kaleidoscoping chaos...: Preparing for Pittsburgh!

This weekend we are making it a three-day weekend and driving to Pittsburgh for a family friend's wedding. We are very excited! (Well, I am super excited!!) First off, the wedding is at Heinz Stadium because they are both big time Pittsburgh Steeler fans - and that is just cool... (the wedding invites were even in black and gold/yellow). Second, ever since our 6 mos stint in Chicagoland, I have been totally into learning about and discovering Frank Lloyd Wright and his architecture.

On the way to Pittsburgh, you can drive to the uber-famous (as in Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie hung out there - see here) Fallingwater. It is one of Wright's most famous and interesting houses. He built it into the rocks and above a waterfall. We are going to stop there on Friday afternoon. Our plan is to meet my brother and his family there. Some of them will go on various tours, but my gang (me, Jonah, Vera and Mama) will walk the grounds, visit the waterfall and house and eat at the cafe. The interior tours are only for kids 5 and older so as much as I want to see the inside - we'll enjoy hanging out outside and taking it all in, in a "kaleidoscopey suprasensorsial" style!

I wanted to try get my kids psyched about it. To jump start my little architects and their imaginations, I put together a slide show of Fallingwater photos on the computer. I also gathered up all types of building materials: boxes of all shapes, containers, Lego's, Citiblocks, Hebrew alphabet blocks, plastic blocks, etc... I also found a coloring page of Fallingwateron the website.

When Jonah came home from camp, we all watched the slide show. They both really liked it! After watching it many more times than I thought they would want to watch it?!?!? I showed them all the stuff and told them we should build one ourselves! They were excited about it. It was sorta like being in the The National Building Museum's Building Zone - but in our living room! They built buildings and Jonah just LOVED crashing them down! Vera didn't like it when he did that - and she would get scared and run into my arms...

They did it for a good while and then somehow the boxes turned into cars and Jonah told me he was using his "imagination" and they were having races... which meant him and Vera were now in the boxes... and crashing into each other... When I thought things were getting a bit out-of-hand I asked them if they wanted to color the Fallingwater building and we went to table to color the pages. They are both really into coloring right now - which is very cute to watch. Jonah is always sharing the crayons with Vera and he is very serious about the whole thing. Vera just gets a kick out of her ability to make lines!

Finally, it was time for Vera's nap. Jonah asked, "I want to do more things mommy, please" - so I proposed we build another "big kid" Fallingwater and use the picture as a "blueprint" and if he really worked hard I would give him a waterfall to add to it! He was very excited about this! So we did it. We had to try a few different ways to get one to stay together, but we got one that looked really good and Jonah did most of it by himself. I gave him the waterfall and he was very excited. Then he "made it CRASH!" - he loves to do that! He is my creative/destructive guy! Then, he asked if we could make a small one from his new Citiblocks - so we did - and again we added a waterfall and again he crashed it!

We may do some more Fallingwater stuff before we leave for Pittsburgh - stay tuned!