Growing up with Little Guy and Emmy

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

"Let's Pretend"

"Let's Pretend."

That's what I've been hearing from Emma ever since we started on this little project.

Emma LOVES to play with her Pet Shop toys (and Polly Pockets, My Little Pony, etc) and usually ends up on the living room floor. We decided that it would be fun to have a little playmat to play on...one that can be changed whenever she wants. So, we got a bit of green felt (on sale this week at JoAnn's for $2.49 a yard and it's 90" wide!), found the supply of other colors that were hiding in the craft room, and got to work. This is just about all her work/ideas, with a little cutting help from me. Nothing is attached, so it can be rearranged any way she wants.

We were going to cut out flowers, but then we remembered we have a box of the foam stickers. We left the sticker cover on and just put there where we wanted them.

The butterflies are very attracted to the pile of rocks!

One of the ponds, with a dock and boat.

The mountain, complete with Fairy house, Fairy, flowers, a pathway, and a little patch on top for a picnic.

The two small ponds.

The perfect place for a picnic!

Here she is telling me the pathway the Pet Shops will need to take to get

to the lake.

I think that these are about the cutest toys out there these days.

I love that they don't "do" anything, either. It all comes from the imagination.

Emma discovered that we hadn't included a desert habitat, so she added one.

I think she likes it!

The Cars

I found a few more pics of the guys' cars on my camera.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

2011 Pine Wood Derby

Last year's Pine Wood Derby was a bit of a disappointment. Bob and Ryan started their cars

near the end of February and had to have them done by mid-March. With this being smack dab in the middle of tax season, their cars were, to say the least, not the fastest in the pack! I think that both of them were out after two races. This year, however, they bought their cars in January and worked on them for several months.

Weighing in the cars. Ryan's was exactly 5 oz, and Bob's was 4.9 oz. The limit was 5 oz.

Ryan's car is the second one on the bottom row (red), and Bob's is the first one on the top row (blue).

This picture cracks me up. If you look close enough, you can see Emma sticking her tongue out just like the dragon on the cover of the book.

Getting ready to race! The guy in charge has written a computer program that works with the track and actually tells the mph that each car is traveling.

Yay!

Emma entertained herself at the coloring table.

Nana came to lend some support.

The boys from Ryan's Den.

Ryan won several of the heats, but ended up not placing. He did, however, get the trophy for the fastest car in his Den. Quite the improvement over last year.