paper boats

Quite a few weeks ago, Spud asked me to look online and find the directions on how to make paper boats, as he'd seen on the Curious George cartoon. I did, and we each made one together so he could see how it was done, and by two days later, he had made at least 50, of various shapes and sizes.  We had a stack of pink boats made from some scratch paper just sitting on a shelf for quite a while.

While on a date a few weeks ago, David and I went to BYU and played Bocce on the lawn and then walked along the path south of campus.  They've made a lot of improvements to it over the past couple of years and it is beautiful!  There is a stream (I guess) running along it and it struck me that it would be the perfect place to race the boats that Spud made.  So the following Sunday evening we gathered up enough boats for us to each have two and we raced them.  It was fun to watch and "despair" as our individual boats took on water and became soggy masses of paper (which we responsibly fished out and threw away).   I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure that one of Spud's boats (we labeled them with our first initials) actually made it the farthest, which seems only fair since he was the one who did all the work!

Prior to boat racing, we spent some time admiring the couple of dozen or so ducklings in the pond.  It was fun to remember our duckling adventure of last year as we watched these little cuties swim and cheep around the pond.  

10 years!

In some ways, it's hard to believe it's been ten years, but in other ways, it is hard to remember life before our wonderful daughter joined us. 

We figured entering the DOUBLE DIGITS was something worth celebrating (since she may very well be in them for the rest of her life) so we let her have a party with friends this year.  A definite advantage (from the mom's point of view) of parties at this age is the kids can do most things on their own if you just give them the direction and materials.  We had planned to make these little pom pom guys that Noodle calls "Puffles," and I was quite impressed to see the creative things the girls came up with to make their Puffles unique.  They spent a lot more time and energy at it than I would have anticipated, but everyone seemed to really enjoy  the project.  I'd also bought some polished rocks on a whim from the dollar store and those were quite popular with some of the girls as well. 

They were a great group of girls to have around, and I'm so glad Noodle has such good friends.  Here's to the next 10 years, sweetie!