For this month’s segment, I mentioned these two activities:
Click to watch the video here.
Tumbleweeds Film Festival 2015
I’m so excited that the Tumbleweeds Film Festival is only a few weeks away! Last year they held it in the spring, so I’ve been looking forward to this for the past year and a half. This year’s festival runs from Friday, September 25 through Sunday, September 27. As usual, they have categorized the films into the appropriate age ranges (which I love) and they are separated into 4+, 7+, 9+ and 10+.
You can buy a family pass or single tickets and the shows are all at the Rose Wagner Theatre downtown. They also have a fun activity area and workshops throughout the weekend for kids at the theatre. The Opening Night film is “Oddball” and is described as,
“The true story of an eccentric chicken farmer who, with the help of his granddaughter, trains his mischievous dog to protect a wild penguin sanctuary from fox attacks and in the process reunites his family and saves their seaside town.”
Who could resist watching that?!
Welcome to the new “Adventures with Theo”!
This is probably how you remember this site looking the last time you came here:
How do you like our new back-to-school outfit?
I’ve revamped the Adventures with Theo website with some help from the Gotham Writers Workshop. Hopefully this site will be more user-friendly with posts separated into categories so you can browse by topic. The legs and feet you see above are actually ours and were shot by D’Arcy Benincosa Photography.
Hope everyone had a fun summer and is ready to start a fun new school year with more adventures to come!
Theo’s 7th Birthday Party
For Theo’s 7th birthday party, we had a repeat location: the Natural History Museum of Utah! They have a variety of different themes for different age groups, so this year Theo was eligible for their science lab themed party. It was held in the same room as the party he had for his 4th birthday, and hosted by fun museum staff.
All the kids got to wear lab coats and goggles while they learned about various science experiments. There were several different stations set up and the kids were kept busy!
We had our traditional Costco cake, with additional decorations provided by my good friend who made special fondant science accessories. I thought they really looked great!
The favors were provided by the museum, but I couldn’t help but science-ify the water bottles that we provided for drinks. The chemical composition of its contents went on the label. I’m always happy when I can add a little educational component to the party.
Theo’s “My Family Tree and Me”
This post is not about an activity that Theo and I have done, but about a particular book that has caught our attention this summer in an extraordinary way. A good friend of mine happened to pick it up at the library and once she started reading it, immediately took photos of the pages in the book to share with me. The book was just published in June 2015 and is called “My Family Tree and Me” by Dusan Petricic. One side of the book depicts the paternal family tree line of the main character, a young boy, and when you flip over the book, the other side depicts his maternal family tree line. Here’s one of the reasons why my friend started sending me pics:
I love books that depict multi-racial families and this in itself would have been great: a mixed-race little boy with a Caucasian (redhead even!) father and an Asian (Chinese even!) mother. What a great book for Theo! Then we started reading more of the book and the similarities became even more shocking:
(The illustrated wedding photo of the boy’s aunt and uncle on his dad’s side. And a photo of Theo’s real aunt and uncle. Also a wedding photo of ours.)
(The illustrated photo of the boy’s uncle and uncle on his mother’s side. And my actual brother and his husband.)
On other pages of the book, the aunt is shown in a medical outfit (the real-life aunt is a doctor) and the uncle is shown in a suit and tie and briefcase (the real-life uncle is an attorney). I started asking for more photos of the further generations and received a lot of help from my mother-in-law and my parents. They were able to find photos of every generation, including Theo’s great-great-grandparents on both sides. I loved seeing them! But when I started putting them into the book, it was eerie how similar they looked:
(Photos of Theo’s great-great-grandparents and great-grandparents with the book illustrations of the accompanying generations. It almost looks staged, but it’s not.)
I purchased a copy of the book and pasted each photo into the hard copy of the book, along with the full names of each person listed. It is a wonderful keepsake for Theo to have this kind of photographic family tree and even more special that it has such a whimsical story behind it. There are even more similarities that people close to our family would notice. I thought this was so remarkable that I wrote an email to the publishing company of the book and asked that it be forwarded to the author, Dusan Petricic. Here is what I wrote:
Dear Mr. Petricic,I recently became aware of your latest book MY FAMILY TREE AND ME from a dear friend who borrowed it from the library for her young daughters. As she was reading it, she became amazed at the similarities between the people in the book and my own family and notified me. I bought my own copy of the book and was stunned. I have attached an annotated version of the beautiful book which includes photos of actual members of my family. The perspective of the main character (the little boy) is that of my son, Theo, who is nearly 7 years old.[Here I went into the details of all the similarities throughout the book…]All this to say, we are extremely fond of this book for obvious reasons, and feel as if it is a treasure for Theo to have. Not only for his personal family, but for others to see the depiction of a multi-racial family with couples of all kinds. I wanted to get in touch with you to share our delight and also to ask the question: Where did you get the inspiration for your characters and do you also find it interesting that it so closely matches our own family?Thank you for your wonderful book and I would love to hear from you.Warmest regards,Christina Lau Billings
Of course, I hoped that the author would receive the email and write back, but I also just recently saw the movie “The Fault In Our Stars” and those familiar with the plot of that book/movie will understand my skepticism of actually hearing back. But, amazingly enough, about 3 weeks later, I received this email reply:
Dear Mrs. Billings,Can you imagine how surprised I was to see so many coincidences between my story and your family.Unbelievable!Or, maybe, it is not so unrealistic. Both Canada and US are multiethnic societies, with so many ethnic and racial mixed families.I have been living in Canada for the last 22 years. My origin is from Serbia, Europe.And this book is exactly how I see Canada as the society. It was extremely provocative and interesting for me to build up the story, literary, and visually, mixing different cultures, ethnicities and races in one family.Only details which are not mine are expressions for grandfather and grandmother in Chinese. The editor of the book Debbie Rogosin suggested them to me.I, even, included some of my personal family facts. I grew up in a socialistic country – Yugoslavia, so I used some communist symbols, and, my father was a military pilot.Anyway, I am so happy that you might consider the book as the story about your own family.My sincere regards to Theo, you and your whole family.Best,Dušan Petričić
Wow! We were all so excited to hear back from the author and receive such a thoughtful, kind reply. I printed out copies of both letters and inserted them into the book as well.
