A Hawaiian courthouse

Third-graders have been working on architecture projects in class, and tonight was a gallery night to display them for parents. Here's Levynn's:

April showers bring May kites

The annual Chicago Kids and Kites Festival was today, at Cricket Hill on the far north side of Lincoln Park as always.

And, seemingly as always, we were there.

Gram comes, Levynn goes

Gram came for a visit this weekend, and, while Dad and Lincoln went to meet her at the airport after school on Friday, Mom saw Levynn off for Girl Scouts camp with her troop. Bad timing, sure, but fun was had by all nonetheless.

In fact, Gram was here for less than three full days and yet we managed to have three adventures with her.

On Saturday, Mom, Dad, Lincoln and Gram did a craft activity at the Art Institute, walked around Lurie Garden and Millennium Park, and went to a playground.

On Sunday, Dad, Lincoln and Gram went to Adler Planetarium. Gram hadn't been there before.

Here she is about to walk with Lincoln into space.

And on Monday, Dad and Gram went back to the Art Institute to see the Picasso exhibit and have an early birthday lunch for her.

Levynn came home at lunchtime Sunday. She had a terrific time, and the adults reported that she was terrific, too. She got the Super Trooper award! There may be more camps in her future...

Superheroes

The Chicago Children's Museum is in the middle of a two-month focus on superhero activities, and today also was comic book day there. So we thought it was a good time to visit.

They made capes.

They built accessories. (Had we mentioned the new "tinkering lab" where we can use real tools - saws included - and build stuff?)

And they bought and read comics.

On this day, who cared about the rest of the museum?

The aforementioned visuals

Here's Lincoln, in the moments before he made his remarks to the crowd to kick off the Books and Bagels event. He was very excited.

He did fine, but his teacher repeated what he said because he had no microphone (someone didn't get the memo) and there were a lot of people.

Then he read this hand-picked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles book to Mom. His teacher thought it was "very long" for the time allotted, bless her, but Mom knew it was peanuts for Lincoln.

Meanwhile, Levynn was presenting her Great Ohio River Flood of 1937 project to her class.

He's a smart boy

So Dad just said to Mom as we were discussing Lincoln's school day.

Let's preface this, though, by noting that Dad, through his weekly volunteering, had come to the conclusion that Lincoln and a girl are the two most advanced students in their class.

Then a funny thing happened today. The school uses a math website - which the kids affectionately call JiJi, after the name of the penguin that guides them through the program - that has more than a hundred levels, per grade, of some crazy challenges. It's so complex that we had no idea it has an end.

Apparently, it does. Lincoln finished the kindergarten program today. He reached the mythical end. Levynn's been doing this three years, and she had never heard of an end. It was such a big deal that Lincoln's teacher called all of his classmates over to him to see "the end." And shortly thereafter, that girl, the other advanced kid, finished, too. (That's the funny part.)

But that's not all. Lincoln is reading chapter books now. The kindergarten is doing a Books and Bagels event in the morning, when the kids will read a book to a parent (Mom's going) in the library and they'll eat bagels together in the cafeteria. And Lincoln's teacher picked him to read a paragraph, about who will go where, with a microphone in front of all the gathered kids and parents.

It's very exciting! Hopefully, we'll have a visual for you afterward. Stay tuned.

About the kids

It's been a while. Again. So we'll do a little catching up.

You probably know that the kids spent spring break in Kentucky. And there was a bit of excitement that, unfortunately, even Mom and Dad missed. Lincoln lost his first tooth!

Just the previous week, the dentist had felt it, a little loose, and figured it might come out at the end of April. So much for that.

Here it is, already much more loose, at Grandy's house before going to Steak 'n Shake.

There it's not, after falling out at Steak 'n Shake.

And here it is, in his hand.

Last Sunday, the day after Mom brought the kids back home, Levynn also lost a tooth, her sixth. (And Lincoln got a nice haircut.)

Then it was report card day on Friday. Levynn's streak of straight As ended, with a sturdy B in math, but the rest of her grades were As. Lincoln, you may recall, gets "beginning to develop," "partially developed," and "well-developed" on his report card, and he went from being well-developed in 24 of 38 categories last term to well-developed in 37 out of 40 now. He went from beginning to partially in one other category and went straight to partially in two new categories.

We went to the monthly family day at the Museum of Contemporary Art yesterday, as we often do. Lincoln was enticed by the theme of "deconstruction." Most of the activities involved taking something apart to build something new. At one station, Lincoln yanked some clay off a structure and worked with Dad to make a fearsome serpent. Check out the fangs!

And today came a moment that's been coming for a long time. Levynn's beloved, threadbare Pink Bear was retired. But she wasn't thrown away. No, no, no.

She got the royal treatment. She gets to sit at Levynn's bedside in a lovingly decorated display box forevermore.

Swimming update

Levynn had been swimming underwater pretty well for some time. But last weekend she suddenly decided to do the crawl, unprompted, and she looked great at it. So we brought the camera down with us this time. And then she wanted to do the backstroke, too. And do multiple forward rolls in a row.

Perhaps that inspired Lincoln, who decided to do a little independent swimming of his own.

Check them out!

Let's get out and do something!

We had been looking ahead to this day's events for a while, but not until this morning did we get the feeling that it had been a long time since the four of us had gone out on the town together. Considering the lack of updates on this blog, you may have been thinking the same thing.

The occasion was the annual benefit for Lincoln's old preschool program. We like to visit anyway, but it also was our chance to get inside the church's newly built addition in which the preschool now resides.

Mom took some photos as she wandered around.

A ghost!

The addition reminded us of the Art Institute's own 2009 addition, the Modern Wing, with its open spaces, floor-to-ceiling windows, ample light, and stairway.

And the Art Institute's new exhibit, Picasso and Chicago, just happened to be our next destination.

Then the kids ran in Millennium Park's snow a little.

It was good to get out!

Winter fun, or what we can get of it!

This sad sum of snow, fallen over several days no less, is the most we've gotten this season. Not great timing for Uncle Dan's awesome snowboard gift, huh?

But we jumped at this chance, even on a mid-week school day, as Dad and the kids dropped off backpacks, got dressed in our gear, grabbed the board and a sled, and hit the road for our favorite hill.

Perhaps Levynn needs a bigger hill, though.

What do you think?

That was a few days ago. Today, we went to the Hancock Observatory for a little "Skating in the Sky," as it's called.

You can see why.

And the synthetic surface is good for the confidence. (It's really cold outside, too.)