Christmas Train

Every  year, Grandpa H puts up a Christmas holiday train.  This year he got a new passenger car.  I believe the interior lights up and it has passenger seating and everything.




 A and Grandpa unpacked the rest of the train.  It's a Bachman, G scale.






 There are various figures who come with the train.  There's an engineer, a Santa, and three Elves. 







 The Engineer shoves coal into the engine.  He had a little mis-hap the trial run and fell out of the coal tender.








 The train has a gondola car--filled with giant gifts--and a caboose.
 The caboose has a tendency to become uncoupled with the rest of the train.  I think the couplings have to do a kind of back-and-forth engagement before the caboose will stay attached.






















Once the train and track are set up, Grandpa will put in a smallish tree, a mirror (for the frozen pond) and various English Village buildings he modeled after a real English Village that is the Ancestral Origin of the Family (and which they visited about twenty years ago).

Last Days of Summer

The mid-September life guard knew all about this one...








"What?"

Meanwhile...

... back at Emperor Ming's Palace...

August Camping Trip

We went to the Redwoods.








The trees were huge.







  There were many photo opportunities.








We're not sure, but we think the thing A liked most about the Oregon Caves was the Chateau.

The Medium Who Could

Scene:  Saturday morning.  The kitchen nook.  A is listening to an audio-recording of "The Little Engine That Could."

Book: "...Our engine has broken down and we're loaded with toys for children on the other side."

A: "The children are dead?"

J:  (Suffering from dead pirate fatigue):  "Augh.  The children are not dead."

A:  "The other side?"

J:  "It's not that Other Side."  (Thinking this is probably his fault for exposing The Child to the Fantasy Genre.)

Book:  "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..."

Opera Birthday

This year was the "Night at the Opera" Birthday.















 

The Duke Manchua greated visitors with song.

The cake.

Turned into a Victrola cake.

 There were many props.  The boat sailed between two banks of waves.

 Grandpa (and Grandma) came dressed as the audience.

 

 Meet me by the Ducal Palace of Manchua.

Science!

A's class participated in a science fair.  His exhibit was about making records harder to scratch.  He wanted to see how chocolate would protect records, but got talked into using aluminum foil and plastic wrap instead.  

He was a little shy for a video, but stood still long enough for this photo.

His old phonograph (shown here playing Enrico Caruso) was a hit.  Kids also got to scratch a sample record on purpose.  

We Went to Seattle in November...

... to see King Tutankhamen, 

and got wet.

If you look closely, the small figure under a jet of water in red is A.  The figure to the left is M taking a video (we'll have to see if we can find that...), and the figure standing close, but-not-too-close, is J.

Many Faces in Seattle

I was going through some old unpublished posts and re-discovered these photos from November 2012, taken in Seattle, when we went to see the King Tut Exhibit.

Life is hard on the frontier.

Quick May Update 2013

Whew.  Things have been busy, and there haven't been a lot of posts.  Here's some highlights.

A is really into opera, specifically Enrico Caruso.  He was working on a opera involving a princess who had been switched at birth by her evil uncle and was working on a farm; she goes to the farmer's market, and meets the prince, who is slumming it in the village as a jester.  Love at first site, secret wedding plans, and a sword fight at the end.  There was a lot of focus on the sword fight at the end.  A lot.  And not too many songs... so I'm not entirely sure, but I think the cast staged a revolt and now A is working on a new opera.

A's science project this year is "How do you make records hard to scratch?"  He wanted to see if records dipped in chocolate would be harder to scratch, but his teacher guided him away from that, so he used aluminum foil and plastic wrap instead.

Birthday Eight is coming up soon.  The list of loot has already been created, and seems to include a lot of --ahem-- vintage materials.  A probably would like the electrical arc cigar lighter from a local DIY-Steampunk-Vintage-Antique store...

Oh. Right, and there was an art class over Spring Break.