Camera Contents

Sometimes, I forget that I have been carrying my camera everywhere, and I download the photos and find things I’d forgotten all about.

A folding car we found at the neighborhood playground.

The stick-bug-guy I made to ride inside.

Chilly Thanksgiving at the beach with storm clouds.

attempting to climb the light pole

While walking to the playground one evening last week, I heard music coming from a side street and we went to investigate. These guys were warming up on their homemade PVC instruments for a gig downtown later that night. We sat on the curb and listened with the neighbors.

a seed pod on our sidewalk

 

Surprising Little Island

This little (4- by 1.5-mile) island keeps surprising us. We took a few outings lately and ended up here:

The Key West City Paintball field. It appeared abandoned and unused, and to me really dreary and depressing, but Zach is already getting excited to play, if he can get anyone to believe it exists.

Down a virtually unused, dead end road, and inside the black net fencing:

We took the Boogedy to the cemetery to make gravestone rubbings with crayons on paper. I remember doing this with my mom as a kid. The Boogedy thought dancing on the graves was good fun, and I wasn’t ready to explain why he should be solemn and respectful, so we didn’t stay long. I wonder if Grandma will enjoy receiving our rubbings.

Last week the Power Boat racers were in town and we went to Fort Zachary Taylor to watch them from the rocky shore. We didn’t pull the little guy out of preschool to go, but we will next year because it was awesome! The boats appeared to just skim the water. I thought of my nephew Mike and his family’s love of car racing. I wish he could have seen this!

My camera couldn’t get good photos of this event, but I sneaked a peak over a fence and shot this baby with matching trailer waiting her turn.

While we were there, we toured Ft. Zach (notice the MOAT!).

And marveled at the difficulties of using Cannons to try to hit Ships.

Rainbow Dough

When Zach makes homemade whole wheat bread each week, he rolls the dough out flat and then rolls it up jelly-roll style. While he’s buttering the pans, the Boogedy stands at the table and picks at the warm, soft, raw dough. He adores dough (he calls it “du” and usually asks it as a question…du? du?). Once I gave him cookie raw cookie dough and he wouldn’t shut up about it for hours.

So when we told him we were going to sit down and play with play-doh, he got really excited. Zach cut up a box and made a play surface so we could all sit on the living room floor.  Obviously the Boogedy tasted the play-doh, and thankfully found that he didn’t like it. He spent a good 10 minutes putting the fresh, new dough cylinders into and out of their cans. Then he walked off. He had zero interest in color mixing, or the little gray snake I made with bright green eyes.

I think this activity was most fun for Zach, who relived one of his favorite childhood memories: learning about the properties of color in elementary school where every kid got a marble sized piece of four doughs, red, yellow, blue, and white. I think we’re both remembering so many wonderful learning experiences that we had as kids, and can’t wait to share with our son. I wonder what HIS favorite memories will be?