Rosy

SWAG AND SWAGGER: Our first order of business this morning was picking Christian up at Sea-Tac. He was winging his way home after enjoying a first in 95 years Oregon Ducks' victory in the Rose Bowl.

Christian brought home t-shirts for himself and the kids. Oddly, he didn't bring me home a shirt emblazoned with the Ducks' logo. Now why do you suppose that is? Hmmm.

ROCKET REWIND: This afternoon a Facebook friend of mine from the #MSL #NASATweetup posted another Tweetup attendee's video of the event. The video was made by a man who is a news videographer in New York. It's well done - very professional and really captures the excitement surrounding the event. Here's a link to "MSL Tweetup Launch Day" if you're so inclined. (http://vimeo.com/34519970)

KNOW WHEN TO FOLD 'EM: Eyeing two huge IKEA bags full of laundry to be sorted, folded and put away, I decided it was time for a life skills lesson. "As long as you're alive, you're going to be wearing clothes and getting them dirty. You need to know how to fold them and put them away," I reminded the kids.

Certainly they've helped with laundry before, but today's task was a mountain rather than a molehill.

I decided to really put CJ to the test and asked him to help put sheets on my king sized bed. I put my side's two corners on first and left the hard ones for him. He managed to wrestle corners three and four on, which was good. Then it was time for the pillowcases. Annabelle had hers on in no time, saying, "It's just like dressing a baby!" Not that she's had any experience in that, but she made short work of it. And then there was CeeJ. He shoved, pulled, fought gravity, and worked up a sweat. He was struggling so mightily, you would think I'd asked him to rotate the tires on the Space Shuttle, not case a pillow.

After a few minutes, Bee gave him some pointers. He finally managed to finish the task. He'll probably have to go to bed early tonight, what with all the effort he expended.

SHAMPOO SUBMARINE: At some point today, Annabelle presented me with a bejeweled/bedazzled former shampoo bottle that had been transformed into a tricked out submarine. Love her upcycling. :)

SILLY SENTENCES: Tonight we FINALLY used a game that's been riding around in my car for weeks/months since checking it out at the library. Based on the popular Mad Libs board game, this was a card game, where players used cards to craft silly sentences. We played before and after dinner (at the Pyramid Alehouse) tonight.

The game was a lot of fun. We all came up with some humdingers, and the game was a great way to reinforce the parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives). We won't wait months before playing it again.

GONE MAINSTREAM: If you read the blog regularly, you'll see from time to time photos of the kids holding a small poster with a Space Shuttle and a bunch of names/signatures (including theirs) on it pop up.

For instance, they held it when they visited Santa Claus and met Apollo astronaut Al Worden. Thanks to other poster signers, the placard has been on the top of Kilimanjaro, it's visited Stonehenge, been to the South Pole, and it has even flown on the ISS. Until now, the poster has mostly been an insider thing, known only to people who have signed it. But today, a story about it appeared in Technology Alabama, and it sounds like at least a couple of other outlets are going to run it.

Tim Taylor, the launch engineer at the apex of all of this, submitted the article and his email address was included along with the story (which includes quotes from a couple people you might know). Tim reports he's already received several positive emails from strangers about the story. Nice!