Emerald City

COOKIE MONSTER: Guess what we did today. Made more cookies. I think that has to make at least 300 cookies so far this month. I stopped counting several dozens ago.

I'm churning out sunshine cookies in celebration for tomorrow's Winter Solstice.

Annabelle was just itching to get involved, and I always encourage that, so I had her put the nonpareils on some of my lemon yellow suns.

This evening, she and CJ each put their own flair on gingerbread cookies I'd been painting suns on. Annabelle did her own version of an ol' Sol.

CJ, on the other hand, went off the deep end, drawing a troll face and something about toenails (ick!) on his cookie.

THEY'RE OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD: For months, we've been sitting on tickets to a show this afternoon - "The Wizard of Oz" at Seattle Children's Theater.

I thought it would be interesting for them to contrast the SCT performance with the high school production of "The Wizard of Oz" we saw a few weeks ago, as well as with the classic movie version, of course.

Kennedy was supposed to take the kids, but he got called in to substitute teach. So we went to Plan B - Rick, who is off from his teaching position for the winter break.

I dropped the three of them at the curb a little after noon and collected them about 2.5 hours later. All of them report the SCT production was pretty true to the movie storyline, and said the production values were very high, per usual.

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS: Today, for the second time in my life, I threw my hat into the ring for a  #NASASocial (formerly Tweetup). I was so, So, SO lucky to get selected for the Mars Science Laboratory launch in 2011. It was an AMAZING weekend, unlike anything I've ever experience before or since.

This Tweetup is a two day event Feb. 10-11 at Vandenberg AFB in Lompac, CA. It's for the launch of an Atlas 5 (the same rocket that sent MSL to the Red Planet). However, this mission is part of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission, part of an ongoing (40-year!) program of monitoring Earth, with data being used to help manage resources of food, water and forests. The project is a collaboration between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. The first Landsat was sent into orbit in 1972, from Vandenberg.

At the NASA Social, lucky people will get to hear from the Landsat Mission science and engineering teams, get an exclusive tour of Vandenberg AFB's Western Range, and on the day of the launch, NASA Social peeps and their friends and families are invited so a special public viewing area to watch the launch.

The fact that it's on the West Coast and his the friends/family tie in are a couple of things that make this NASA Social super duper attractive to me.

Fingers crossed, maybe lightning will strike twice and I'll get in on this one. ...

OVER HER SHOULDER: This morning when I was working in the kitchen, I looked up and saw some crazy thing on Annabelle's laptop screen about some theory of motion.

I asked her what she was watching, and she said it was from a series of videos called "Minute Physics."

Anyway, not sure how she discovered the videos, but WOW, what a wonderful resource. We'll be watching lots more of their videos.