Family Ride with the Oscar Box

It's over. The nice weather has ended and Fall is decending into Winter. But the weather held out long enough for us to have one last family bike ride. (It was also the first.) The only obstacle was how to bring Oscar.
In Calfornia we had an small, old car seat that we pulled the handle off of. It fit pretty well in the trailer. But it didn't come with us on the move. By the time we wanted to go on bike rides with Willa, she was big enough to be belted in. But David found a solution with an old diaper box and strapping tape.

Behold! The Oscar Box:

Don't let the face fool you, he LOVES it.

And it fits in the bike trailer very well.

Willa approved.

We didn't want to go far so we took the mid town green way.  Enoch did a great job on his little bike.

We stopped off at the MidTown Global Market.

The green way is an old railroad bath converted to a bicycle highway.  There are a few shops on the sides, places to sit, lots of open space, and places to park your bike.

We bought some goodies in the market and raced home to eat them.

Our delicacies, from the Salty Tart.  We bought six different cupcakes and one bar and split them seven ways.  So very, very good!

And Oscar?  He was fed, changed, and asleep before the cupcakes hit our bellies.  But he approves-- baked goods, bikes, desperate cardboard inventions--it's the Martin way and Oscar is Martin all the way.

Mpls Art and General Conference

Conference weekend included IHOP on Saturday, as is traditional, and a walk, some temporary tattoos, & a cake.

We went down to walk by the Mississippi near downtown.

It's ALL good.

Martin Moment

Oscar Holding

Taran and Oscar October 2011.
Taran reads his Garfield comics while keeping his littlest brother upright and happy; therefore, making him unhappy.

We Be Loyal

This summer Taran my boy (which is his formal nickname)became a Webelos in the Boy Scouts of America Cubs program. In order to attain such a rank, he needed to learn all sorts of useful and not so useful information.  Like how to build a birdhouse, decorate t-shirts, how to fish, hike and even to build and launch rockets.

Taran preparing his rocket for launch.

Calvin holds up Taran's rocket after launch.  It exploded.

So for his next big step in rank advancement, Taran dressed up and we headed off to the church.

Where he was awarded his bear patch and presented me with a pin.

Good job my boy.

the Adventures of Bumpa & Baby Moose

Willa's latest toy crush has to be my favorite so far:  she has combined the dollhouse grandpa--whom she calls Bumpa--with a baby moose of unknown origin--whom she insists is a horse. 

 Bumpa and baby moose go on amazing adventures that involve screaming and giggling. 

But I don't know what they are; the moment I get too close Willa, Bumpa, and baby moose stop their gallivanting and stare at me until I move to a safe distance.

So I'm forced to try to take pictures from a distance.  Even then, I am regarded with suspicion.

So one day when Willa was busy with breakfast, I got a quick shot of the dynamic duo before they had to fly off to another adventure.

Rock on Bumpa and baby moose.  Rock on.

mARTin

My children come home with art from school everyday. Every. Day. That's a whole lotta paint, paper, and glue. I enjoy and appreciate all of it, however, it's just too much.  Most of it goes from the back pack to the garbage (quietly), some of it goes to the art wall upstairs, but there are some pieces that I just don't want to let go.
They are usually the ones done here at home. They come straight from imagination to the paper. Here are a few examples...

Enoch did this picture of a car and the people he loves in first grade. He is the driver.  Taran, Willa, and Daddy are on board.  His mother, Calvin, and Emma are specifically excluded.  It is titled "Our Car."

Taran, the family cartoonist, expressed his scholarly ambitions in this one...

And he, Taran, made a character in this one.  It's a beaver growing trees.

The copies just don't do justice to the originals.

Martin Moment

Martin Pile! 

My kid is a genius?

As we began our school readiness campaign--shopping for school supplies, dragging through closets for closed toed shoes, and cleaning out backpacks--I found an official looking manilla envelope smashed in the bottom of Taran's backpack.  It had his report card and his state testing scores.  The report card was pretty good.  My boy is average in the school way and that's all we strive for but the standardized test scores always come out somewhat funky.

For instance my boy is SUPER SMART.

Check out that growth...!

Or not...

What Calvin Did This Summer

We went to my old preschool [Corcoran Park].  We got there and found all the colors of paint.

 

We dipped our hands in the paint we sticked them on a board and painted a flower.

 

The picture I talked about...

 

We ate ice cream floats.

[Painting doors is an annual event for our neighborhood.  The neighborhood association is trying to bring art to everyone.  If you come through our hood you can see the painted doors.  They are quite pretty.]

What Emma Did This Summer or A trip to the downtown library

Someday Emma will reference this post in the therapy that she will no doubt need because of her deprived and cruel upbringing. It will help her to make a major breakthrough. Family blogging, Saving lives...

So my mom is forcing me to do this, and she took all these pictures, so I can only give you a second rate view.

Willa is sitting in one of the bookshelves in the little kids area.
Apparently, Willa doesn't think of them as bookshelves.
Toot, toot!

I do have first opinion on this picture, though. We took the light rail to and from the library.
Right here, I'm trying to read my new book on this very noisy train, and Taran is making it even more difficult, since he was pointing at something out the window and talking loudly right in my ear. (This is on the light rail, just so you know)
So ends the post my mom forced me to write!
Emma