Oxygen Day

This afternoon Paul took Nadia and Ian to the Joseph Priestley House for their annual Oxygen Day. Dr. Priestley discovered oxygen in England in 1774, and he lived the last 10 years of his life in our county (about 30 minutes from our house). Paul had planned to take the kids to Home Depot yesterday morning, but when I told him of this chemistry field trip (they watched chemistry experiments at 1:30), he decided to work at Kennedy Concrete yesterday instead of today as originally planned. Paul took the kids with him to work yesterday morning, and his parents took them to the Home Depot down in their area. Home Depot made the workshop extra special yesterday by having a guest appearance by Elsa (she signed Nadia's apron), free popcorn for the kids, and by playing music from Frozen while they completed their projects.

They came home last night with another one of Paul's Star Wars toys from his parent's house, and this morning Paul brought up some of his Star Wars

figurines from our basement. For two kids who have never seen any Star Wars movies, they both know a lot about Star Wars! They can't wait until I deem them old enough to watch the movies. I was thinking this morning that I can't recall any toys that I was so sentimentally attached to like Paul was to these Star Wars toys. I'm sure I had some toys that I loved, but I just don't have any memories of them. I mostly remember reading voraciously, practicing the flute and piano, riding my bike, watching tv (shows like "I Love Lucy"), and playing board games with my family. Speaking of which, we had fun playing Operation with Nadia last night! Well it will be interesting to see some day if our grandchildren (hopefully we'll have some!) enjoy some of our children's toys as much as they do (ex. Nadia's princess collection).

Oliver and I were home alone yesterday for 10 hours. In addition to playing with him, I did some extra cleaning around the house such as straightening up my dressers and closet, organizing our medicine cabinets and the cabinets under
the sinks in our bathroom, sweeping out and straightening up the garage, etc. In the process I did some purging - some to the garbage and also filled a couple of garbage bags of stuff to donate. It felt so strange only having one child at home, but that will be the case during Oliver's last couple of years of high school. To make the day a bit more special for him (he was really missing his siblings), I assembled the basketball hoop I got him for his birthday and charged up the Lil Kawasaki that I got him for $5 at a yard sale (brand new they cost over $100). As you can see from the pictures, he loved it! He just needs to grasp the concept that he has to keep pushing the red button (with his thumb) if he wants to keep going. He would push it and then let go. Those were his two birthday presents, but since he's not quite old enough to comprehend birthdays (the other two eagerly anticipated their third birthday), I gave them to him five days early. Two presents for a two year old! He also had fun with the sidewalk chalk yesterday, although as you can see from the picture he used the chalk more on his face and clothing than he did on the driveway. I took him right upstairs and gave him a bath before dinner, whereas the other two got their bath and shower after dinner.