From {Idea} to {Reality}

It only took me 8 months, but by gosh, I got er done!

Happy about that. Cause it seems I have a lot of ideas that just kind of take root in my head but never really bloom... so anyway....

{the idea}

Last summer, we went to the OKC Science Museum. There were thousands of square feet of interesting exhibits and interactive amazement. But Luke was obsessed with 5 square feet of the place - with The Peg Board with dowel rods and ramps that allowed him to build a series of mazes and jumps for a little marble to roll through. We literally could not peel him away from it! The idea hit me later that afternoon... why not put a wall of peg board up in his room for endless building?

{the reality}

Finally, a couple weeks ago, I paid a dandy handyman to mount the peg board an inch away from the wall. I tried dowel rods, but they were too big and not fitting very well in the holes. And carving ramps from wood was not going to happen. Problem. But then when waking up one morning, it came to me to use the hardware that you can buy specifically for peg boards....and let Home Depot be my source for "toys" for his pegboard. Pipe insulation, plumbing pipe and a few funnels later, I had it figured out! And thankfully the end of this story doesn't go that Luke had outgrown the peg board. Not at all.

He has already spent a good chunk of his day making his {ideas reality.}

Here We Have the BCS Championship....

in Legos..... !!!
This Luke and Ellie's football field creation....complete with yard lines, goal posts and bleachers.Here is the ultra-competitive coach....
.... the raucous crowd....

... the "impartial" refs

I didn't get a picture of the concession stand in back of the bleachers or the skittles for sale. No kidding.

Still in the works, a scoreboard!

I hope it shows AUBURN and Cam Newton as the winner. Go Tigers!

Luke, Lauren, and Lincoln Logs

Some days, it seems that we could take up residence on the top floor of FAO Schwarz and the kids would still be bored. They'd still walk around, shoulders down, sighing, "I dooooooooon't haaaaaaaaaave anything to dooooooooo." GRRRR. As a mom, this goes all through me. But then are those magical moments when the air is just right, no one is tired, and they are feeling creative that they get started on something and just GO. Such was the case when Luke and Lauren got into the Lincoln Logs and became little architects, making a model of..... can you guess? Look really closely and think back a month or so....

It's BIG CEDAR!!! They worked for hours and hours to recreate the cabins, the stables, registration, and even added some creative touches like a shelter (in case of tornado) and a rock climbing wall.

Entrepenuers

These kids learn quickly! I gave the girls a handful of tattoos and a wet rag and told them to have fun. 10 minutes later, they had set up their own tattoo parlor, with 5 handmade signs and their own special tattoo applying station made of 2 water coolers. Cost: 50 cents per tattoo! So, the boys ran inside to.... guess who... and the next thing I know, I'm digging for quarters so my own son can get tattooed by his sister with the tattoos that I bought!! Ellie, Hallie and Brooke each made about 75 cents, after splitting their profits. I should have made them give me a piece of the pie!

Contraption

The Princess of Hearts loves boxes and strings and jump ropes and pocketknives and rocks and paper clips and little bits of nature. It is in her pockets that I discover all sorts of odds and ends that she has collected throughout her day... bottle caps, pieces of string and all sorts of other interesting stuff. On a good day, you could say she's an avid recycler and on a bad day, you could relegate her to a pack rat. Anyway, she also has great, creative ideas about what to do with all of her stuff, and a couple days ago, after school, she set off determined to make a contraption. Using part of her collection (a box, jump ropes, pieces of yarn and an old white plastic parachute from an ORU game) she created a state-of-the-art-box-parachute that was supposed to fly open at the tug on the yarn. I didn't have the heart to tell her it wasn't going to work, but just allowed her to experiment over and over and over again. She thought the air by the fence may be a little different than by the fort, so she tried each place several times. She also attempted different ways of jumping. The parachute never quite carried her to the ground the way she imagined, but I couldn't help but get a kick out of her t-shirt that day. The message couldn't have been any more perfect: "Little girl Big dreams"