This whole situation has been such a fun part of our summer and I am so charmed and delighted by it all. So many stunning details that show how wonderful diversity can be in one family and in one little boy. Theo is so lucky.
August on TV
Here are the topics and posts I referenced in my TV segment yesterday:
Click to watch the video here.
Magic Mondays at Hatch Family Chocolates
We love going to Hatch Family Chocolates as a fun neighborhood hangout. Not only do they sell chocolate and candy, but they have a great ice cream selection and delicious chocolate-related treats (frozen hot chocolate!). I found out about an ongoing activity they have on Monday nights (from 7pm until close) called Magic Mondays. We went last night when the usual magician wasn’t there, but there was a group of magicians who went around to the tables and performed tricks. Theo absolutely loved it!
It was a pretty busy summer night so there were lots of kids around and they were such a good audience. Even after Theo finished his ice cream he still wanted to stay and watch the magician do tricks for the other tables. He liked being able to see them up close and found it very entertaining. We will definitely head back on other Monday nights to check out the other magicians and for a nice summery treat!
*****
We haven’t gone, but they also host an Avenues Block Party on Friday nights in the summer where they show a family-friendly movie and have free popcorn and live music. The remaining shows for this summer are on July 31st (Mega Mind) and August 14th (Guardians of the Galaxy). It starts at 8pm and they show the movie from the roof with guests sitting on blankets across the street (the LDS Hospital lawn). I love having fun things within walking distance to go to!
Camp Google
I just heard about Camp Google which sounds amazing! It is an online free “summer camp” for kids that they can do on their own from home or the library or another computer. There are four themed weeks (Ocean, Space, Nature and Music) and during each week, they have various activities. Each week from July through the first week of August a new theme “launches” and kids can follow along.
The Ocean week is currently live and features a video (originally a live stream) of two scientists from National Geographic speaking about what lives down in the ocean. It didn’t go unnoticed by me that the two scientists featured are both women (bonus!). During the live stream, kids can interact by voting and asking questions.
The other activities are experiments that the kids can do at home. They provide a list of supplies needed and kids can learn about different properties of science based on the experiments. Kids can earn “badges” that they print out for each activity completed, if they need a visual tangible chart of what they’ve accomplished.
The interface seems very intuitive and easy for kids (they recommend age 7+ but younger kids can definitely participate with help from a grownup… or an older kid). This seems like a good compromise for the summer: screen time but with an educational focus. Thanks, Google! (Meanwhile, we’re waiting patiently for Google Fiber!)
July on TV
Happy Summer and 4th of July! Here is today’s segment which covered these topics:
- Big Hero 6 Interactive Movie at Glendale Library
- Disney’s Fantasia at Deer Valley Music Festival
- Food Truck Face-Off
Click to watch the video here.
Fruit that Tastes like Candy
Lychee fruit has been one of my favorite treats since I was a young child. My family lived in Taiwan when I was 2 years old and I remember watching my dad peel and eat these delicious fruits. We honored this tradition at our wedding when we had our caterer custom make lychee sorbet for our guests. I was thrilled when I saw that our local Trader Joe’s sold these fresh (you can often find them canned). If you aren’t familiar with these strange-looking fruits, you will be surprised when you peel off the rough shell and find a juicy, sweet fruit inside. Some of my friends’ kids tried it for the first time this week and they are hooked! It tastes like candy!
Speaking of candy, at the same Trader Joe’s (can you tell I love this store), they were handing out samples of “Cotton Candy grapes.” I was dubious, but they actually taste like cotton candy! Supposedly they are totally natural (and organic) and the flavor was created with some hybrid grape breeding. I had my husband try one (without telling him what they were) and he could identify the flavor. These are just a couple of refreshingly sweet fruits you can try that your kids might enjoy on these hot summer days!
Adventures with Theo 