The White House

This week Quinn continued to use his newly mastered skills and unbuckled himself from his carseat.  We were parked at the time and waiting for friends to meet us at the park on Tuesday.

Quinn\’s buddies Lucas and Kaiden arrived and we had a fun, long afternoon in the park.

On the way home from school on Wednesday Quinn kept telling me to catch up to this truck.  He wanted to grab a Dibs for both of us.

On Thursday we planned to drive to Maryland first thing in the morning and I got the car packed and ready to go by 9 am.  And then Quinn woke up with a very raspy voice and told me that he didn\’t feel well.  Quinn NEVER says that he doesn\’t feel well.   We had recently been with Sullivan who was at home with strep throat so I decided to take Q to Dr. Lois just to make sure it wasn\’t strep.  Dr. Lois thought it was the virus she was seeing so much of so we hit the road to spread our germs in Maryland.

Friday was a beautiful day so we took in a new nearby nature center. It is gorgeous, inside and out.

Lots of stuff for kids to touch and great information for adults.

The centerpiece is this sculptural tree with handpainted banners.

There\’s a \”Discovery Room\” for the kids with lots of nature oriented stuff for them to do.  Quinn and Grams put on a nice little puppet show for me.

On Saturday morning Don took the train down.  We picked up Ben on the way back to Grams house so they could have a little uncle-nephew quality time.  Then it was off to lunch where we had some fun with a new iphone photobooth app.  For some reason the tongue is a requirement.

We left Quinn overnight in the capable hands of Grams and Pam and headed out in the snowy weather to Frederick.

It was great to see Nick & Suzie and celebrate Nick\’s 50th birthday with him.   This is Nick with 15 year old Emily.  Nick and Suzie are parents of a 15, 14, and 13 year old.  Makes my 4 year old seem eazy-breezy.  But they are great kids and it was fun hanging out with them on Saturday night.

And that\’s a wrap of our wonderful week.

Every year for Halloween Sundance School does a costume parade with a special theme.  This years theme was Outer Space.  After much deliberation, our family of three decided on a robot costume for both Sundance and Halloween.  We started with an inspiration picture we found on the internet and took off from there.    The creative team of Don & Amy were pretty pleased with our final product. Quinnbot was just about over the moon and would have gone to bed in the costume if we had let him.

Here\’s Quinnbot trying on the costume yesterday before papa shortened the arms.  

Here\’s a close up of the front.  The base is a rubbermaid container painted with a hammered silver spray paint.  The arms are dryer vents that Don really cleverly attached to the box so that Quinnbot could still move his arms around.  We added battery operated lights, pictures and signs printed off the internet and  little reflectors.  

The back is so cute.  Quinnbot really like the \”Danger Robot\” warning.   We held the whole thing together with some adhesive velcro straps covered with duct tape.

Quinnbot is pretty happy with what he sees.

Here are some scenes from the Costume Parade today.   It was great to see Quinnbot so excited about his costume and the parade.  This is his first year of even remotely liking a costume.

Here comes Miss Bess\’ yellow group.  Miss Bess is on the left and school founder, Miss Terry, is on the right.  You can see Quinnbot 2nd in line.

He is so happy!  The hat is a spray painted oxyclean bucket with two reflectors and a spring out the top.   He even got some new tennis shoes that light up.

The class (and parents) paraded around the whole school.

Time to line up for the papa and mamarazzi!

All the other classes were in different places around the school to watch the parade.  They were all cheering and clapping the kids in costume.  I heard lots of kids talking about the robot 🙂

Then it was up on stage in the auditorium.

Don and I put alot of time and effort in to the costume but it was a well worth it to see Quinnbot so excited!   We love you little robot!

Stacey captured this great shot of us getting ready to watch the 3D movie Ice Worlds at the Central Park Zoo.