What a Wednesday!

First off, did you see the lunar eclipse? We did; the girls stayed up late and watched the entire process happen. Thanks to the heavens for making tonight a very clear night, and thanks to the school district for having no school tomorrow so we could stay up. (I probably would have let Lauren be late were there school tomorrow.)


Annika, who just loves space and all that is related to planets and such, was busting out of her seams with excitement tonight. AND, to make it better .... I read that there was some triangle with the moon, a really bright, blue, star ... and Saturn! (Annika's second favorite planet - argumentatively her first favorite, since Pluto has been down graded; Annika, however, does not accept the fact that Pluto is no longer a planet.) Sweat, Wonderful Bill got out the telescope and the girls took turns looking at the moon through the telescope. Then, during a somewhat lull about 2/3 of the way through the eclipse, Bill decided to find Saturn with the scope. I did not think you would be able to see anything, but WOW! It was very teeny tiny, but you could see the rings of Saturn through our telescope! How awesome that was! We let the girls each take a look, but I am not convinced that Annika really saw it, due to her age and the fact that it was soo very small. But heck, I did and it has left me feeling kinda giddy still!



Earlier in the day Annika and I made a city with the girl's blocks. What started out as a simple little fun way to play with Annika, and maybe turn it into a little "social studies" project, turned out to be an all day adventure for the two of us! We started the city around 10:30 this morning. We had lunch, snack, and did about 4 loads of laundry in between playing, but we spent a good deal of the entire day creating and playing (mostly creating) with our city.



We started out with their blocks that have pre-made buildings on them, so naturally she said, "this is the post office, this is the hospital," etc. But we also talked about each building, the people that worked in that building and what those people did. We talked about what stores and buildings a town would need, and what she liked to do outside of our house. We had a library, a gas station, schools, a zoo, and neighbors' houses too. Then, she said she wanted to make Grandma's house. OK, I said. So she took a house block and walked from our "toy" room to our living room - out of view from the city and probably the farthest away she could get! She came back and said that Grandma's house was far away, and she could not see it from our house, so that is why she put the block house in the living room. Good idea to me!


Then she created a farm and a park with a pond full of water birds. After creating the farm and putting the animals in the farm, she decided we needed Nanna and Poppa's house too. But since the farm burnt down last year, she gave them a separate house a short ways away from the farm. (The fire she remembers was a small rental house on my parents property that my father donated to the fire department for training purposes. The girls happened to spend the weekend at Nanna and Poppa's the day the house was scheduled to be burnt down.) Then, Annika decided she needed a library for Nanna, since the two of them used to go to "Nanna's library" for story time a few years ago when I needed to work in Lauren's preschool class. Not forgetting Grandma, she grabbed another block and gave Grandma her own library too, in the living room of course!


Later, as we were traveling about our newly created town, Annika borrowed the neighbor's car (there were only three or four vehicles, so she decided we all had to share) and drove to the post office. She had a letter she was sending to Friend Carol. So "our" car drove to the PO, and then the Mail Truck took off to Friend Carol's house, in the city. But, after delivering Friend Carol's mail, she smiled and kept on driving .... all the way to California, to deliver a special surprise package to Grandma.







Annika and Grandma's house
Grandma's Library


This whole project was just so much fun! I wish the blocks had been set up in a better location so we could have kept them up for more play tomorrow. As it was, Mulligan kept coming over and knocking them over. I had some big Godzilla image in my head, but figured Annika would not understand any reference, so I had to chuckle to myself!