Stuff

The inside of a baseball. We've been watching this baseball all summer. Months ago it was on the school field, obviously mowed but still looking like a baseball. The next time we saw it, it had been mowed again and was more beat up looking. This Thursday we found this inside ball, wrapped with gray yarn on the outside. Here it is, pried open a bit more. I'll have to google for info, but that looked like a ball of hard dirt on the inside (?) and the black and red parts were rubber. The yarn was over that.

Treasures. The kids were collecting things from the field. There's the baseball inner, with the gray yarn next to it. The blue thing is a cap gun thing I think. The gears, I am informed, are from robots. They're gears, a motor (that might not be in this picture) and a "computer chip". We took all this home and Bridget spent about 1/2 an hour hammering these pieces onto a chunk of wood to make a robot that will clean the house. The robot was a success! But we don't have a power supply for it so it hasn't done any cleaning yet ;-)

The newest toy. We were at a playground with friends a few weeks ago and a man there had this thing. He was very nice and let the kids play with it. We went home and told Robert and he said "oh yeah, I want one of those!". He'd seen it on Gizmoto.com. So, since his birthday is tomorrow we bought it for him. My birthday was last week and we had a little party so the kids and I gave him his presents then. This thing is very, very cool. It's already been played with a bunch of times and even though it takes some learning, it's been enjoyed by the 5 year old, the 43 year old (until tomorrow) and everyone in between :)