Marchie's World

This is Rachel and Puddy in the vet's office at the end. She wanted a pen before they gave her the shot so that she could draw that picture to show Puddy how she was feeling (sad).


 
 I found this note in our office 2 days later. "My cat died. I am sad." (She often gets her b's and d's backwards.) Heart breaking. I also spoke with her teacher who said she announced to the class the next day that her cat was dead. Her teacher loaned us a wonderful book called "The Tenth Good Thing About Barney" that I am going to purchase so we'll have to remind us of our pets we've lost. http://www.amazon.com/Tenth-Good-Thing-About-Barney/dp/0689712030/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338857143&sr=8-1

It's hard to believe it, but Archer turned FOUR today.  I don't know where the time has gone, I feel like he's still a toddler.  I catch glimpses of him every once in a while and wonder where this BOY came from, and I can easily see the teenager and man that he'll become.  Scary stuff.  I'm going to try not to blink again or he WILL be a teenager... sad stuff.

We had a bunch of fun activities planned to celebrate this weekend.   We were able to go to the circus at the Rose Bowl on Saturday, which was particularly interesting because Archie's jobsite was towering over where the show was held.   The circus featured a fairly well known clown, Bello Nock, who did a wonderful job.  He was very entertaining, and kept Archer on the edge of his seat as to what was going to happen.  He particularly liked the act with the spinning rig that has two rings on each end that the clown and another performer did a bunch of tricks on it.



Here is a picture of the arena with the clown and another performer on top of 60? ft spring poles. They climbed up with no harnaces, made the poles sway back & forth a bit, then they swapped poles and each of them slid down, firefighter style. The clown, of course, slid down head first.
 

Here's the field with Archie's jobsite looming overhead:


Today (Sunday) we went to the "Big Train Show" at the Ontario Convention Center.  There were tons of model trains of all gauge and size on display and for sale.  Archie is currently in the middle of a personal dilemma in his want to share his passion for trains with his son, and how much money it would cost to get a set up going, and also the ease of portability given our lifestyle (moving every few years).  He's got the beginnings of a plan, we'll see where this goes.  Anyway, both Archibalds loved being in the middle of the train world for a little while.

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I also love the sense of humor that seems to run among these RR afficianados.








After all of our fun at the train show, we went home in preparation for Archer's birthday dinner. When we gave Archer the choice to have anything within our power to give him, including going to any number of restaurants, he chose to have Trader Joe's Orange Chicken, with rice and broccoli of course... because that comes with it apparently in Archer's mind. He thinks it's all in a box or something (because I almost always serve those things together). We had a nice dinner, a homemade (box) train cake (as requested) and Archie made raspberry ice cream in the ice cream maker - Yum! Archer talked to family on Skype (he kept wishing everyone else a Happy Birthday!!) and opened his gifts before going to bed.
 

The first was with when I *thought* we were done, but I turned around and Rachel had added some finishing touches as seen in the 2nd one.  What do I know about cake decorating?  Apparently nothing.

As one of their year-end events, Rachel's school holds their "Evening at the Arts".  Each student got to choose a piece of their recent artwork to put on display and then the families are invited to school.

Rachel's class has been learning all about ocean life and their artwork revolved around that.  Rachel's was drawn with sharpie, then painted with water color paints.

  


Here is her whole class's work:


And here are ones that particularly impressed me from the other grades:

 1st Grade:

These were done in a similar technique to Rachel's with in & watercolor.



2nd Grade:



3rd Grade:



4th Grade:



5th Grade:



And finally, 6th Grade:


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Rachel made a picture frame for her brother:


She also got to spend some time with her friend Tarun.

All in all, a very fun night.