Times with Thomas, Mostly!

Hi, everyone!

James is in school all day, but Thomas just goes to his school in the afternoon.  So I have morning adventures with Thomas! One day, we went over to his new house to see the remodeling that’s going on.  The carpenters were working inside and outside!  The kitchen and most of the bathrooms had everything taken out of them!  Next time I go take a look, it will be very different!

One Wednesday, Thomas and I went to the Seneca Park Zoo with Aunt Kara and Grandma.  We started at the snake exhibit, then we went to see the snow leopard and red panda!

The zoo is building a new habitat for their African animals!  Right now the lions and elephants are in temporary space.  There is a new pair of young giraffes, too!  They had to come now because they’ll be too tall to fit in a truck when the habitat is finally ready for them! I always like to make friends with more of my cousins and close relations!

Thomas liked the coin spiral and the climbing wall.  We had to leave to get him to school on time, but we did stop to watch the penguins on our way out!  That evening, choir rehearsal was at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, instead of church, because of Jewish services for Yom Kippur.  Thomas and I helped set up all the chairs so the choir could practice in our living room.

While Uncle Steven has been working on James’ and Thomas’ new house, Aunt Kara has been getting her uncle’s house ready to sell.  Some days, Thomas goes with Aunt Kara in the morning and finds treasures!  He brought home something that shoots balls for dogs to chase.  Both he and James had fun trying to make it work!  While they were doing that, Grandma and I were planting more daffodil bulbs – 180 more!  That’s enough to finish the daffodil meadow we started in the ivy patch last year.  I was a good helper, mostly with keeping track of what variety of daffodil bulb Grandma needed to plant next!

Some rainy mornings, Thomas plays Super Mario Galaxy 2 on Wii.  One rainy morning, we went to the Strong Museum, instead!  Grandma knew there was a special astronaut exhibit, so we went there first.

After that, we went to Thomas’ favorite area — the Space Warp climber and the shingle house!  This time, Thomas wanted me to shoot shingles up to him on the roof.  Then he used some shingles to start closing a wall!  Nearby, he found a place to build a golf ball run.  The run was long and complicated, but it worked!

The museum wasn’t very busy, so Thomas got to play with the dump truck and foam building blocks by himself upstairs.  We even had a chance to pretend to play one of the car racing arcade games! Of course, we finished with a ride on the carousel.  Thomas went all by himself for the first time!  Aunt Kara and Grandma and I all watched to make sure, but he was fine!

Uncle Steven’s Volvo finally arrived from the Netherlands!  Now we have a very crowded driveway!  Grandma says she hopes all the extra cars have new homes before we need to get snow plowed off the driveway!

Grandma is starting to get the soups ready for the Election Day bake sale bakers, and I’m helping!  We made four recipes worth of cauliflower cheese soup yesterday, and the Hungarian mushroom and curried squash / pear soups are already in the freezer.

Yesterday was another rainy day, so there was more Super Mario playing going on.  Thomas is getting much better at playing, but he still needs someone to read any text that comes up.  James and Uncle Steven got to the green star level!  Thomas has a new video game hero, too.  He found a Sonic the Hedgehog costume and has been wearing that around the house!

Love,

Lion-san