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July 8, 2002 - Another assortment of pictures we want to share. Malina recently celebrated her 5th birthday. Her parents are shocked that she is 5 years old already.
A total of four pages of recent pictures have been added. Please scroll to the bottom of each page and choose the "next page" link for the next page in the series.
Pictures
The pictures that follow are very recent pictures. Probably for a little while, things will not necessarily proceed from newest to oldest until we get caught up.
Contents: Museum, air show (2), doll house birthday present (3), art supplies birthday present (2), garden (3).
We took a trip to the Betty Brinn Children's Museum. Malina is shown here in the "TV news studio" area, reading a news script at the anchor desk, and speaking (kind of) into the wooden microphone in her left hand. The camera (a camcorder mounted in a sturdy clear plastic box on a professional tripod that was roughly the heft of a studio camera) was on, and the video image could be seen in monitors around the area as well as at a rudimentary editing station nearby. They also had a crude "chroma-key" set up that allowed people to switch background images in front of another camera, and then walk into an area covered by a third camera to see themselves in a monitor superimposed on the chosen background.
Yes, we know. Never ever touch a propeller or stand where you could get hit with it if it unexpectedly started turning. These general aviation piston aircraft engines run with magnetos, and a common minor electrical fault could allow an engine start if the propeller is moved. I don't know what we were thinking, and we were apparently not paying nearly enough attention to our situation when this picture was taken, but we were a bit horrified when this picture was developed. We had gone up to the West Bend airport for an air show. Malina wanted a picture of herself standing next to a local Cessna 150 series general aviation plane. It was early in the day, and we were walking around looking at everything getting set up. This will be one of those moments that you always remember wherein everything worked out fine but could have been potentially dangerous. It will serve as a "wake up call" (dope slap) to behave better in the future. In our defense, we did walk around the plane fully beforehand and verified that there was no one else within at least 50 feet of the plane.
There's also a picture of Patty Wagstaff (world-famous aerobatic pilot) with her arm on the prop of her aerobatic plane (we know, it's weak justification).
This was a fairly good air show, although no jets were flying. It was one in the series of shows put on by Southeastern Wisconsin Airfest (suspended indefinitely). We went up on Saturday, June 15, 2002. We had fun.
At the air show, Malina had some fun sliding down a huge inflatable slide that was there. Twice. For the price that was charged by the somewhat befuddled operators, she was not going to be making much use of any of the inflatable things that were here.
(Note to self - write about the weather and the condition of this slide and some of the other inflatable attractions later in the afternoon.)
For about the last two years or so, an effort was underway to create a doll house for Malina. It was finally finished in time for her 5th birthday. The house is quite the amazing structure. Much work had gone into the house itself, the inhabitants, and all of the furniture and fixtures.
This effort was instigated and led by Grammy Ramstack. On the weekend after Malina's birth day, Malina and Grammy unwrapped the boxes of furniture and fixtures and Grammy placed them in the house where they would all fit.
This is a view of the interior. The whole house is mounted on a turntable that allows the house to be easily rotated. In addition to Grammy and Grandpa Ramstack working on it and keeping it at their home in Waterford during construction, others, including Malina's great grandparents (Marj and Joe Paik, who live in Arkansas) built and upholstered furniture, painted, etc.
Malina is busy making good use of a large art set that was given to her by Uncle Doug and Aunt Haydee (Dad's aunt and uncle living in Florida) for her birthday. She appears to be drawing a "bug car", a picture of an actual VW "new bug" automobile that she saw on the street one day that was painted just this way.
Later, she used the art set to create some "thank you" notes for some of the gifts she received recently for her birthday. The many gifts included stuffed animals and books from friends, more books and savings bonds from family, and much more. She had a very happy birthday!
We have a garden. It is a plot that we rent from the county each year in the community garden in Waukesha. It is located on county grounds maybe a mile and a half via roads from our house. Malina and Mom are the gardeners, and Malina helps with most aspects of planting, watering, weeding, etc. Dad was inoculated against gardening during his childhood.
Malina is standing in a structure onto which the climbing plants, that are planted in a circle around the outside edge of the base of the structure, can climb when they grow.
Malina is watering the rows of seeds early in the season. Actually, this year the weather was so cold and wet for an extended time into the spring that the planting got started quite late. The weeds are doing much better now than they were in this picture :).
Additional recent pictures can be found on the next page.
For additional pictures that have appeared here in the past, please see Malina Archives Page 9, Malina Archives Page 8, Malina Archives Page 7 and Malina Archives Page 6. Previous archives (namely, 5-1) have been moved off-line.
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