Sylvia at the Children's Museum

Last week, Sylvia and I had a girls afternoon out together. We attended the grand opening of the newly remodeled Madison Children's museum. We had a good time.

There was a water area, where you could scoop and dump from a fountain, and all the water was recycled to rain onto the clear plastic roof overhead.

One of things the really caught Sylvia attention was a wheel that was hooked up to some pulleys on the ceiling. If you spun the wheel, you could move a giant cow up and down throught a large atrium area. She felt very powerful!



I thought the painting-on-plexi-glass exhibit was brilliant. The kids could paint, while looking out windows over Madison. When they were finished they could squirt water bottles on their painting, and use squeegees to clean it off. It was a fun, but relaxing area.

Sylvia also loved the new slide they put in. It is carved from a tree trunk. You have to climb up a pile of logs to get to the top. She is the perfect size for it.

She also loved the imaginitive play area, that was set up like a native village. She could play with the stuffed chickens, and load them into this cart to drive to market. We had fun playing in the little huts, and pretending to cook dinner for the baby chics over the open fires.

We have always called Sylvia our "Dessert Baby" because after all the chaos of having the older three so close together, we are finally able to take a slower pace, and enjoy the experience of parenting. I'll definitely have to take "Desset Baby" back to the Children's Museum. It was a great time.

Mellow Maya

Next week, it will be a year since we chose Maya from the Green Co. Humane Society. We chose her because she was more motivated by human interaction than treats, and she was more cautious with our then 3yr old Sylvia than any of the other dogs.




I think it was a good choice. When we are gone from home for very long, Sylvia will say "I miss Maya." Maya is like her best friend. She puts up with a lot from Sylvia. She allows scarfs to be tucked into her collar for dress up games, and crowns to be placed on her head.



Recently though, Sylvia devised a new game, which I was very impressed at Maya's tolerance for.

The new game was to put pencil top earasers on Maya's individual claws, so it looked like she had long nails. Then Sylvia would put rings on her. Maya just flopped over on her side, and put up with it all. It sure did look funny.

Asher's scouting summer

Asher has had a fun scouting summer. I went along for the bike-camp in June, and loved it. We road 50 miles on a rails-to-trails track. The trail went through some amazing old train tunnels, cut into dripping cold limestone rock. It was a really tough, but fun ride.
Asher also went to a week long summer camp in July and completed several merit badges. This month he went with his troop on a 3 day kayaking trip, where he had more adventure than he bargained for. - This is why mothers say lots of prayers. We are glad he came back safely.




Earlier this month, Asher and Noel both helped out with a friend's Eagle project. An old building is being turned into a Youth Center. The scouts helped build benches, flower boxes, and landscaped the front of the building.



It turned out beautifully. The old building is located on Main Street, and every time we drive by, I think what a great job those kids did.

Adventure Week 2010

Since Asher was going to be away at scout camp for a week, I decided to plan out an adventure everyday for the kids staying home. Thus, Adventure Week was born. Some outings panned out well... some didn't... but we sure did exhaust ourselves in the quest for local fun.

Another mom (Joyce) who helps with Mattias's cub scout den organized a camp-out in her backyard. One of her sons was also out of town at BSA camp, so the younger brothers had their own mini-version.

They had fun for hours in her pool, enjoyed good food, games, a craft, and of course... s'mores.



Sylvia and I loved sleeping outside in a tent... it was much cooler than our bedroom at home!


Sylvia just made herself at home with the boys. She made a puppet with them, and roasted marshmallows. The boys were very good about watching out for her.

On another day, we took a day hike in Kegonsa State Park. I had heard about a grove of ceder trees where the deer bed down. We went off to find some deer. What we found instead was a cool stump to climb up on, and take silly pictures with. See how strong Mattias is!


We also found some very good climbing trees.

As we were driving away, we finally did see a deer. We stopped on the road and watched it. It stood close by our car, and everyone was amazed. We had succeeded!



There were less thrilling outings as well. Geo-caching in the humidity, through swamps and swarms of mosquitoes was not a good idea. We also tried out a swimming beach on the lake in Madison, only to be grossed out by all the trash. Well... we tried, and did go where no McMullin had gone before. I'm glad we have another year before Adventure Week 2011 comes around.

Milwaukee Camping Trip

This week I took the kids camping outside Milwaukee, at S. Kettle Moraine State Park. The main point of this trip was to help Asher and a friend attend a 4 day referee training clinic. They held 4 hours of classes every evening. During the day, we had some great adventures.

Here is Spencer, our friend who is also an officially certified soccer ref now. Here he is displaying his cooking skills at our campsite.

Noel had a good time taking pictures of the sleeping boys in the car. They were usually exhausted, and slept whenever we drove anywhere.

