Giant Jelly Babies and Giant Snakes

Sprout and Squidge had some sweets one night and came up with the idea of doing an experiment with them. They each went and got a mug of hot water and a glass of cold water, and Squidge put one of his Jelly Babies in each of his two, while Sprout put one of his Fruit Pastilles in each of his two. 

They checked them later that night, to find that the ones in hot water had dissolved but the ones in cold water were much the same. 

The next morning, however, this was the Jelly Baby that greeted us! Osmosis ftw :)

The boys have been collaborating this week on Little Big Planet 2, Lego Marvel Super Heroes, and The Puppeteer. One of their friends came to play and did LBP2 with them too :)

Their grandpa is still in hospital so they've all been making videos to tell him what they've been up to...

Moppet turned two (TWO!!!!), and had a Peppa Pig filled day :) She loved blowing out her candles and spent the rest of the evening telling/showing me again how she blew them out <3

Sprout and Squidge went shopping with their pocket money and both bought some Lego. Squidge's Hero Factory had a bug as part of it which reminded me of a rhinoceros beetle, so he wanted to see what one looked like:

Sprout had been looking forward to the Night at the Museum that we'd booked for him and Gruff. We'd had a call from a guy at B-Arts, who were organising it, to say that he'd be on the Anglo-Saxon team, so he went along in his cape and helmet :) There was an adventure where the Staffordshire Hoard had gone missing, and on the way they found out about mead, the roman snack of dormice, and sang a song about what Saxons did. Sprout's favourite part was freezing to hide when the grumpy museum night guard came round :)

This was the Saxon song performance at the end of the adventure before the film came on.

Squidge and Moppet got out his Crayola light explosion board that they haven't played with in a while. She asked me to draw Peppa on one layer and then they both added to the picture on the other layer :)

They then moved on to the airbrush, and actually got it working properly for the first time.

Squidge made this...

...and this...

...while Moppet made this.

The boys and Gruff completed the Lego Marvel Superheroes game and are excited to now have all the characters and vehicles available for doing missions with, and have also been playing a lot of Little Big Planet 2 on the community levels.

Moppet has been having a run up and down the street on the scooter.

After that Sprout and I went out for some time together. He chose KFC and we had such an awesome time :) We chatted for ages about what he thought a 'futurecar' would be, essentially a force field that held you in place and moved you from place to place; about career paths in restaurants and how you make the most money and what he thinks he'd enjoy; about the world record for the longest fart (who am I to question his wonderings lol); about whether he's taller or shorter than a baby giraffe (he came up with a detailed theory that led him to think taller, but it turns out that at six feet the giraffe would actually have a couple of feet on him); about whether anti gravity could be harnessed for intra city transportation; and about how you dance on Minecraft and what he'd make a dance floor and lights out of. We also read our newest copy of New Scientist and he was amazed at the robot hand that can be used to sense touch, and he was interested in the article on nuclear fusion too. He then suggested we quiz each other with five questions at a time, so we did that back and forth for an hour or so, with everything from facts about Minecraft to general knowledge to phiosophical questions to riddles. It was fun :)

We had a day at Come into Play for some friends' birthdays...

On the way home in the car Sprout said to me that he'd realised that if you add two odd numbers together you get an even number, and if you add two even numbers together, you also get an even number. Then he said he'd been thinking about it and he's worked out that the earth's centre of gravity would be in its actual centre, as you can go anywhere on the earth's surface and not fall off.

Later on Gruff took the boys to a new monthly animal group. There had been some umming and ahing from the boys as to whether they'd go, but they were so glad they did! They came back bubbling over with how much fun they'd had and the things they'd learnt.

This is Gruff holding a little snake...

...a big python that Sprout tells me was looking dull as it shed yesterday...

...Sprout handling a snake for the first time...

...Gruff holding a huge cockroach...

...one helluva spider...

...a Tanuki or Japanese raccoon dog. (which the boys were especially excited about as a tanuki is one of the things that Super Mario transforms into)...

...and a fox that had been rescued as a cub when it's mother was killed and had resisted all attempts to release it back into the wild.