Take Your Child to Work Day

We're going to go a little out of order, skipping Prague for the moment, and tell you about Take Your Child to Work Day at the Consulate.  For those who are not familiar, the US Consulate basically serves as an Embassy, mainly to the Palestinians since the Israelis can use the Embassy in Tel Aviv.  Folks can come and apply for visas to the US, and American citizens have services too, such as reporting stolen passports or registering a birth abroad.  Of course there are also diplomatic and security aspects too (ahem, you SHOULD know about that last part by now, right?). Click on the link to learn more!

Take Your Child to Work Day was a three hour event where the boys got to create "passports," do radio checks, suit up in Marine gear and run an obstacle course, and explore armored vehicles and play with their sirens.  They even got badges and had to take an oath of office.  It was a really fun day!  Take a look!

Sam kept looking at his badge and saying, "It's Sammy!"

The Marine Det. Commander had to help Sam with the helmet.

It was heavy!

 I helped Sam with the obstacle course, 

but he simply would NOT be deterred.

 Liam conducting a radio check

 Kitted up and loving it!

 Liam's turn for the course

Checking out one of the armored vehicles

Sam sounding the siren in the armored car

Liam's Science Fair

Liam's school had a Science Fair on Friday. The Kindergarten took the opportunity to teach parents about shadows and light, which was the subject of their most recent science unit.  Due to illness, I could not attend, but Geoff went and took some pictures of the stations that were set up in the classroom.  I will let Liam tell you about them.

This station is about artificial light and natural light. 

We had to put pictures in the right place--if the light is natural it goes under natural light.

This station is about prisms. 

You shine a flashlight through it and make a rainbow.

 We had to predict what light looked like.

We traced our shadows three times.

At 10 our shadows were in front of us.

At 12 they were beside us.

At 2 they were behind us.

When the sun moves, our shadows move.

Opaque means we can't see anything through it.

Translucent means we can see light through it, but we can't see with our eyes through it.

Transparent means we can see everything through it.

We made shadows.

The best part of the science fair was when Dad had to guess my shadow.  He guessed three times, and the first two were wrong!

Egg hunt and picnic

On Saturday, we enjoyed a picnic brunch in the park and an Easter egg hunt.  We had planned this for Easter Sunday, but the weather did not cooperate.  It was a good change--the weather was glorious!  We had such a great time and will miss these good friends.

 The kids are lined up and ready to go!

I just love these shots.  

Liam is hunting eggs under the olive trees with the Old City behind him.

 Goofing around with Daddy

 This beautiful boy eats his weight in strawberries just about every day.

The kids piling on Geoff

And Beth was able to get everybody in the photo!