Our bike ride today was pretty fun. Midway through the ride, we stopped at the neighborhood park to play. It was a beautiful day and the park was crowded with people. The kids played while mom and dad enjoyed the sun on the park bench.
Towards the end of the ride, we found sea oats and eventually brought them home after a short “sword fight” with a neighbor kid.
-Dana
Our kids experienced their second snow this past weekend. While I can’t recall just how many I have experienced, I know that this one was my favorite and continues to be since the snow hasn’t left us yet.
We spent the first night looking out the window at the snow and the kids just loved watching the flakes come down. The night wasn’t over until we had gone outside for a cul de sac snowball fight. Our youngest was trying her best to throw snowballs but most of them just fell backwards off her hand. Our oldest had more success but grew bored of the snowball fight and began designing something or other in the snow off to the side.
Then, the next morning began with the kids bouncing up and down on our bed very early in the morning and abot 3 hours of sledding in the sleet.
Our snow weekend ended after another day of sledding and ultimately building our snow family. That was a great weekend. Did I mention it was Jill’s Birthday and we had a great little birthday weekend? 
- Dana
We had a great time in Uptown Charlotte today. We started off attempting to ice skate. Our oldest liked it after he tried it for a while and our youngest tried and wouldn’t step back out on the ice. We had lunch at Fuel Pizza and then it was back to the ice. Great time.
- Dana
Well, it’s now a few days after Christmas and the kids have switched toys again. The first big hit was the Splatball, then it was the board game Trouble, and now, we’ve moved on to our Zhu Zhu Pets.
Santa brought 4 total – two for Brennan and two for Claire. Claire calls both of hers “mousy” even though their given names are Chunk (white) and Jilly (pink). Brennan is fine with respecting the manufacturer’s wishes and call his Num Nums (grey) and Mr. Squiggles (brown).
The toys don’t do too much but they do more than you would think. They have sounds indicating they are moving like roosters or boings. They zip forward, spin around, and shoot off in another direction.
The kids love them and treat them like they are their kids. In the picture shown, the Zhu Zhu pets are at the movies but tomorrow they have hamster school. Very fun.
- Dana
Every year, we buy our kids toys based on what they request, what the “hot” toys are, what looks educational, and what we think looks fun. In addition to those items, we’ll randomly pick up a couple of things. Regardless of how much thought we put into it, the toy that the kids like best is typically one of the random toys.
This year, the instant hit toy was Splatball. As usual, it is a super simple toy. It looks like a tomato and is a liquid filled thing. All you do is throw it and when it lands it looks like a tomato that splattered on the floor. After about 2-5 seconds, it reforms into a little tomato. It costs about $2.99 and the kids’ grandma bought it at Harris Teeter.
It was very cool. Be careful because if you use excessive force, it will indeed break.
- Dana
I’m pretty late with this update – oh well. The family had a blast hanging ornaments on our tree. Jill had to go buy extra lights before we could start because the tree is about a foot taller than we normally get – 9ft this year. Mom and I enjoyed egg nog as usual. Anyways, here are the tree pictures and thanks for reading.
- Dana
Everyone in the Edwards Family is super excited for Christmas and now we have our tree! I think it is about 8ft tall and we’ll very soon begin decorating it!! Our family photographer will soon be getting photos out!
- Dana
It has been a few months since Brennan and I did a science project. This has been the case mostly because of his fascination with trains, specifically traction rods on trains. I am thinking that the trains fascination may run its course pretty soon but hopefully not before we take him on his birthday party which is all about trains. Enough on trains for now … I’ll post birthday pictures soon.
An upcoming fascination of Brennan’s is Tornados, which I agree are really cool to look at but not too cool in real life for those that are unfortunate to be in one. He has memorized the Fujita scale but hasnt quite latched on to the concept that the size of tornado doesnt dictate the strength of the wind. That’ll be a next step. Here is a quick video of it in action:
To make a long design / science discussion short, the box is cut so that there are slits in the sides which make the tornado funnel spin as a motor on top sucks the dry ice smoke up. Email me at dana@danaedwards.com if youwant to know more about the physics of how it works. Here are a couple of photos of it in action:
We had a blast making it and hope to show it off to the grandparents for Spaghetti Night tonight and Thanksgiving Dinner soon!
- Dana
I think this one is pretty self explanatory. This is the first photo I have taken where both Claire and Lucy posed so it is getting posted.
- Dana
So what do tee ball and the University of Kentucky have to do with each other and why am I spending a few moments writing about it? Well, it’s actually quite simple. Today, the family out of the house to register Brennan for tee ball with the Mallard Creek Optimist Club. While driving over to MCOC registration, I whipped out the handy iPhone, pulled up the geocaching application from Groundspeak, and found that the Big Blue Stash was located with 1/4 mile walk of the registration site.
So, after a brief discussion of the logistics of how we manage the kids as we bushwacked our way along side Stony Creek, we headed into the woods. As usual Brennan repeated a number of times that he didn’t want to go his way or that and Claire eventually convinced Jill that she should be carried instead of walk through the woods. All that said we did make our way through successfully.
Brennan did great for the most part and seemed to enjoy the time in the actual woods. Jill explained to him that when she was younger, she used to call rotting trees – chicken – because they pulled apart like chicken. Brennan took a few moments to pull of a few pieces of chicken. After a little bit of time we climbed over some other trees and brush.
Brennan ran quickly over to some fallen trees to find the cache! Claire was very excited to see what was in the ammo box and Bren was too. When Jill opened it up, the kids eyes popped open wide. Claire was immediately ecstatic when she saw a McDonald’s Doc car in it. Jill convinced Brennan to take a key chain level on her behalf because she “didn’t have an iPhone level like daddy”. Brennan loved it but I bet Jill ends up with it – clearly yet anoher power struggle to occur in the Edwards house. For those wondering how Kentucky fits into the picture, the cache was apparently named for the musical University of Kentucky bottle opener which was in with the loot and yes I did test it and it does still play some music.
A couple of pictures later and we were on our way. Jill and Claire’s first caching trip was a success and I am pretty sure that they had a blast.
Oh, and yes we did get Brennan registered for tee ball!
- Dana
