Our Diva...

Fresh from her success at last night's talent show our Cami dressed up as a diva. She wore a pink bathrobe, pink slippers, pink gloves, pink purse and accessories, and a pink feather boa. She even had a little pink dog!

Cami's Talent Show Award

About a month ago Cami's Daisy Scout troop (gaggle, herd, flock?) decided they wanted to perform in their school's talent show. Their skit was to sign the words of Louis Armstrong's "It's a Wonderful World" song.

They practiced this whole month at their various meetings and last night they finally got their chance to show off their efforts. Just before Cami went out on stage she told her teacher that she was scared to go out there, but she never said anything to us. She told us that she was really excited to perform. But, in the end she was up there with all of the other girls, and they all did great.

After the show all of the kids that participated received an award. We purchased her some flowers, which she really enjoyed and appreciated. She can't wait until next year.

Father & Son (and Daughter) Cake Bake

Last night was the 2010 Cub Scouts Blue and Gold dinner. This year marks the 100th anniversary of scouting in the United States. That was the theme for the Father & Son cake baking contest. Below is a series of pictures of the cakes that I and my kids made.

Stage 1: Use some black gel icing to draw the outline of our scouting character. This gel never did solidy, so we had to be very careful we didn't smear the black around as we filled in our other colors.

Stage 2: Start to fill in our spaces with other colors of icing.

Stage 3: We've finished filling our spaces, now on to spreading the icing around our image.

The completed cake! Ian won the "Most Artistic" award. They did not have a "Best" award last night, but I choose to believe that Ian's Most Artistic award means the best.

Here is Cami's cake. We used the same technique of using the black gel icing to draw out the earth figure.

After that we filled in the spaces with icing to make the ocean and the continents. Cami made up her own globe by not bothering to try and make actual earth continents (like North America and Africa). After that she wrote "Daisy Troop 663" on it.

Her completed cake! She won the "Most International" award last night.

It was a great dinner and everything went well. The boys' skit was really fun. They "baked" a cub scout by putting all sorts of boyish items into a trash can and stirring with a big paddle. At the end a real cub scout pops out. Ian was the one to pop out of the can. He had a really hard job of hunkering down in the can while everyone dropped things on him.

Ian was also excited that he was awarded his Bobcat award last night. We have a tradition of turning the boys upside down while the Bobcat award is pinned on. He can then turn it right-side up once he does a "good turn".

We had a great time and it was one of our better pack nights.

Free Day at the Museums

Yesterday was free day at both the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum. Of course, that did not include the special attractions (like the dolphin show) or include the cost of parking. "Free" day cost me a small fortune, but it was worth it because the kids had a great time.

We went to the Field Museum first and even though it was free day we still had to stand in line for 15 minutes to get our hands stamped. I was annoyed at this mostly because it took us forever to get to the museum because the "expressway" was jammed with cars.

Once we were stamped we headed to the wildlife area where we looked at a lot of stuffed birds. I was really pleased that the kids recognized many of them. Perhaps our trips to the various forest preserves have paid off by increasing their knowledge of nature.

After the wildlife area we went to the McDonalds restaurant that is in the basement of the museum. Thankfully there were no school field trips in the museum yesterday so there was plenty of seating available. The food renewed the kids' spirits and they were eager to go look at the dinosaurs. But, before we did that the kids got a couple of those wax / plastic figurine things out of the molding machine. I loved these things when I was a kid and I was happy to see the kids excited about theirs.

The dinosaur area of the museum is scaled down from when I was a kid. It has been changed to "The Evolving Planet". It starts with meteorites with amino acids on them and moves on to single cell creatures, and then moves through the dinosaurs and ends with mammals and the obligatory "diversity" talk and how humans are awful and have gummed up the whole works. I was amused to see an electronic sign, sort of like the deli signs that displays the number being served, that had a "28" on it and above it said "The number of species that have gone extinct since 8:00am this morning". How do they know? Is there someone standing there counting and then phoning in? It's all hooey.

After that we went to the museum's "Sue Store", which is a gift shop that focuses mostly on dinosaur-type gifts. The kids were excited when they each bought a saber-toothed tiger plush animal.

On to the Shedd aquarium. The cashier at the Sue Store told us the best way to get out of the museum so we could walk over to the Shedd. Here's the fun part. Cami had to go to the bathroom and on our way there we found the coelacanth display in the bathroom hallway! Woohoo! I've been looking for this fish display for 10 years. About a decade ago I read a book called "A Fish Caught in Time" that discusses the rediscovery of this living fossil. This fish was supposedly extinct millions of years ago until some turned up. Anyway, the back of this book lists the Field Museum as having one. I've never found it...until yesterday. I was very excited.

The Shedd Aquarium was fun but it was more crowded than the Field Museum. We were lucky that we were at the huge "reef" aquarium at feeding time. This involves a diver that swims around inside the aquarium while someone else talks to the crowd and to the diver. She explained the various fish as the diver fed them and she would ask the diver questions while he was in there. Ian asked a question that she relayed to the diver. He asked why the big fish don't eat the little fish. The answer was that they keep the big fish well-fed. Way to go Ian for not being shy to ask a question.

I was hoping to take a lot of pictures of the fish but the aquariums were so dark it was almost impossible. Someone needs to turn the lights on in there. At one point the kids were talking to a worker there who was giving a demonstration about snakes. I was taking pictures of her and the kids and at one point she asked me not to take flash photography. Oh well.

The kids had a great time. I had a great time, but I'm pooped out today. And my legs hurt from standing all day. In a couple of weeks Ian is going to the Museum of Science and Industry and hopefully I will be able to go as a chaperone.

He's growing up...but he's not there yet

Ian is growing up, and I think he's really getting big, but last night he put on my pants and he looks really small in them. Of course, when he was born he weighed only 3 pounds and his whole body would have fit in one of my shoes, so I suppose that he really is getting big.

Cami is growing also, but her growth is not so much in size but in her face becoming less child-like. She's becoming a real cutie.

Hungry Hungry Ducks

The ducks are back in the lagoon on the Northwestern campus, and they seem to be very hungry. My kids came with me to work the other day because the schools were closed due to snow. We went to the lagoon to feed the ducks and to my surprise the ducks came up out of the water and came on to the sidewalk and ate right out of my kids' hands.

I'm Sleepy....

The other night I just could not get Cami to bed. No matter what I did she would not settle down. She was bouncing around like crazy and basically being really loud...and then all of a sudden it stopped. I looked at Cami and she had completely pooped out. Phew!