2013 Kite Festival....This year with actual kite flying!

Once again we went down to the National Mall with my brand new kite that I got for Christmas!

This year, we managed to get the kite up into the air! If you recall from LAST YEAR we had some trouble getting the kite up. Granted, I think that part of the problem was that we had bought a lousy kite, but the day also wasn't that windy. This year was gorgeous out, AND we had some heavy windy moments!

We got the kite up so high!

Dad helped me get it up by using his patented method of finessing the string once we got it up there!

Once he got it up in the air, he handed me the string, and I got to fly the kite myself!

We had it so far up, that it was a little scary, and I was sometimes worried, but ultimately I had a lot of fun flying it!

Next up, Mom got in on the action, and she also did a really good job of getting the kite up there, too!

We were both flying it when it was way up in the air, and even though there were a lot of other kites around, we did a pretty good job at not bumping into anyone else!

We had a lot of fun flying the kite together, and whenever the wind died down...

...it was my job to go and grab the kite and bring it back so that Mom could relaunch it again.

I even helped her relaunch it! It wasn't easy, but once I got the hang of it...

...we were back in business, and I ran around to get out of the way.

Once Mom had the kite settled nice and high against the gorgeous backdrop of that perfect sky, with the Capitol in the background....

She nudged it even higher!

I could barely keep track of it, since it was so high up!

She handed me the string again, and I can't tell you how exhilarating it was to be in control of it, flying it around the sky, and working so hard to keep it up there. It was nice when the wind settled into a nice pattern, and you could just minimally nudge the string to make sure it was kept up there...

Sometimes I got so worried because of how high up it was, but the fun always overwhelmed the feelings of stress that I had...

Even though I was having lots of fun, inevitably I got bored and started running around the Mall.

Dad caught me a few times, and we hung out together so we could rest...

...but only long enough for me to get back up and have him chase me again!

Thanks so much for my kite gift (I think my Great Aunt may have given it to me) and thanks for taking me out to fly a kite, Mom and Dad!

My take home hibernation project!

Who writes about homework? Just me cuz we make it awesome! That's right...we had another take-home project, and it referenced the hibernation station chapter that we had been focusing on at school. We had to choose an animal that hibernates, and then make a diorama about it. My first diorama! Cool, right!? When I first proclaimed that I wanted to do one on the frog, Dad thought I was nuts...he didn't know that some frogs hibernate. Well, I taught him something that day! :-)

We decided to print out little frog bodies on green paper, which I cut out...

While I did that, Mom put brown tape on a shoe box to make it look more swampy.

Once I finished cutting out both frogs from their green paper...

...Dad helped me get some frog face stickers, and I added them on to the cut out frogs to give them a bit more personality.

Mom and I glued the frogs to the bottom of the "swamp" we had built, and we added some colored puff balls, because really...making regular looking rocks would have been dull. I'd rather my rocks look pretty, right? Don't you agree?

Dad and I added some grass (I later added a tree, not pictured, for no real reason other than to make it look more aesthetically pleasing) and Mom put some plastic wrap on there to simulate water (frogs hibernate under water) and voila! It was done! Pretty cool, huh? We all thought it came out pretty awesome!

I wrote on the bottom of the diorama: Frog By Sam...and Dad helped me write: "The frogs are happy because they are underwater hibernating in the forest." I dictated it, and Dad wrote it down just like I asked him to...

The Elephant Parade!

Late one night a couple weeks ago, Mom and Dad kept talking about an elephant parade. I thought they were a little nuts, but hey...I got to go on the Metro train, ride downtown past my bedtime, and hang out in the cold watching PBS shows on my Dad's phone...even if that was all I ended up doing, it was pretty cool...

It turns out my Mom and Dad were NOT crazy...the circus was in town, and to help promote it, they had a small parade from downtown through some of Washington, DC, and ending at the building that they held the circus at.

We waited for awhile (They were running late)and I was getting a bit cold and impatient...but when they finally showed up, it was TOTALLY worth the wait!

Here, you can see that they are wearing light up circus badges on their heads. There are also some pretty girls on the elephants that were waving at people.

It really was an elephant parade. They walked right in front of us, which was super neat. After having seen elephants on TV, and at the zoo, it was wild seeing them up close, and in the middle of the city like that.

There were also acrobats and clowns who waved at us, and did some fun little tricks...and then just like that...it was all over! It was so brief, but so very cool. I certainly enjoyed the elephant parade.

I did also enjoy getting out of the cold, and heading back home to finally get to bed. :-)

Easter 2013 in Maryland!

From one holiday.....we jump right into another! (Of course, this one is a bit more timely) Happy belated Easter, everyone!! You can see our nice little haul in the pic above. We will officially be eating candy for the rest of the summer...We decided to stay in Maryland and not travel this year, which resulted in a quieter, more laid back Easter. We missed everyone, but it was a nice change of pace to not have to be battling traffic.

In addition to the lovely little treats that were left for us in our Easter baskets, Mom and Dad also hid some Easter eggs around the apartment, so we could have a good old fashioned Easter Egg Hunt! Here I was trying to figure out exactly how many I was going to be searching for, based on the one or two I had already found...