It was so cute to see them all lined up like little dominoes. Noel did a great job as co-pilot, and helped me navigate all around crazy Milwaukee.

One day we went to a science museum, Discovery World. Mattias was in heaven here. They had rows and rows of different gear systems that you could make work and see how they moved objects. He went from station to station, imagining how he could use them in different inventions.

On the bottom level they had a R.O.V. unit that Mattias got to drive around in a huge aquarium. He was bouncing up and down with excitement. The other kids enjoyed petting the giant lake sturgeons. No pictures of that, sorry!

On the top of the museum is a nice look-out over Lake Michigan. It would've been amazing to be up at this place during sunrise, or a lightening storm. Sylvia was impressed that we could look down, and see the seagulls flying below us.

Another day, we went to the Milwaukee Public Museum. The butterfly garden was by far the favorite spot for the kids. Sylvia was so tickled when she held her first butterfly.

Mattias was great at catching them.

Here he is showing off another of his friends. I think he looks very dashing in this shot, but then again, I am his mother.

Spencer also did his fair share of sneaking up on the butterflies. The museum had a beautiful fountain in the room, and it was beautifully landscaped.

Noel slowly moved around, trying to make the butterflies think she was one of them. It was all about stealth, and projecting insect vibes around you.

Asher and Spencer started hunting for the big ones at the end. No more of these little pretty butterflies! If they weren't 6 inches across, then they weren't worth catching.

Mattias ruled the butterfly day by setting a Giant Blue Morpho butterfly on his shirt, and wearing it around for 10 minutes, until I said it was time to move along. He wandered around the exhibit with this blue badge, flapping on his shoulder, amazing all the little kids he walked by.

On other days, we spent time at my new favorite Wisconsin hang-out, Ottawa Lake. It is the least mucky lake I've seen in Wisconsin. I think it has to do with being fed by underground seepage springs.

It has a nice fishing pier, with a pretty view, not far from the swimming area. The boys tried their luck at fishing, but to no avail.

Spencer was impressed with Sylvia's fake frog in the tackle box though.

Asher reeled in some lovely sea weed, after yelling "I've got something, I've got something!"

It was great to have the boys able to fix their own poles and lures. I wish we had gotten more daybreak fishing time. -I'll have to go back another time.

The swimming area was the hit of the trip. Cheap and wild entertainment. There was a clean and sandy beach that went out into the water, very gradually getting deeper. Sylvia had lots of room to roam before it got too deep. I loved it.

The older kids came up with the dunking game. I'm sorry I don't have any action shots. For hours, they would see who could dunk each other the most, and keep score. Mattias was an early champion at 20 some dunks to Asher's 5. Spencer learned that he was too light to compete against the boys directly, and started stealth tripping. He'd lift his targets foot out of the water, then tap them over. It was a funny manuver to watch, after seening the other kids head grabbing, and thrashing around wildly like bull sea lions.

Noel got into the game after a while, and it became a 3 against 1 game of "dunk Noel".

I stayed out of the dunking zone, but kept a close eye that certain rules were being observed. (No nuclear weapons, no neck choking, etc.) It was much more relaxing to float around with Sylvia and play in the sand. We will definitely be returning as a family to Ottawa Lake. What a great place!

Despite an emergency dash back to Stoughton one night when tornadoes were possible, and drenching ourselves in DEET every day to ward off the mosquitoes, the camping trip was a great success. The Wisc. Soccer Association has 2 new referees in it's ranks, ready to make their fortunes this fall, and we all have some great memories.

Sylvia's first Fair

This year we let the kids get wrist bands for the local fair. I realized that Sylvia had never been to a fair, and it was time to do something about it. We remembered back to when I would take the other kids every year to the Missoula fair, and what a wild time that was, so we introduced Sylvia to the carnival rides.



Within one hour, she had re-couped the price of her wristband with 10 straight rides on the carousel. She had to keep trying out different horses! The older kids went together to ride the crazier rides, while I rode carousel ponies with Sylv. After 10 rides, I steered her away to other options (little motorcycles and buzzing bees). But, by the end of the day, we had ridden the carousel 25 times. My stomach was feeling a little loopy the next day.. but that was probably from the upside down rides I went on with Noel. :)

Rowing Clinic

This month Noel and Asher tried a week-long rowing camp that was held up on one of the lakes in Madison. Once they learned proper technique, the were zipping around on boats in the hot summer sun.

If it wasn't your turn to zip around on the water, you practiced on Ergs... rowing machines that tell you how strong you are pulling. Noel was really good at it.


Here is Asher looking so cool out on the water.


Sylvia and I did some fishing from the bank, while we waited for the kids class to end.

It was fun to be out in the evenings on the lake. I think next year I'll have Noel try rowing the whole fall season, instead of just a week long camp.