In a way, Friday marked the Mariners' third opening day this season. They officially opened their season in Japan on March 28, where they split a pair of games against the Oakland Athletics.
Then they, along with dozens of other teams, played on the stateside official opening day, Friday, April 6, down in Oakland, where they won.
Friday, April 13, was the home opener at Safeco. A rather inauspicious date, to be sure. For weeks now the kids have been asking if they could make a "Jason" mask (from the horror flick "Friday the 13th," a movie neither one of them has seen) for the Mariners' game. I said sure, and of course we had to make a sign to go with. A Mariners game tradition is a sign asking for "rally fries" (free fries) for the best sign. So, we decorated a mask and made a sign.
I think CJ wore the mask for a total of 2 minutes at the game, and held the sign for 30 seconds. Needless to say, he wasns't spotted in the crowd of 46,000, and no rally fries came our way. That's OK, it was still fun. Here CJ is out by the lovely fireplace in the concession area at centerfield.
Though the Mariners lost the game, it was still fun to be back at the ball field. The weather was about as lovely as you could hope for an April evening. And we got to see former Mariners outfielder Mike Cameron throw out the first pitch, with Ichiro catching.
One of the highlights of the night for sure was getting to see the ISS fly over. Baseball and the space station!? It doesn't get much better than that!
The space station is right over the arch of the roof, between the red warning lights. I put a bit of a halo around it to make it more visible.
FINISHED: The kids completed their Singapore 3A math books on Friday. They did their daily assignment and when they saw they only had one more assignment to go they begged to double up and get it done. Of course I said 'Yes!'
When they finished the final assignment, CJ noticed there was a blank page at the end of the book (clearly labeled BLANK). He asked me if they could do a bonus problem there. I said "Sure!" of course. So I wrote a story problem on each of their blank pages. In CJ's book I write, 'CJ played Minecraft for 1 day and 8 hours. Annabelle played Minecraft 3 hours longer than CJ. How many hours did Annabelle play Minecraft?"
He correctly computed 35 hours in no time.
In Annabelle's book I wrote, "There were 12 Top Pot Doughnuts in a box. CJ ate 3 more than Annabelle, who had two. Kirby ate all the leftovers. How many did Kirby eat?"
Annabelle correctly computed the dog ate 5 doughnuts and added a picture labeled "happy Kirby" to boot.
Today, we started the 3B books. The first exercise was a review of using mental math to add two digit numbers.
NASA TV: I turned NASA TV on first thing this morning, knowing that space orbiter Discovery is about to make its final journey - a piggyback ride from Kennedy Space Center to the Smithsonian, its final resting place.
Not surprisingly, NASA TV showed a montage of Discovery missions this morning (including its first, the historic 'return to flight' after the Challenger disaster, and John Glenn's return to spaceflight). We learned more about how the piggyback ride atop a specially outfitted Boeing jet is achieved.
After the Discovery special, an hour long show about the sun came on. Though we'd had other things scheduled for the time slot Annabelle was rapt and pleaded to watch the show. Of course I said yes. It was super educational - an hour well spent, to be sure.
HELLO FROM HUNGARY: Over the weekend I received an email from someone in Hungary who is publishing some kind of book (no idea the topic or audience). Whatever it is, apparently this photo of Annabelle (which I have parked on Morguefile.com) is going to be in it. Interesting.
That's how most of his first one minute 'flight' went. Fortunately, the instructor was super encouraging and CJ rallied for his second go round, pictured here ...
Annabelle made full use of her two trips in the tunnel. She soared high, well over the instructor's head.
They are really getting that flying down. Is skydiving next
ReplyDeleteGreat story problems. They did really well.(so did you.). You cant have too much math and science is this day and age.