Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows

TRANSFORMED: Yesterday's big news was CJ's acquisition of a white fedora.

It fit him so well in more ways that one, and if we had my druthers, we would have left it as is. But CJ had other plans. Big rainbow colored plans, in fact.

If you read yesterday's post, you know CJ is Super Obsessed with a Rainbow Fedora in the game Roblox. And he wanted one of his own, in the real world. So this morning, we were at the craft store by 9 a.m., laying in proper supplies, including glitter. ...

We had to do a little color mixing once we got home.

 And some very careful painting. ...

After all the colors dried, the hat got a light shower of silver glitter all over. And in the end, CJ had a custom hat he was VERY happy with. 

In fact, he was so happy with it, he wore it to the grocery store - along with his My Little Pony shirt with Rainbow Dash on it. 

I'll just come out and say it. He pretty much looked like he was ready to grand marshal a gay pride parade. And that didn't bother me, and he was downright proud of how he looked, so who cares what other people think. I caught a few people gawking. I'm sure it was just because they're jealous THEY don't have a sparkling rainbow fedora.

HISTORY BUFFS: We're working on a little artsy-craftsy project that has to do with things that happened 50 years ago. There are no shortage of things to research and write about.

Today, we learned that it was Feb. 20, 1962 when astronaut John H. Glenn, Jr. became the first American to orbit the earth. Glenn named his spacecraft Friendship 7, but the mission was known officially as Mercury-Atlas 6, because it was the sixth Mercury launch to use a modified Atlas-D rocket. 

Glenn orbited Earth three times, with each orbit lasting 88 minutes and 29 seconds. The entire mission lasted 4 hours, 55 minutes and 23 seconds before he splashed down in his capsule. In all, Glenn traveled a total of 75,679 miles. 

In '62, the space race was in full swing. While both the Soviets and Americans put men in orbit, but NASA was eyeing a much further target – an interplanetary encounter. Enter the Mariner space probe program. ...

On July 22, 1962, Mariner 1 was launched, its destination Venus. However, the rocket veered erratically off course almost immediately and was destroyed by the Range Safety Officer.

Bugs were worked out and the nearly identical Mariner 2 was launched on Aug. 27. The operation went flawlessly, and less than four months later (Dec. 12), Mariner 2 passed within 22,000 miles of Venus.

Launch of Mariner 2, 1962 - photo courtesy NASA

Mariner 2 recorded the temperature at Venus for the first time, discovering a hot atmosphere of 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, Mariner 2’s solar wind experiment measured for the first time the density, velocity, composition and variation over time of the solar wind.

Fifty years later, Mariner 2 is still out there, making lonely orbits around the sun.

Artist Illustration courtesy NASA

MOVIE REVIEW: The kids hit a movie with their brother Kennedy today. Together, the three took in ParaNorman. CJ started making noises about seeing it a couple of weeks ago, when promo ads began in heavy rotation on TV. I don't know much about it, other than it's animated and at least somewhat comedic.

When they got home, I asked the kids to write a review of it for me. 

Annabelle's take: Today I saw the movie ParaNorman and it was a very good movie. It was about a kid who had the ability to talk to the dead, and his name was Norman.

Norman was very unusual, and people don't believe he could really talk to ghosts.
But he could. Nobody knew that Norman could see the dead, or even talk to them.

I'm not trying to spoil anything, but there is a happy ending, you might giggle or cry a little, like I did. The movie was overall good and it had a balanced amount of comedy and horror. I went to my 3rd favorite theater, and so it was great for me.

CJ's take: Paranorman was a movie about a kid named Norman and his ability to speak to ghosts. In the beginning of the movie, Norman is watching a horror movie with his dead grandma. Norman is late for school. In school, Norman walks up to his locker with the word "freak" and his friend, Neil has the word "fatty" written on it by the school's bully, Alvin. later in school, Norman does a play with Neil about how in 1712 a witch was taken to court, and when she was found guilty, she was going to get hung, but she made the 7 accusers die a horrible and gruesome death. The school did the play to celebrate the 300th anniversary of it happening.