Truck Touch in D.C.

To start off this Father's Day weekend in a very manly sort of way, we took the girls and my mom to an annual event in D.C. called Truck Touch.  It's a little kids dream come true!  You know the garbage truck that they're enamored with each week on trash day?  Or the back hoe they see the construction worker using on the side of the road, loading and dumping dirt?  Or perhaps the more obvious fire truck they see screaming down the city streets with its sirens blaring, rushing to a call?  Well at this event, they get to climb inside, on, around the likes of these types of vehicles...and honk their horns like crazy!  Like enough to give the common man/woman a blaring headache; but to see the joy on their faces, to actually get to touch these vehicles, it's well worth the noise pollution! :0)

The first truck Olivia went to was an ice truck, used to deice the major highways around the metro area.  It was funny because my mom saw the plaque on the door that said it's powered by Mercedes-Benz, then quipped, "Man would I be disappointed if I was told I was getting a Mercedes-Benz and then they hand me the keys to this!"

 

 

 

As soon as Olivia climbed down out of the police vehicle above, she booked it to the Hazardous Devices Unit vehicle (equivalent to USAF EOD).  Once in the driver's seat, she laid on the horn like she was rushing to a call!  Then she was accompanied by Lauren to check out the back of the truck, which included a plated alley-way interior and a robot!

 

 

 

Lauren told us she was fixing her robot ;)



We were able to see so many "trucks", and the girls ran around to the different vehicles so quickly, that I barely had enough time to snap a photo before they were off and running to the next best thing.  So here's my picture montage to capture the rushed-kid chaos that was Truck Touch!

 

Such a happy waste disposal worker!

The "sewer sucker" showing how well it sucks!

 

The Metro Police were so sweet in letting her sit on their motorcycle!

There was a man doing a demonstration here that seemed very random, but super fun! He was doing back flips with the kids and literally throwing them in the air mid turn.  Lauren loved it and did it over and over and over...until we forced her to move on.

 

 And of course we had to see the fire trucks!  The Police Chief was even there handing out plastic firemen hats, which of course are always a big hit.  Lauren liked to wear her hat both ways, mostly backwards to keep the sun out of her eyes.

It was a warm day, so lucky for us they had a misting tent...which we had to eventually pull Lauren and Olivia away from too. 

 

 

We also had free snow cones, were given free water bottles, free popcorn, free books...What a wonderful free event! AND we didn't even have to pay for parking (unheard of in D.C. area)!  Looking forward to this event again next year!

FHE: Samuel the Lamanite

We had a very entertaining family home evening (FHE) tonight.  The girls learned about Samuel the Lamanite and, in particular, about how he preached to the Nephites on the city wall.  Nate told the girls about how the Nephites threw rocks and shot arrows at Samuel, to stop his preaching, but no one could hit him. 

To drive the story home, Nate had Lauren stand on the coffee table and pretend to be Samuel preaching at us, the Nephites.  When she began to speak, we threw strawberry marshmallows at her which kind of stunned her into silence for a second.  Then Olivia picked up a bowl of marshmallows and started eating them like a starved child, causing Lauren to cry and howl because her treats were disappearing before her very eyes.  Once we got the bowl back from Olivia, Lauren was more than happy to play along with being Samuel, as long as we aimed for her mouth!



A blurry picture yes, but it captures the essence of Olivia's fevered marshmallow eating!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lauren then wanted to throw marshmallows like a Nephite, so she and Nate switched rolls.  Nate was a great Samuel, as he was very animated and definitely got the "crowd" all riled up!

 



 

Yes, those are two marshmallows flying towards Nate's lower regions, released at point blank range (as you can see).  Good thing we chose marshmallows over wiffle balls; otherwise this story could've been a lot more 'interesting' for Nate here!  And look at the frenzied little girls in the second picture!  They were tossing all they could at their daddy.

 

Then Lauren gathered the marshmallows, as the remaining ones were rightfully hers to eat; however, Olivia didn't see it this way and was very sad when mom and dad sided with Lauren on who got the remaining treats.  A very dramatic scene ensued...guess it doesn't pay to be a greedy Nephite huh?! ;)

 

Kangaroo Pouch

Olivia has a new habit when I'm wearing skirts...and it gets a bit dicey when I'm somewhere other than our house.  So she likes to climb under my skirt, stand up, and poke her head out through my waist band! Weird right...in a cute way, but still interesting that she's developed this habit?!  It's like her version of hanging out in a kangaroo pouch.

A Tie-Dyed Teepee for Two

We have friends from church, the Little's, that have been trying to eliminate a bamboo forest (literally), that the previous home owner planted in their newly purchased home.  So what to do with all this bamboo?! Why build a teepee of course!  The Little's not only had enough cut-down bamboo to build their own teepee, but enough for the boy scouts, as well as us Olsen's...and various other families too!  And we even grabbed enough bamboo to make two teepees!  Oh it's going to be a regular club house convention in our back yard!

I found a great website with all the "how to" for the teepee building materials and steps (http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2011/how-tuesday-backyard-teepee/), so we just needed to get rolling on the material collection.  We started getting everything together about a month ago, but just hadn't started on it yet due to various activities taking precedence.  Finally this past Friday and Saturday, I decided we were just going to take the time to get it done.  PLUS, my mom, "Nana Barbie", just got into town on Thursday for a quick visit, so we had her craftiness at our disposal as well! 

We whipped out the canvas and decided it needed a cute face lift before we strung it up on our bamboo poles.  How to make this teepee fun and artsy, knowing it will be out in the Virginia summer elements?  Tie-dye!  Then if it rains and the dye bleeds a little, it'll just add to the character of the teepee!  (*Though it has sprinkled since finishing this project on Saturday, and no bleeding has occurred, so I guess we'll see if it happens.*) So we rubber banded the canvas, used the dye squirt bottles (the girls LOVED this part), sprayed away, and began to watch the dye dry.

I began cleaning up when I realized, I should've been much MUCH more careful with this dye.  What was my first indicator?  Well...the girls.  They looked like flower-power children...and nothing was coming off.  Of course I've tie-dyed before, and of course we wore gloves then!  How did I make such a grave oversight?!  I'm going to blame it on my desire to get this teepee built, that impaired my judgment.  Ugh.  Lauren and Olivia were a mess! :(

Notice the blue spray dots.  Apparently Lauren was squirting herself in the face too!



After about 10 mins of soaking.  Still pretty much all there!

 

Regardless of her state of appearance, Olivia still managed to get Nana Barbie to pick her up and snuggle her.





 

So how did our tie-dying turn out (besides on our skin?!)  Well I think we did a pretty great job...and even the red checkered gingham I had to add to cover our over sized teepee completely seems to fit!  I'd say our teepee's style is hippy meets country girl.  A fun combination in my books!  And to make it even better, the teepee even fits Nate standing up!  And can comfortable fit about a dozen toddlers - woohoo! 

Pocahontas and her new hangout.

Closer view of the tie-dye and wooden stick closure.



A view of the first club house meeting, complete with chairs and members!

Another inside-teepee view of our sweet tie-dying skills

Also, the completed construction of our teepee has seem to raise the Olsen girls' "fun" status with our neighbor kids (They are like 6 and 9, so they really don't interact with our 2 1/2 and 1 1/2 year olds much-understandably).  Guess we can now do some practice camping in our back yard teepee to see if we are "there yet", in being able to actually take the girls camping.