Jennifer's 365 Project

It's a pretty heavy arduino week this week but man, I'm on a roll. So I started testing something I'm thinking of putting together for Grand Rapids Comic Con.

A part I ordered earlier this week came so I did some soldering this evening. Now with everything wired up I can start programming this adorable 8x8 multi-color (red, yellow, green) LED matrix.

He really likes to help push things. The stroller is a little frustrating because he can't reach the handles, but he can push it from the front, which seems to satisfy his needs for now.

Sewing with conductive thread is kind of tricky since it feels a lot like sewing with wire. But it's good practice I suppose, since I have several projects I'd like to work on with that thread.

With the weather getting cooler, evenings in the park are pretty nice. Having awesome company certainly helps. These guys are great.

Tuesday night a large branch off of a neighbor's tree fell and crashed in our back yard. It landed on a few smaller trees we had back there but didn't do any real damage. It did need to be removed so that it would stop pushing on the other trees and potentially kill them.

So Chris's dad came out today with his chainsaw and cut the large branch into smaller more manageable chunks. Quinn and I spent our time watching from the deck.
After the majority of the work was done we headed out for a quick bite to eat. Quinn is definitely still not ready to sit still in a restaurant. He was ok for about 5 minutes but after that he wanted to get down, run around, climb on the table, and in general just explore everything!

He did enjoy some mac and cheese once food arrived. Progress on that front! I look forward to hiding vegetables in mac and cheese in the future.

Earlier this week I finished sewing up some slippers for Quinn. He really likes shoes so I thought it would be a fun thing for him to play with in the house. I pulled the pattern off of Darling Diapers after watching a video tutorial.

He thinks they're ok and will occasionally ask for them. I consider that a minor success.
We also made a few magnets for him yesterday. We were at Joanne Fabrics and they had a bunch of wood figures for 50 cents, so we picked up a few figures and a pack of magnets. We have a small bird magnet for our fridge so he's been especially enamored with the parrot figure.

It's been a few years since we've been to Frederik Meijer Gardens and quite a while since I've actually been anywhere outside. I've actually only been to the sculpture park and part of the children's area, so I wanted to take Quinn and see more of the gardens.
It's still the first week back to school for most kids so this was a perfect day to visit. The children's area wasn't too busy and the kids that were there were on the younger side.
I was really surprised at how much there was to the children's area. Aside from the water area there was a log cabin...
...And quite an elaborate tree house. I think we will definitely be coming back several times over the next few years.
They also have the sculpture from Northland Mall since that's now closed. I grew up going to that mall quite a bit and I loved this thing. I remember my mom yelling at me all the time not to climb it. So now I guess if I ever want to see it I can just go to the gardens.
After two hours of running around Quinn was doing so well we even went through the Japanese Gardens. It opened last year and I was curious to see what it looked like.
It is definitely not as kid friendly as the children's area, so we could only linger at certain areas briefly before the whirlwind of energy hurled a rock into a perfectly manicured area.
But all in all I really enjoyed it. It was pretty peaceful since there were only retirees out and about. And Quinn did really well for nearly three hours we were there. In fact, he napped for three hours after we left. That alone made the trip worth it!