Easter

We celebrated Easter on Saturday at Grandma and Dziadziu's house.  Sean looked for "hidden" eggs in the backyard.  We then all made Peep dioramas, an idea stolen from a newspaper.  On Easter Sunday at Mass Sean wanted to know why the choir was singing about salt (they were singing "exalted")

Sean and his egg booty.  Plastic Easter eggs come in all sorts of cool shapes now.

Peep diorama Grand Champion: Grandma's circus.

Sean's Peep sculpture

Dave's diorama of a Peep gym thingy

Joanne's "Running of the Peeps"

Barbara's "The Last Supper"

Dziadziu's Peep surgery

Tripi to Baytown/Sylvan Beach

The Saturday before Easter we took a trip to Baytown to see a bald eagle family that has nested there.  We then went to a very foggy Sylvan Beach in LaPorte.

Volcano from Grandpa

Grandpa sent Sean a Magmasaurus Magic Volcano Toy in the mail.  You add water and the volcano erupts.  It slowly disintegrates and a dinosaur is inside.  The dinosaur grows over 3 days to almost fill the plastic jar!  The Elmo Easter basket seems pretty amazed, too!

Cheez-It Scrabble

During a 2am snack session this morning I was struck with the need to count how many of each letter is in a box of Cheez-It Scrabble Junior.  The chart below compare the percentage of each letter in the Cheez-It box with the percentage of each letter in the official Scrabble game.  They actually match up pretty well... (there may be sampling error in my interpretation of whether a cracker was an "N" or a "Z")

New Windows (Mostly)

Today our new windows were installed!  This is something we have wanted to do since we moved into this house, but the cold winter and the drafty old windows pushed us forward.  They were ordered about a month ago and came in last week.  World of Windows spent 12 hours on them today and got the old ones out and the new ones mostly in.  They still have 3 hours of work tomorrow to finish putting the outside trim and caulk in place.


On another note, Sean taught me a new word the other day: Reggiano.  Apparently real parmesan cheese, from several regions in northern Italy, is called Parmigiano-Reggiano - especially on one of Sean's three favorite shows: Rachel Ray.  Last week Dziadziu broke out a jar of Parmigiano-Reggiano and Sean recognized it, somehow, and called it by its correct name.  No one is really clear where he picked that up.

Guest Room: Before

Guest Room: After

Missing Master Bedroom Window

Sean using his new emergency exit.  We have told him the new windows are so strong they will keep out the longhorns (which he is afraid of coming in the window at night.)  I know, don't start with me.

Entering Sean's Room

Sean peeling off the window sticker (for Aunt Keri, who hates for people to buy new windows and leave the stickers on)

One more sticker left...

Bayou City Art Festival Spring 2010

Sean spent Saturday night at Grandma and Dziadziu's so we could have a date night.  He reportedly had fun, but got very little sleep.  Sunday we met picked him up and met Darlene at the Bayou City Art Festival, spring edition, in Memorial Park.  It was a beautiful day.

Sean shows off the mini-art car he made

Who needs art when you have dirt?

This guy was very cool.  It is a person in a very realistic tree costume.  At one point when we were watching him he crept up behind a two people and then bent over and shook his branches - scared the art right out of them.

Sean poses by a metal alligator (with a moving head) for the Johnson's

Sean fell asleep in the wagon on the walk back to the car. That is a tired boy.

Pearland Easter Egg Hunt

On Saturday we got moving early and went to the annual Texas City Trash Bash.  Area petrochemical plants and other organizations get together to clean public areas of Texas City.  It used to be focused on the Texas City Dike - at 5-miles long the world's longest man-made fishing pier.  It is now closed "until further notice" due to damage from Hurricane Ike, it will cost $5 million to repair and might be done by October.  (and some people think it is taking me a long time to get ISP's Administration Building re-opened after Ike - we should be in the building by June!)  The clean-up now focuses on a public park on the Texas City Levee.  The levee was built after Hurricane Carla in the early 1960's and saved the city's bacon during Ike.  ISP, traditionally the smallest of the area plants, although not so much any more due to "reductions in force" at two other plants, always has a great turnout of employees, family, and friends for this effort.

After cleansing the levee we went to a huge Easter egg hunt in Pearland. Sean scored big:

Rodeo Houston

On Friday night Sean's Cousins spent the night here - 3 i s a lot of kids!  Nick and Heather were at the Rodeo that night.  We drove in and meant them Saturday morning to go to the Livestock Show.  The kids loved it so much that went back today as a smaller group.  Sean had the place to himself, for a little while...

Science Museum/Butterfly Center

We made a visit to the Houston Museum of Natural Science. They are just now kicking off an expansion that will double the size of the museum. They definitely need the space to compete in modern times. The Welch Science Hall, which was very cool 10 years ago, is in serious need of updating. Sean loved the dinosaur exhibits, which we went back to several times.

Daddy's Chair Goes Bye-Bye

We finally found a replacement for Daddy's much loved chair (which unfortunately was more loved by Barley.) Sean likes the new chair a lot, and the chair is liberally coated with SmartyKat ScratchNot. It is a cat safe cat repellent. If it does not work we may need an cat repellent that is unsafe for cats.

Safety Information: Store out of cat's reach when not in use (why? so it can be used against humans?). Intended for pets only (there goes using it to keep Sean out of daddy's dark chocolate). Keep out of reach of children (double drat). Do not take internally. Use only as directed. Do not spray on pets (Come on, what fun is this stuff?).

• 1% Lemon Oil
• 0.2% Eucalyptus Oil (no more pet koalas)
• 3% SP115C (secret ingredient, no info on internet)
• 1% PEG-7 Glyceryl Cocoate (penetration enhancer?)

Barley's Old Chair

Sean and Dziadziu Sunday night - getting close to bed time...

Children's Museum

Last weekend we made a quick visit to the Children's Museum.

"Fish are not for eating!"

This dam dam won't work

What is that big glowing orb in the sky? A sun? Which sun? We don't have one of those. (It has been a cloudy, rainy, and cold 2010 so far)