Welcome to World Wide Wood, the online home of Peter, Rebecca, Catherine and Esme Wood.

The Works

Today we visited The Works, a science and technology museum located in Newark, OH. We went down with my parents, my sister, brother-in-law and niece.

This museum was chock-full of activities for little kids. From the minute they entered the building to the minute they left, the girls were playing, experimenting, and learning. We got to try playing a theremin and a xylophone bench. We built and tested marble tracks, built some circuits, learned about light, prisms, and lasers, tested our vertical leap, played in a kid-sized city with grocery store and doctor’s office, watched a glass-blowing demonstration, explored an interurban railway car, and learned about Licking County history. Catherine said her favorite parts were building circuits and the Invent Lab, where she got to build a robot from salvaged computer parts (this was probably one of my favorite parts, too).

The museum is in downtown Newark, which is about 25 minutes from Columbus, and about 40 minutes from Mount Vernon, where my parents live. Admission for the four of us came to $20 – $7 for each adult and $3 for each child. I would definitely recommend a visit for anybody with kids who lives in the Central Ohio area, or anybody paying the area a visit.

To see all of the photos from our visit, visit the full gallery.

By Peter | 01.04.2012 | 11:28 PM | Permalink | Categories: Family | No Comments

Joining a show already in progress…

(The Wood family is currently in Ohio, staying with Peter’s parents, and visiting with them, Peter’s sister, brother-in-law, and niece, and doing the things that there are to do in Central Ohio. We join their activity already in progress…)

We’ve been here in Mount Vernon since December 29, and have been enjoying spending time with family. We celebrated my Mom’s birthday, did another Christmas celebration in Mount Vernon, visited a train, celebrated my niece’s birthday, celebrated New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

Today, Catherine, Esme, Rebecca and I took off for a family trip down to the Columbus Museum of Art. I haven’t been there since I was a kid, and apparently it’s recently been overhauled. We had a very enjoyable visit to the museum. Nearly every gallery had some kind of kid-friendly activity, whether a matching game with photos from the current gallery, or a puzzle of a painting in the gallery, assembled with the actual painting on the wall for reference.

The museum is a very manageable size, and yet maintains an impressive collection. It even has an area devoted exclusively to kids, the Wonder Room.

We spent a little over two hours at the museum, and the girls enjoyed every part of it, except for the part where we had to leave! Since both girls are under 6, and AAA offers a BOGO discount, we only paid $10 for the four of us! I highly recommend a visit if you’re in the Columbus area.

Tomorrow we’ll be headed to Newark with my family to visit The Works, a science and technology museum with lots of hands-on activities for the kids. Looking forward to another day of exploring and expanding young minds, and having fun with family!

If you head over to our gallery, you can see the daily photo galleries from our trip so far. Far more photos than I’ve included in this blog post!

By Peter | 01.04.2012 | 01:15 AM | Permalink | Categories: Family | No Comments

Expecting Christmas

We’re just a few short days from Christmas. The Wood household is busy with activity, particularly in the evenings when the little ones are asleep. Rebecca has made and mailed Christmas cards, knitted and sewn a plethora of gifts, wrapped and packed gifts for loved ones. I am usually busy getting the girls ready for bed, doing chores, and offering opinions on Rebecca’s creative endeavors where requested. Last weekend, I took the girls with me down to Somerville to visit my cousin Mark, and so that we could all be out of Rebecca’s hair for the day. She appreciated the chance to do some serious crafting with no interruptions.

At work we’re at the end of ‘Wind-Down Week,’ the last week before Christmas where the busy-ness of the season starts to slow down. The company spends the week showering us with free food, folks bring in treats to share, and everyone starts taking stock of the previous year and planning for a successful new one.

Our house is lightly but tastefully decorated for Christmas. One of my favorite decorations is the advent candle holder that Rebecca made from a slice of an old log. I also appreciate Catherine’s attempt to replace a ‘fallen angel’ from our nativity set with a doll from her dollhouse.

I’ve got one more day of work, then we’ll be spending part of Christmas Eve in Townsend with the Quitadamo family. We’ll come back for the Christmas Eve service at Dane Street, and on Christmas morning we’ll have a little Christmas at home, attend the Christmas Morning service at Dane Street, and then head out to Townsend again to spend the rest of Christmas day with Rebecca’s parents.

After Christmas, I’ll be working Tuesday and Wednesday, and Wednesday night we’ll begin our trek out to Ohio to visit my parents, sister and brother-in-law and niece. We’ll be out there for a whole week, and I’m looking forward to the road trip with Rebecca, Catherine and Esme, the visit with my family, and the break from work.

You can see a few more photos of Christmas decorations around our house.

I hope that you have a Merry Christmas, wherever you are!

By Peter | 12.23.2011 | 12:32 AM | Permalink | Categories: Occasions | No Comments

Weekend on the Vineyard

I spent this past weekend on Martha’s Vineyard, visiting with my in-laws at their cottage in the MVCMA campground in Oak Bluffs. It was a nice vacation (which I define as any escape from the ordinary, regardless of how long). Rebecca and the girls will be staying down there this week to enjoy the Grand Illumination, and then I’ll be going down to bring them home this coming weekend. Here are some of my favorite moments from this past weekend:

 

The lemonade stand at the West Tisbury Farmer’s Market is one of our favorites. Definitely try one of their drinks if you can make it to West Tisbury on a Saturday morning.

