Rehabitation of Shelly, the Painted Turtle- Now with functional video

I joined Calvin and his class for a beach field trip up in Marblehead. I was in charge of the tide pool station, and as I was collecting creatures for the children to look at, I found a painted turtle struggling in the harbor.

A quick google search confirmed that painted turtles require a fresh water habitat, so after spending the morning as our star tide pool [guest] specimen, I brought it home to relocate it to a pond.

The kids took right to "her," and Calvin named her Shelly. She's missing a leg, but makes up for her lost limb with spunk and determination, and was constantly trying to swim through the plastic holding bin we had her in.

Here's the release video:


Calvin was pretty upset afterward, and went through all the stages of grief. He worried about things like her being lonely, never having a family, being eaten by predators, and getting lost. He's settled into acceptance and knows that we can go visit her pond and try to catch a glimpse of her in her new life.

Some Kids who Love their Dad

At dinner they went around the table and each told one reason why they liked him:

• Ivy: because he's sometimes silly and sometimes not (it was unclear if she preferred one over the other). But also she made sure to clarify that she likes me more than him.
• Bryn: because he always puts their needs before his own. 
• Calvin: because he introduced them to Candy Box.

Crazy Hair Day

Colonial Bryn

A-Doh-Bay

Calvin built an adobe house for his 1st grade structure project. Some of his favorite parts of the project:

• Taping off the windows and doors and finding them again once everything was dry
• Mudding the outside with leftover putty and putty knives
• Texturizing with sandpaper
• Using the heavy duty titanium loppers to trim the dowels for the roof beams
• Drilling holes to for the roof beams with an electric drill
• Spray painting
• Contracting out 3/4 of the landscaping (to Bryn)

Queen Isabella would be proud

Here's a throwback video I put together with my new video editing software (Premiere Elements)- Bryn was 6 when this was recorded.

The Battle Road

We went for a walk on the Battle Road in Lexington before the rain started. Many silly pictures were taken. There were tears of joy and tantrums. The British would have been scared.

The Ballad of the Dead Bird at the Church Outside

 

Ivy Dances into Four

Ivy is a whopping 4 year-old now. She loves princesses, pink and purple, dancing, flowers, rainbows, unicorns, ball gowns, sparkly anything, and zebras. But she also loves dirt, sticks, rocks, fighting robots with Calvin, smashing bugs, playing soccer, hiking, climbing trees, and still pulls really great faces.

Calvin Cruises into Seven

Beyblade battle in a makeshift stadium

Science Fair

Calvin is seven now, and enjoys building lego hero factory guys (and then he and Ivy spend hours setting them up and fighting battles), beyblades (Japanese spinning tops), Skylanders (even though we have no Wii), and is excited to start T-ball.

He and Bryn recently participated in the science fair. Bryn did a research project on black holes. Calvin tested the electroconductivity of different substances. At first he had an LED hooked up to a 9-volt battery, but the LED burnt out so he (at Peter's, "Father-of-the-Year"'s, suggestion) used his tongue to measure how hard the wires shocked him. when they were passing through different things like bread, spoons, vinegar, etc. A unique setup, for sure.