Taking the Scenic Route

Because it is more fun to play with.

A seriously bad virus and/or trogen infected my parent’s computer and they brought it up today so Zach could work on it some more. They brought us yummy Three Brother’s BBQ while Zach worked to find out if was a quicker fix or an overnight stay. After working on it for a while, he decided to do a complete reinstall, so it is staying here for the night. Robert is here too, so it gives him some company while he deals with it.

The kids were thrilled to see them again so soon, and Zora kept her Oma occupied the whole time they were here.

#136 Showing Opa how it’s done.

#52 The Workers.  Zach helping Robert program.

#23 “The Workers” Zora wanted to be a part of the action when Zach was helping Robert get started on a work project. (Zach got Robert a contracting job at his company)

#15 “A relaxed evening on Facebook”

#6 “Roboblox”

It is an online, multiplayer game that is basically a world of lego-esq people and building and destroying lego-esq buildings. Zane really loves this game now.

This week there was no program at Exploration Place, so Robert came over with his kids so that we could help him turn his pumpkins into pies while the kids played together. They guys played on the computer, watched Wall-E, and ran around outside.

Watching a Movie

Here we are turning baked pumpkin into strained pumpkin the easy way. We let the fiberous part drop off into the blender so that we could run it through and make it easier to use in breads and cookies later, and use the good stuff for the pies.

Zora helped hold the blender pitcher.

The guys were laughing at the pumpkin in the cheesecloth because it kept sounding like it was peeing. lol

Hard at work

The littlest nerds playing a game together on the computer.

While the pies were baking, Zach worked on my computer for a while to replace the power supply (I think) so that my computer would quit crashing.

By the end of the day we had two meals together, baked 6 pies, and had enough extra pumpkin for many cookies and muffins when he took it home. The kids wore each other out and Zora was asleep before we got the call from them that they had made it home safely. It was a great day.

Zane and Zora have been at odds lately. Zora is suddenly very interested in the computer, so I hook her up with Noggin or Disney online. Zane kept trying to shut it off, which of course caused Zora to scream like crazy. Every time I would step away (my computer is near the kitchen so I can watch her play while I am doing dishes or working in there), and Zane kept shutting it off. I started realizing after a while that it he wasn’t trying to be mean, it seemed almost driven, from an uncontrollable place inside him, to close up her windows.

I could not for the life of me figure out what was going on, until later in the day when I was opening up a window for her on Zach’s computer. Suddenly, a seemingly unrelated outburst came to mind. Zane had yelled, in the middle of doing something totally unrelated, something that sounded like “FOX” several times. I couldn’t figure out what he wanted until hours later when I was looking at Zach’s desktop and realized that I tend to automatically open everything in IE (because one of my message boards doesn’t come up on any other browser), and Zach tends to open everything in Mozilla Firefox, which has a fox as the desktop icon.

So, I tested my new theory. I closed all the windows in IE and opened up her Noggin or Disney in Firefox and walked away. Low and behold, when he went and looked over her shoulder this time, he just watched a bit and went back to what he was doing.

Our 6 year old hates Internet Explorer and loves Mozilla Firefox. I think he is now an official nerd.

On Monday Zora figured out the mouse enough to be able to successfully play a game independently. (it was a page where you put “stickers” on a background).

She was very proud of herself. Here she is showing me that there are “two Dee-gos” (Diego, from Go Diego Go). A whole new world opens up to her and she is excited.