Look What I've Been Doing?

Jimmy's parents have a store at this flea markety thing in the city. It is totally cool. It is mostly Hispanic people who own stores there and who shop there, so going there you sort of feel like you've walked into Mexico. There's always Spanish music blasting in the different booths, and the smell of Mexican food from the food court. You can also buy a lot of very inexpensive, Made-In-Mexico products that you won't find in normal stores.
A few years ago Monkeyboy saw this video game system there, called Superjoy. It was the kind that doesn't have a box and cartridges. It just consists of two controllers. You plug them into the TV, and wala, up comes a list of about 7,500 video games that are pre-loaded into the system. (I'm not exactly exaggerating here. The game lists 7,500 games. But most of them seem to be different versions of about 50 games.) The games are old, classic, arcade-style.
Including... the original Super Mario Brothers! I'm talking about the 1986 version that came packaged with the Nintendo system! My brother and I got that for Christmas when I was about eight. Before that, we had ColecoVision, and also played a lot of Atari with our teenaged uncle. But all of our friends were getting Nintendos... and when we got it, we played it nonstop! We only had the two games that came with the system, so we played Super Mario over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...
So, anyway, Monkeyboy got SuperJoy from the flea market several years ago. He played it a few times, and forgot about it.
Then, just recently, he found it packed away in the attic, and plugged it in downstairs. In the room I sleep in! Now, everyone is addicted to it, including me! I play it with Little Bear just about every morning as soon as we wake up. She is amazed that I already know all of the "secrets" of the game, like how to get the invisible "one up" mushrooms that give you extra lives, and where to find the secret warp zones that let you skip levels. I've never been able to play any of the newer 3-D games. They confuse me! But this one is great!
SuperJoy has other old Nintendo games like Excite Bike, and Tetris. And it even has even older games that I used to play on ColecoVision, like Popeye and Donkey Kong! I could play those 7,500 games all day long!
So... thats one of the places you can find me these days...

Through the eyes of Little Bear and Pufferfish...

This is what happens when almost-7-year-old Little Bear and 3-year-old Pufferfish get ahold of my camera!

                                                                A piece of our newest dog, Kodiak 

Rafael, deep in thought

Monkeyboy and his friend in the basement

Some random kid

Weird picture of Kody

I have no clue what Jimmy is doing in this picture!

\

THE END!!!

Letter Writing Wednesday

Here in the exciting world of our house, I've been trying to enrich the children's brains over the summer as much as I can. For instance, we've entered the summer reading program at the library, and we read for half an hour each day. We also frequent the area nature centers and local museums, attending educational kiddy programs and stuff.
One cool idea I read about in a book about homeschooling was Letter Writing Thursday. (I changed it to Letter Writing Wednesday because it just sounds better to me!) On this day each week, all the kids pick someone to write a letter to. Then you mail it out, and hope for a response back!
Little Bear and Rafael both chose to write to fire fighters. Their letters:

Dear Firefighters,
       When I was little I was in a fire. The scariest part was seeing the fire. What is the scariest part about being a firefighter? Please send me a letter.
Love, Little Bear.

Dear Firefighters,
         What is the funnest part of your job? Please write back with the funnest part.
Love, Rafael.

Pufferfish originally wanted to write to the mailman, but then she chose to write to her Daddy instead!

Dear Daddy, .
I love Daddy. Daddy always plays with me. My dad always says what I say. He always says"I love you!" I say, "I love Daddy." I always play with you. I'm never gonna kill you.
Love,
Pufferfish,

Hmm... what a sweet letter... I think???

Anyone want to join in on Letter Writing Wednesday next week?