March 28th, 2011

More pictures from the Building for Kids. Like I said yesterday, it is more of a play area then a museum. There are plenty of things that kids can do with their imagination though. Mom says that with all the video games and such, kids need a place to use their imaginations!

Mom doesn’t like posting pictures here that have other people in it. There were A LOT of people there. It seemed like hundreds!

This little girl was enjoying spinning the globe. (They’re all facing the other way, therefore exempt from Mom’s rule.)

We thought we would post this picture for Dilly. It looks like one of her cousins was immortalized in papier-mâché!

I have a new plushie friend and mail blog post thought up for next, but then I am going to show you one more place that Mom visited! I hope you all don’t mind my blog trip around where I live.

March 27th, 2011

We read all your blogs about the areas that you live in. My mom and I live in Wisconsin. We actually live in a little town near the city of Appleton.  We thought we would share pictures  of our nearest city like you all share pictures. Yesterday, Mom and Caleb went to downtown Appleton to see a children’s museum called the Building for Kids.

This is the corner that the museum was on. Mom was with some other people, so she didn’t want to cross the road to take a picture of the building itself.

Downtown Appleton is sort of recovering. There are some businesses, but there are also a lot of empty buildings. That large building is mostly empty.

The Building for Kids is supposed to be an educational children’s museum. It is mostly a gigantic play area, scattered with a few learning things. Mom thinks that if your visit was more structured, a kid might learn more! The two little girls we were with enjoyed themselves a lot, so that is the most important part!

Mom had seen commercials on television for their Japanese exhibit. It turned out mostly to be a room with a few manga-inspired things. It was still kind of cool—Mom was impressed that she recognized these characters! They’re from a movie called My Neighbor Totoro!

This is the cat bus! We’re not so sure what it is from, but it’s very funny looking. (Reading the Wikipedia article on My Neighbor Totoro explained that it comes from that movie too!)

My mom really enjoys zoos and animals. She was glad to see that they had some birds. They were all little finches and canaries.

They also had a few pet rats. They were female dumbo rats. This one was named Oreo. Some little child had put finger-paint all over the glass of the cage they were in, so there wasn’t too many places to get pictures.

Then they had a rainbow bearded lizard. He or she was pretty interested in sunning herself on the rock. I think that would be a pretty sweet life if I were a lizard!

Next time, I’ll show you some pictures of what else was inside the Building for Kids.

March 22nd, 2011

Things around here have been pretty calm for me, but exciting for my mom. My mom is a real book nerd—and one of her favorite things in the entire world is to meet her favorite authors! (You might remember Neil Gaiman and the House on the Rock.) Well, last week, Mom and one of her friends from work went to Minneapolis, Minnesota to see Jasper Fforde, the author of one of her favorite contemporary fiction works, the Eyre Affair.

This is Mr. Fforde. Mom says he was very funny. Caleb, who traveled with her in her purse, said that he didn’t get a lot of the jokes. Mom said that he probably would have to read the books to understand.

This is my mom with Mr. Fforde. She was kind of nervous and mostly giddy.

This is my mom’s signed copy of his newest novel, One of Our Thursdays is Missing. This made my mom a very happy person indeed!

She has the next few days off from work, so as long as the weather improves, I’m hoping to talk her into another trip outside. Right now Wisconsin is experiencing some very un-spring-like weather. I hope that will change soon. Hope you all are having a good day!