all around). He just giggles in there.

And we made it upstairs for the first time to discover fun masks. Or scary masks. Depending on how you look a them.

Unfortunately they're positioned for adults so I got a little workout trying to get everyone a chance. Maybe we should donate a stool for this area.

Driving this jeep on safari in Africa was definitely a highlight for the kiddos who love to drive.

I gotta say I'm a pretty big Forestry Center fan. It's always empty. Well, once when we arrived the attendant warned us there were a couple groups touring today. But they were groups of like six. And as anyone who has been to omsi on field trip day knows, it's not a group unless its thirty preschoolers in the sandpit.

The week in review. Sorta. Not really.

*siiiiigh* 

It has been a long week. A super long week. Dave was sick last weekend and the kids have been sick all week. (I never did catch it!) Ellen's feeling pretty well, but the boys are not happy campers. Poor Isaiah - when he gets sick the world seems to come crashing down. I canceled all our plans for the week and we've been holed up at home. Today I decided we've been home long enough and we ventured out for a few hours to the World Forestry Center. I forgot my camera though. Oops. 

It was super fun. The kids were excited to do something other than watch movies and draw and a change of scenery is always nice. We took a white water rapids ride, flew a parachute to a target to help fight forest fire, planted some seedlings...it was a productive morning.

On the food front, I'm feeling cooked food cravings HARD. When you go raw you leave all dairy behind. Which actually doesn't bug me as much as I thought it would. I don't mind no milk on cereal or yogurt or grilled cheese (unless I'm making one for the kids and then its rather tempting). But the other day I'd given the kids a bagel and cream cheese and they didn't finish it. I put it away for later and it sat there looking at me allllll day. By the end of the day, which may I just say was the worst day of the week for all of us, I decided shoot. I'm eating that. And I did. A partial bagel with maybe a teaspoon (and a half?) of cream cheese. It tasted good I gotta tell you. And then I got sick. My stomach felt horrible, I had heartburn (I don't get heartburn. -well except for from red peppers. but otherwise that is a completely new experience to me) and I was just not feeling well at all. Pretty interesting that five or so days off dairy and you get that effect.  I called Dave and told him to bring me pizza cause this would be a good night to have it since I was sure I'd get sicker and then never want it. He told me I was crazy.

But! Tonight I'm making some. I don't know if any of the rest of you are like this, but sometimes when I really really want something, its better to have it and either feel how much my body does not enjoy that or that I don't really enjoy the taste anymore. So hopefully I don't like it tonight. :)

As I read more and more books and magazines about all this, I am more and more convinced to take this a little slower. Many of the people who are writing the books and are the raw food guru's took a loooong time to go totally raw. Like years. At this point, I'm thinking its a goal I'm working toward and I'm incorporating a few cooked foods back in. They all say, though, this doesn't mean eat whatever. They still say the cooked meals you eat should be vegan. Which I'm obviously not doing tonight with the pizza. Other than tonight the only thing I'm adding back in is freshly made wheat bread. Kinda funny cause I don't really even crave bread so much (I totally thought that would be the hard thing). What I really want is something warm. And non mushy or crunchy or fruit and vegetably I guess. We'll see how it goes.

Overall I gotta say I totally dig this way of eating (I hate calling it a diet). There are times when I really truly want something cooked - but I'm pretty sure that's going to happen a lot since I still cook things for the kids and Dave periodically. I think the people that go 100% instantly (so far I've only read about one) have no kids. I've been pretty tired today - but I'm thinking that has more to do with getting off my morning walking schedule this week and staying up late watching all the shows off the DVR. (Dude. I'm addicted to that Duggar family show. 18 kids!!?? And the Cosby show of course. Not so much cooking shows anymore. :)

That idea that having cooked foods makes you want raw more totally worked for me too. After I recovered from the bagel debacle I was totally ready for the next day. I even made my first green juice. Well second really but when I took a sip I immediately started coughing and grimacing and I knew that particular recipe was not going to work. This was the first I actually drank. I read on several blogs about people making their green juice in the morning and then working on it throughout the day. I thought that was sort of odd - why not just drink it up? I'll tell you - they're not tasty. At all. I hear its an acquired taste. I believe it - my juice was pretty tame (full head of dark romaine lettuce, one cucumber and one apple) and it wasn't exactly good. But I kept thinking about it during the day and taking more sips. I didn't quite finish it - but I did drink a good 90% of it. Why do that too yourself you say? Why drink something gross? Well, because that's where all the good stuff is - dark leafy greens. And a body can drink a whole lot more of it than you can eat. They say green juices are the backbone of the raw diet. So there you go. 

field tripping

We went to OMSI for the first time in a long time yesterday.

We spent most of our time at about four exhibits.

Brennan loved every single one of them.

it was nice and empty,

So Isaiah had lots of time,

to play with the water rockets.

We did eventually make it up to "age appropriate" area. It was fun there too.

We're going back tomorrow.

Sciency thanksgiving (pt 3)

More science demos!! I believe this one was water with some drain-cleaner type lye melting aluminum foil. Wendy, you should feel completely free to correct me when I butcher the ingredients.

Brennan was pretty interested in this one.

The water is turning gray...

And it's melted! or dissolved perhaps? I do remember some smoke though. Notice the plastic spoon is untouched.