The only thing more exciting than finding the eggs...was discovering that the eggs contained more treats inside!! So yummy! I found a lot of the eggs on my own...

Like this one that our little stuffed monkey was holding onto for me...

But some of them required a bit more thought to find them...

I began getting some hints from Mom and Dad, since some of them were a bit more difficult to find than others...

I began tracking them down (Some of them were awesome eggs that Aunt Mallory had bought for me last Easter...thanks!) and one by one popping them open to see what was inside!

Slowly but surely I found them...hidden on bookshelves, inside Laura's cat tunnels, under pillows, behind chairs...it was a lot of fun looking for them!

Success! All the eggs were found...all the candy counted...it was a good morning for a hunt!

Then came a large box that Gramma Mindy had sent along to me.

Inside this delightfully decorated basket was more candy (of course) including lots of jelly beans which I love...a new video game for my leapster, and some other fun stuff!

It was very overwhelming...

As you can see, I was pretty pleased with the spoils of this little gift...

...and tried to figure out just how much of it I could fit into my mouth at one time. Turns out it was quite a few!

Last up, Mom, Dad and I colored some Easter eggs! Dad hard boiled them the day before, so they were good and ready for us. (Mom and Dad were emphatic about which eggs I could take from the carton to put into the dyes...turns out, non-hard-boiled eggs are not very resilient when dropped into glass bowls...

We did a whole bunch of colors, and got to color about a half dozen eggs.

Mom is really good as helping me get some nice even colors on the eggs.

And here is what we ended up with: half dozen eggs of various colors, all ready to be displayed and/or eaten!

Someone was feeling a little bit silly after all the chocolate he had eaten...here's a hint...it wasn't Mom.

Celebrating Christmas In Connecticut 2012!!

Whoops! Did I skip over Christmas in Connecticut entirely? Well...that'll happen to you when you're trying to do recaps from over 4 months ago....What better way to celebrate the coming of Spring...than to finish off my long-ago recap from the holidays at the end of last year! Looking at all these photos brings back so many memories...

Gosh, I miss Christmas...

Holidays mean so many things to so many people, and to me they mean getting to see my family! (In addition to all the other crazy stuff you get to do during the holidays!) And BOY did I see a lot of people!

We left Dad back in Maryland for a few days, while we went up to Connecticut early...Gramma Mindy's house was decorated so nicely for Christmas...

We went for a lovely walk in Grandma Mindy's neighborhood - We got to go over a cool bridge! Here is a shot of me warning Gramma Mindy to be very careful. I was worried about her falling, and wanted to make sure she stayed safe.

Past the bridge, we got a really nice vantage point to look out at the marsh - We saw a lot of really cool birds, which was nice!

We went to my Great Aunt Penny and Great Uncle Peter's for Christmas Eve - I got to hang out watching Christmas shows with my 2nd cousin Hank.He and I cozied right up in the chair, and even had some room left for Monkey!

Things livened up a bit when they pulled out the microphone. Hank and Aunt Mallory joined me for some singing, and we also pulled out some toy cars, because what goes goes better with singing than toy cars?!

EASILY the best gift of the night - talking Mater! He lights up when you push buttons on him, and says a bunch of stuff that I assume is from the Cars movie. I still haven't gotten a chance to see that movie yet!!

Christmas morning at Grandma Mindy's - so many action figures! Big action figures! Small action figures! Some had little toy weapons, some talked, and some you had to talk for. They were very cool, and it was nice to have such a crazy variety of action figures to play with. Richie was of course a bit jealous, so I let him play with me. He is pretty good at playing action figures!

JustRichy's present - A color-it-yourself spaceship! Aunt Mallory joined it and helped me get started on coloring this massively awesome spaceship! I was able to climb right in it!!!

It was really so much fun!

Look! Mommy fits in the spaceship! We can both climb in and be space people together!

We drove the spaceship, and took it to far off worlds...many of which looked like Gramma Mindy's kitchen. With a little imagination, however, things looked pretty spacey...

Christmas morning - hanging out with 2nd cousins Molly and Kaylee. We got to do a lot of visiting while we were in Connecticut, and I don't get to see them very often, so it was nice. They were pretty cool. :-)

We also had a late Christmas at Grandma Debbie's, where I managed to snag even more presents from everyone over there. Lots of cool stuff, and tons of fun time with the family.

I took some time before we left to play with some of my birthday presents. What is a world without a hard hat? Not a world I want to be a part of, thankyouverymuch! Now I can use my tools a little more safely, and get some solid work done in and around our apartment!

Before we left, we also had a quick visit with my Dad's friends. We stopped by the Dumas' house for awhile. It had been ages since I had been there, and they were very nice! We had lots of snacks, and played for awhile.

They were also super nice in giving me even more gifts...it was so generous of them! Our visit was brief, but we really made the most of it, enjoying lots of snacks and fun times before we headed out to see the Fantasy of Lights display out in New Haven...

Hot cocoa! What better way to warm up after a bunch of outdoor events, than to have hot cocoa at Gramma Mindy's...warm blankets, warm (not too hot) cocoa...what more could a boy ask for!?

What a great holiday...we did so much that it kind of makes sense for me to have spent months recapping it (or maybe that's just my excuse for taking months to recap it. :-)   )