The Science Odyssey

I have a bunch of pictures from the girls Science Odyssey. We weren't able to hear the results of A's judged project, they were to announce it at school today but A didn't hear anything.

This Science Fair was unlike any I had ever been to. It was at the middle school. There were several classrooms set up with science exhibits and demonstrations by scientists from the Livermore Lab. The 4-H club kids were there with the animals they were raising. We got to see chickens, bunnies and tiny baby goats. The little girls loved this part. The Science projects submitted by students were split up between the Gym and the Multi-purpose room. We spent two hours there checking out all the stuff. They even served food. yumm.

The Soda Taste Test Project by:

K and her friend "M"

Crystals Project by:

A and and her friend "E"

A and a 4-H chicken

K, A and their friend "E"

Science Fair (revision)

K and A will be participating in the school Science Fair tomorrow evening. A has partnered up with her good friend "E" from school.

Tonight we go to the middle school to set up the projects, and tomorrow night is the big fair. A and her friend are submitting a judged project on crystals. They grew crystals to determine if colored crystals grew faster/slower/different from clear crystals. K, is submitting a non-judged project. She did soda taste testing. I will have to say, I would have called myself an expert of soda flavor, until now. I absolutely couldn't tell the difference between Sprite and Sierra Mist. The diet sodas were a little tricky too.

I'll put up another Science Fair post after tomorrow, with the pictures and the results.

*I'm revising the original post and deleted the part with K's drop out friend. K decided that she was not going to let her friend drop out of the Science Fair. She handed the project in with her friends name on it, too. The girl did help with the experiment, but decided she wanted to drop out. K called her and said she turned in the project, got the girl a t-shirt and that we would pick her up and take her with us tomorrow night. This child amazes me. I wish I was that sweet.*

We be Bakers

We have been baking a lot lately. It's been so much fun. Adam is a total cookie monster so we have to bake and bake and bake all the time. E, J and I baked 5 dozen chocolate chip cookies on Saturday and they were gone by Monday night. Adam had his pouty I need cookies look today, so back into the kitchen we went. E and J are big helpers, they pour all of the ingredients into the bowl and lick the spoons. YUM!!

Today we made two dozen peanut butter cookies (Adam's favorite) and two loaves of Banana Bread aka Nana Bwead.


Eating the peanut butter



Aggghhh! (insert Cookie Monster voice) COOOK-EEE!!


They love the mixing part

Learning to squish the cookies down


The results. SO YUMMY!

I've got to get a K, A, H post in here soon. =)

I GOT WORMS

Today was the first rain free day in a while. We were aching to get outside and do something. Anything. Our house is extremely small (900sf and 6 people living in it) so when you have to stay inside all day it gets a little squished. E, J, Super Jax the Ninja Cat (our kitty) and I went on a worm hunting adventure. There are always tons and tons of worms outside after it rains. The girls grabbed their buckets and out we went. Jax followed along on our trip. He's so cute!

Ready to go


Jax likes worm hunting too


I had to pick up the first few worms myself because the girls were acting all grossed out. This really doesn't work for me, I like kids who like worms. It was a little tricky, I had to pet the worm *eww* and actually call it "nice worm". "E" was on board after that. She was petting and petting those little slimy suckers. She finally started to pick them up herself. She was so proud of herself, she yelled "I did it, high five". She is so cute I just want to squeeze her guts out sometimes.


Teaching them to pick up worms


E's first worm


Of course, Julia is equally as cute, but she didn't want anything to do with touching those worms.


Mommy: J look, pet the nice worm

J: I can't want to pet the worm


Mommy: Come on. Look, Emmy is picking up the worms, you do it


J: I can't want to do it, I can't pick up the worm

Mommy: You can do it, E can do it (a little peer pressure)

J: No, you put the worm in my bucket. E touch the worm. E can put it in my bucket too.



She was very excited to show daddy all of her worms despite the fact that she didn't pick any up. Oh well, it was our first worm hunting quest. She just needs a little more practice, or she figured out that she didn't have any need to get her hands all dirty if E did it for her.


J

The girls hunted for worms for about an hour. It was really a lot of fun. I can't wait for it to rain again.



The big daddy worm


The worm lot

Valentine's Day with no money.

Lack of money has really taught us to be creative. This year for Valentine's Day, "K" and "A" both made all of their own Valentine's to hand out to their class, 32 each. It was really sweet and very creative.

I usually buy them all kinds of goodies and give them to them in the morning. This year, we are pretty low on money so I decided to just skip the goodies and do nothing. I felt bad about this all day the day before Valentine's Day. After all 5 girls were in bed, I dove into my craft and party boxes. I found cute little paper doily hearts, a pink plastic table cloth, red & pink construction paper and a bunch of cute ribbon. I put the pink table cloth on the table, cut out tons and tons of paper hearts in all different sizes, and scattered them around the table. I kind of got paper heart crazy and started taping them everywhere and even hung some from our light fixture. I made a card for each girl ("K" and "A" making thier own cards gave me the idea for all of this). Adam came home with 5 valentine bags and some candy and two little toys that were given to him. PERFECT!!

When the girls woke up they were so excited and thought it was the best Valentine's day ever.

The finished table

"E" and "J" loved the hearts so much they wanted them all to be on their bedroom door. It's so cute. They brought me the tape and took all the hearts one by one and taped them to the outside of their bedroom door.

"J" with her heart door

"E" and her heart door





I will have to say I thought this was one of the best Valentine's day too. The kids loved it. They had a blast all day with my home made paper hearts. "K" can't remember one thing I've ever given them for Valentine's Day, actually neither can I, but she said she'd never forget this one. It's amazing the "remember when's" you can make with no money and a little love.

Middle School, Attitudes & Getting older

I am slowly coming to grips with the fact that "K" and "A" will be going to middle school next year. Actually in approximately 3 months they will stop being elementary school students. Where did this time go? I asked Adam last night if we could just hold them back this year because I'm just not ready for my little girls to be big girls. He said no of course, that I would never be ready, and he's right.

It makes me wonder if everyone elses kids grow up this fast? The thought of sending them to middle school scares the pants off of me. Boy oh boy. I don't think we're quite ready for all that goes with the "middle school years". I'm pretty sure they can sense what goes with being a middle school kid, because the eyes are already starting to roll once in a while. The heavy sighs have developed recently after I say something. I'm suddenly panicking trying to remember what a jerk I was to my parents. "Oh no" I'm really in for it, I think. My sweet little girls are going to get attitudes. Yikes!

Example of today:

"K": Mom, did you get me a white T-shirt for my project today?

Me: Uh, no not yet.

"K": Well, what the heck did you do all day!

Me: (mouth haning open) *speechless*

I still don't know how to answer that. Where the heck did that come from?

2009 is proving to be a year full of realizations.

1. My big girls are moving on to a whole new stage.
2. My little girls are not babies anymore, and it's probably time to quit calling them "the babies".
3. I will turn 30. Which I'm sure is not a big deal for those of you who've already done this, but I can remember my parents being 30 and I never really thought I would be because it always seemed so old. Though I do thank God for allowing me to live 30 years.

Hang on it's going to be a wild ride.

The Starter blog

My goal will be to update about the girls, and their parents of course. I'm not very blog savvy, so you'll have to bear with me. As if I don't have enough on my plate, I'll add blogging to my list. I'm way behind the SAHM Joneses and all of their blogging, so since I've finally figured out how to conquer the laundry (15 years later), I have a little extra time.