Paper Airplanes

Airplanes are totally not my department.  I gained an appreciation during the early years of our marriage living on Air Force bases, but appreciation does not an expert make.

So you can imagine my panic when Micah asked me to make him a paper airplane!

I have never been able to make a paper airplane that actually flew well.  You know, fold in half, fold two corners, fold down the wings, voila.  You have now created a terrible paper toy.

But in this age of limitI consulted the trusty internets, quickly find a super easy tutorial.  It has diagrams, which is what we used, but also step-by-step photos for the truly inept.  I folded the first few steps, then he jumped in to finish off the last few.  We flew it a few times, then he decided it needed some decorations.  The circles are the passenger windows.

It flies amazingly well, when the pilot is experienced.  It flew 15 feet or more.  The less experienced pilot might fly it straight into the ground, but since it is blunt-nosed, it will live to fly another day.

Snips and Snails

Before having boys I would have never touched bugs, snails, or frogs.  In the last several years, though, I have done exactly that. 
I didn't want my boys to be grossed out by that stuff.  (Future daughters-in-law may thank me later when there's a spider to be confronted.)  So I just pretended to be cool with slime until one day I just was cool with it.
Caleb really has taken an interest in living creatures. Likes the science of it, and he appreciates the beauty of creation.  He's very interested in observing and caring for these little creatures.  He "speaks snail" and was utterly mortified when he accidentally ran over a snail with his bike last year. He still gets upset thinking about it now.
Micah, he's my ant stomper.  I hope his interest in living creatures increases.  He did have a great time at the PacSci butterfly house.
At any rate, this evening Caleb was looking in the bushes for a bird we'd seen on the porch, when he came across an unusual looking snail.  The ones we see around here are brown.
This one had very distinct stripes.
We observed it for short time, then Caleb and put it out in the grass.  Turns out it's a European Striped Snail.