This is a great diner located at the Katama Airfield in Edgartown. You can get a seat right on the edge of the airstrip and watch biplanes, turboprops, and other personal aircraft take off and land. The food is delicious, too. Rebecca’s parents watched the girls so that Rebecca and I could go out on our own to the farmer’s market and have lunch at the diner. Thanks!

Nonni (aka Dianne, my mother-in-law), makes the best food, and I always enjoy eating it when I visit. For Saturday’s dinner she made steak kabobs, rice, cole slaw, corn on the cob, and frozen banana for dessert. Yum.

I always love watching my girls be creative, and this weekend was no exception.

We couldn’t have avoided this if we tried. The cast came zipping around the campground on a golf cart, shouting that the Wizard of Oz would be starting at 7:30. Catherine and I, along with Ken and Dianne, went down to see it. The kids did a great job and Catherine enjoyed watching it, even if a few parts were scary.

You can see all of the Wizard of Oz photos here, and all of my photos from the weekend here.

By Peter | 08.15.2011 | 09:44 PM | Permalink | Categories: Family, Travel | No Comments

What I Did This Father’s Day Weekend

A Report By Peter Wood

This weekend ranks up there as one of my favorite Father’s Day weekends so far. The weather was great, the activities were fun, and I got to do my favorite thing, spend lots of time with my family.

On Friday we drove out to Harold Parker State Forest in Andover, MA, to go camping with our friends Laurel and Scott and their kids. We had a big campsite where we each pitched our tents, as well as a screen room to put around the picnic table, which our friends had brought.

L&S are very experienced campers, so we enjoyed the opportunity to learn from them and benefited from their service. My particular favorite was Scott’s buckwheat pancakes.

Catherine and Esme had a great time playing with the kids. Either family’s tent was fair game for jumping, cuddling, roughhousing, or reading.

I also got to enjoy some quality time with our girls. We walked to the campground’s playground, explored our own campsite, and went to look at the pond. Here’s a photo from one “adventure walk” Catherine and I took while Mama and Esme were napping.

Overall, the camping trip was very low-key. We didn’t have any real plans of what to do, we just relaxed and did what we felt like doing. I checked the time only a couple of times during the trip, but otherwise didn’t have a clock in sight. We had a really great time with Laurel and Scott and their family. It was also a good dry run for our trip to Michelle‘s wedding in July, where we’ll be camping for a few days.

You can see all of the (many) photos from our camping trip here.

After we got home from the trip, we unpacked and spent the afternoon puttering around the house, resting from the weekend and getting things put away. Later in the day, we went out to dinner at one of my favorite places, the 99 Restaurant.

After dinner, we went over to Endicott Park to play on their excellent playground and see their farm animals. We saw the unusual (to us) sight of two female sheep butting heads. We also got to see the park ranger feeding all of the animals. The girls were both very excited.

I was glad to get to spend the weekend with friends and family. I feel very privileged to be the father of two great girls, and am glad to have Rebecca as my partner in helping them grow. Thanks for the great Father’s Day!

By Peter | 06.19.2011 | 11:05 PM | Permalink | Categories: Catherine, Esme, Family | No Comments

Epic Picnic Fail!

There were signs that maybe this evening’s picnic at Dane Street Beach wasn’t meant to happen. It could have been when we arrived at the beach and were greeted with a chilly breeze. Maybe it was when Esme flung an entire shovelful of sand onto our picnic blanket while we were eating our egg salad sandwiches, coating Rebecca’s with sand. But if those signs weren’t enough, we knew the picnic was doomed when “Rambo,” someone’s unleashed Boston Terrier, ran all over our picnic while we were still trying to eat the remains of our meal, kicking sand into everything, ate a bite of my sandwich, stole one of the girls’ sand shovels, ran across our blanket two or three more times, all while his owners did little or nothing to rein him in. At this point we just had to laugh about our misfortune, and agreed that it was time to pack it in. To add insult to injury, as we were packing up, one of the dog’s owners started smoking and blew a cloud of second-hand smoke towards us from upwind. Here’s to knowing when enough is enough!

Of course, despite our misfortune, I managed to get some photos of the outing, showing that in the midst of the ‘fail,’ there was still some ‘win’ to be had.

See the rest o’ the photos in our gallery.

By Peter | 05.08.2011 | 10:30 PM | Permalink | Categories: Food, Humor, Life Near Boston | No Comments

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

Today we’re attending Easter services at our home church, Dane Street Church in Beverly, MA. I’m playing the cello in a performance of Don Francisco’s “He Is Alive!” We’ve rehearsed quite a bit, and I think it is going to sound great, and hopefully send a great message to the many people I expect will be attending today.

After church, we’ll be heading out to Townsend to have Easter dinner with Rebecca’s parents. After that, we’ll be leaving on a road trip to Washington, D.C. My cousin, Kim, is getting married in the area next weekend, and we’re going to spend the preceding week doing some sightseeing. I’m really looking forward to the whole week.

Today also marks the end of my Lenten Challenge, where I had given up Facebook and Twitter for Lent. I succeeded in abstaining from both of those for the duration. However, I’ll be glad to get back on Facebook. While I do think that I’ll be more conscientious about my use, it’s too valuable for staying connected to my family and church life for me to consider giving it up entirely. Rebecca can attest to the number of times she’s had to relay important news and information to me that was only posted on Facebook.

By Peter | 04.24.2011 | 09:50 AM | Permalink | Categories: Occasions | No Comments