Christmas Stuff

The annual star placement.

Derrick and Jack did the cookie house this year.  Very elaborate and colorful.

We also went to a lantern walk to celebrate the solstice at Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary.

First, we each made a lantern.

 Then we listened to a story about the solstice and went on a short hike.

We got to have some hot chocolate after the hike.

Jack likes the music for the Nutcracker.  Not wanting to spend $200 for us to go to the ballet and take the chance of Jack not liking it, we instead went to the Urban Nutcracker in Boston which uses a lot of Duke Ellington's version of the Nutcracker music and has different types of dancing other than ballet.  Jack remained interested until almost the end, but I think all of us were ready to go after two hours.

Jack had most of the week off from school and Derrick had time off work, so they got around to baking.

Jack decorated these ricotta cookies and was pretty proud of himself.

- S.

Lego Discovery Center

A few weeks ago we finally broke down and took Jack to the Lego Discovery Center in Somerville.  It was Star Wars weekend, so that was further motivation to go.  (Jack is into Star Wars now which is actually my fault because I got Derrick a Star Wars graphic novel which Jack took to immediately and things snowballed from there.)

Anyway, we spent the afternoon at the LDC and it was fun, but basically an expensive indoor playground with Lego.

The Lego displays of Boston are pretty cool.

They are also somewhat interactive which Jack enjoyed.

There was a section to make vehicles...

and then you could race your creation against other peoples.

There was a little movie theater which showed Lego movies that were 15-20 minutes in length which was perfect for Jack.  This was his first movie theater experience and I think he was a little weirded out by the 3D aspect, but seemed to enjoy it overall.

Making a giant tower on the earthquake table.

 I don't know that we will be rushing back here, but it was a good experience this time.

- S.

Leaf Jump

Catching up on some old stuff before the Christmas glut.

Click on the square in the lower right corner to make it full screen.

- S.