We the Peeple

POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME: The bulk of our day was spent toiling in the sugar arts. Yes, we did some math. And Annabelle had ballet. And we checked on our seedlings. But mostly, we melted, smooshed, shaped, colored and sculpted sugar, as today was the day set aside for a Peeps art project. A couple of weeks ago, Annabelle settled on the idea of doing a Sesame Peeps themed scene. We've been collecting different colored Peeps in our shopping travels recently and first thing this a.m. we made a list of the colors of fondant we needed to make, as fondant was going to be our modeling 'clay' on the project. We had to make red, blue, green, orange, gray, black, brown and yellow. The red and blue above is part of Ernie's shirt.

CJ's hands got a workout mixing colors. It was good for him. In addition to the Peeps, the CJ Sesame Street set had to be constructed, too. It took several hours, but it wasn't hard work and it's coming together quite nicely. It should be finished early in the a.m. tomorrow.

BACK IN THE USSR: The Russian space program figured largely into our day. Case in point: first thing this a.m. I had an email from NASA letting me know the April 19 launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour has been pushed back to April 29 at the earliest. That's a HUGE bummer for Rick and Ken, who had/have flights, etc. booked for the original date. Sigh. I kind of saw this coming. I saw a post by a NASA launch pad engineer/technician on Facebook last week and he said everything was on target for the April 19 launch, but that NASA just had to get things squared away schedule wise with the Russians regarding a mission of theirs to the ISS. As soon as I saw that I pointed it out to Christian and said, "I think this is trouble." Why? Well, because the U.S. is no longer the leader in a lot of things, and one of those things is a space program.

We only have two shuttle flights left and after that, we're just along for the ride to get back to the ISS. Our astronauts will just be buying seats on Russian flights. It makes me a little crazy. So sure 'nough, today word comes that the Russians aren't going to change their schedule to accommodate the Endeavour's launch date. Disappointing, but I don't blame them. The times, they are a changing. And speaking of the Russians and their burgeoning space program, this afternoon, we watched Expedition 27, with crew members Russian Flight Engineer Andrey Borisenko, NASA Flight Engineer Ron Garan, and Soyuz Commander Alexander Samokutyaev lift off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan in a Soyuz rocket. (You can watch it too HERE.) The Soyuz, dubbed "Gagarin," launched one week shy of the 50th anniversary of the launch of Yuri Gagarin from the very same launch pad on April 12, 1961, to become the first human to fly in space.