What a fun weekend!

Bug's dad had to work, so we hopped on the train and headed "home". After a yummy breakfast with Aunt Pat, we walked around town and visited some old friend...and made a brand-new one! Thomas is one week old. He came a bit early...heard Bug was coming to town, I guess.

We spent the day at the Celebration of MN Children's Authors & Illustrators. Always a fun event. Here's Bug and a friend, climbing on Max. (the creator of Mudboy...Bug's favorite sculpture)

Bug was a little sad when I told her that David LaRochelle wouldn't be at the show this year. I emailed him and found out that while he wasn't doing a reading at the show, he MIGHT come down for part of the day. You should have heard the SCREAM when Bug spotted him. Here she is with David and the picture/story she made for him.

We met Nancy Crocker and loved her book, Betty Lou Blue. Here she is with Bug after signing the book for Bug.

Here is Bug as a giant purple fish. She loved this.

This year, Bug decided that she was big enough to try the stilts...although she said she didn't want to fall and get stitches.

He got her to the tree where she was supposed to hang on and just practice walking in place for a bit, to get used to the weight. She immediately wanted to be done. We got a few more steps out of her and called it done. I think she'll give it another go next year.

Leaf girl

I took these a few weeks ago and forgot to post them. The girl was having fun with the BIG leaves from the tree in the neighbor's yard.

Of course, in Bug's world, EVERYTHING is a hat!

A few new drawings.

Bug is always busy, drawing. I like this first one a lot. She had a puppet-making class this summer and this is a drawing of one of the puppets that she made. He is playing basketball. Notice how she wanted to show that the ball was bouncing, so she drew it multiple times, and each one is colored in a little lighter than the last. Very cool. Oh, and at the bottom is a swingset, but "It's very far away. That's why it looks small". In the middle is his teddy bear and there is a cactus next to that.


This cookie-eating bat was made for the owner of the local candy store.

Bug & her dad just saw Wall-E. She drew this afterwards.

Fun with geodes!

We're learning about rocks & minerals, so we got out the "break your own geodes" kit this weekend. We didn't crack all of them...just a few. Here's Bug's dad showing her the proper hammer technique.

Bug gives it a whack.

Now, to reach inside and see if it worked....

She cracked it!

Sadly, this one had no crystals inside. Bug was happy anyway!

Let's try another!

Crystals!

There were 2 really small geodes in the kit. Bug smashed one of them. It was purple inside. Yay.

Nature walk

The 3 of us took a walk yesterday. We found a little creek and this beautiful butterfly.

Then Bug found something....being Bug she said "It's so cute!"

Yep...a dead mouse.

Stitches

The girl has had very few minor scrapes or cuts....I guess she was making up for it all. On Thursday afternoon I heard a faint voice outside saying "ouch...ouch...ouch". There was Bug, sitting on the sidewalk....with blood everywhere. By the time I got her inside she realized she was bleeding and started crying and yelling. I called her dad (good thing he works next door!) and off we went to the emergency room. 3 stitches later, we were home. She's doing fine and has been telling EVERYONE about her stitches.

She's a reading machine.

Bug keeps surprising us with her reading skills. She was reading to me this morning and I wrote down some words that I hadn't heard her read before...I was surprised that she could read some of them.

confessions
warily
nervously
suspiciously
mischief

Time for school

Bug just finished her first week of homeschool. There was much excitement when she spotted these tracks on the driveway. She grabbed a book she got for her birthday that has life-sized animal tracks in it. I got her to the most likely page and she looked them over a bit before declaring them to be raccoon tracks.


We made our own "fossils", too. You can't see them very well in this shot, but you CAN see Bug's "new" chair. She loves it.

On the left is a tomato leaf. The "fossil" on the right is a feather.

Bug finished off her MUS Primer math book. She's a bit excited to be moving on the the next book!

One day she drew a huge panther on the sidewalk.

While working on the panther, she found a slug. We moved it from the grass to the sidewalk with a stick, so that we could get a good look at it. It was MUCH smaller than the slugs we saw in Washington. Thankfully.

Guitars and rock stars.

Can you find Bug? She's nearly invisible in her yellow t-shirt in front of the big Gibson tour bus.
Here she is, inside the bus, trying out a Paul McCartney model Epiphone. (you gotta play them left-handed!)

Bug got to meet John Corabi, former singer of The Scream, Motley Crue and Union. Just before this photo, he asked Bug if he could give her a kiss. She offered up her cheek.

p>

The guy behind John is laughing because John just excused himself from a chat with "the guys" to hear what Bug had to say. From the looks of her, I'm guessing it was "Hey, John....guess what's behind my back."
It was a long day at the guitar shop.

A few more pics.

Bug recently discovered our collection of Calvin & Hobbes books. We often find her in this pose with them.


One of Bug's dad's co-workers put this together with a few pics he'd taken of Bug over the past few months.

Bruce the Bug Guy

Bruce the Bug Guy visited our library yesterday. Luckily, I had my camera with me and the mystery moth photo was still on it. He told us that it's an Imperial Moth. Yay. Mystery solved!

Bug got to check out this BIG caterpillar close up.

Can you hear the giggles? She really liked this moth.

Miss Sherrie (the librarian) was very brave, and held the moth, too. (she did vanish when the tarantula came out.... Bug's friend, Kaz, thought that the tarantula (named Rosie) was cool.
Bug liked Rosie, too. I wish that I had a sound recording. She was laughing so hard.

Stockholm Art Fair

We spent last Saturday at the Stockholm Art Fair. It's always fun. The weather was perfect, the music was great. Bug was thrilled that they had added to the play area.

Here she is on the spinning rings of death. (Bug is in brown)
With her buddy, Yata.

Our former neighbor, Angela, had this lovely piece on display.

Check out the title....

Bug goes for a spin. DON'T JUMP!!!

Bug was happy when she realized that she was big enough to push the other kids this year.
Will she do it?
A new skill was mastered...Bug had never tried this before. I helped her one time and that was it. I'm not sure how many times she did this in the 5 hours we were there...but it was a lot.