Exploring

PARTY TIME: On Saturday, we had the pleasure of attending the 10th birthday party of CJ's BFF from kindergarten. Weird to think they've know each other half their lives now.

The festivities included wearing pointy hats in odd ways and decorating gingerbread houses.

As usual, CJ's architecture was austere and stately.

As usual, Ananbelle's was over the top (or, in this case, through the lid of the sprinkles bottle. Here's the before the nonpariels invasion  ...

and here's hers after she accidentally dumped an ENTIRE bottle of sugar on her house ...

Pretty!

They also enjoyed yummy sugary treats they didn't have a hand in making. ...

SEATTLE TRADITION: From the very first Christmas season we spent in Seattle, we've checked out Swanson's Nursery. It's about 10 minutes north of us, and well worth the drive.

They have hundreds of lovely camellias in bloom, not to mention a couple of Santa's reindeer and even Curly the Christmas camel!

Here's Donner and Blitzen, resting up for their big day.

And Curley, posing for the camera.

Swanson's also has an annual model train display. This year there was a medieval/Hobbit theme. The trains whirled and whizzed and wound about castles. ...

There were so many purties around the nursery. These faux peacock feathers caught my eye.

EXPLORATIONS: For a few nights now, CJ has been reading the book "100 Cool Things About Explorers"at bedtime. So, I thought we'd explore the topic of explorers a bit more.

We turned to Bookflix, which is storybooks online. (We access it via our Seattle Public Library card. Check to see if your local library subscribes!)  On the site, we found two books about Christopher Columbus. First up, "Where Do You Think You're Going, Christopher Columbus?" by Jean Fritz.

When I was in elementary school, Columbus was a Top Tier Hero. Heck, he even had his own holiday. Over the years, his reputation has tarnished a bit. (He didn't really discover America, which is what I was taught. In fact, he didn't set foot on North America!) And, as it turns out, within four years of his arrival
on Hispaniola (today's Dominican Republic and Haiti), men in his party had killed or "exported" one-third of its estimated population of 300,000. Um, ouch. I'm guessing there's no Columbus Day there. ...

As I was working on a cake and some cookies, I kept my ears open for history that might need a little moderating. One thing I heard was that Queen Isabelle of Spain was "such an enthusiastic Christian, she insisted everyone in Spain be a Christian."

O Really? What one person calls "enthusiasm" another might call "oppressive" or "dictatorial," I pointed out to the kids.

We also listened in on a Scholastic published book "Christopher Columbus," by Lisa Wade McCormick, which was much shorter and just-by-the facts.

After the pair of Columbus books, I showed the kids "We are the Explorers," a NASA film. This one will give you goosebumps. It explains everyone from Leif Erickson to SpaceX's Elon Musk


Then, I asked the kids to write something about explorers/exploring. I wasn't any more specific than that. Here's what they came up with, CJ first. ... Buckle yourself in. ...

Explorers are people that explore. Exploring can range from a lot of different things, from taking a walk on the street looking at new things, to going up in space to study. Often times, explorers will want to be the first person to go to a place or to be the first person to do something at that place.

Ancient exploring just started with our monkey ancestors before we were alive crawling around places, clueless where to go, to us going to the Moon and even more recently, us sending rovers up to Mars. We can go anywhere with exploring, really.

Exploring can be as safe as sound, like bouncing up and down softly in a pillow world where there is nothing to be afraid of, to as deadly as Hell, like trying to juggle a million flaming chainsaws that explode like a atomic dirty bomb when they collide with the floors, walls, and roof in a impossibly tiny room in hell. Kind of makes you claustrophobic a bit, eh?

Often times, modern exploration will defeat the accomplishment of earlier exploring, such as Apollo 11 beating Christopher Columbus' feat of sailing to the Indies, though, some earlier accomplishments will still be better then future explorations, such as Apollo 11 compared to the Curiosity launch.

Interesting, CJ. Very interesting. ... Times like these I think it's probably a good thing he's not in a traditional public school program, LOL.

Here's Annabelle's essay ...  It's a little more sedate, with no atomic dirty bombs. ;)

Why do we explore? So we can find new things. Why find new things? So we can learn about the world – possibly even other worlds! Exploring allows us to find things we have never found before. For instance, Christoper Columbus found out about the land between Asia and Europe, (no maps show what it's called, neither do the books!) and we've already discovered ice on... no, not Mars.... Mercury! Yes... It's closest to the Sun.... But really, ICE. Ice could've used to be water, and could support *drum  roll* ... Life! Yes, just because of exploring, we have found Mercury can support life! Exploring also allowed Christoper Columbus to discover the Indies! Christoper did this because he wanted to explore – if you want to learn new things like Columbus... you're destined to be an explorer – just like Christoper. If you love finding new things – an astronaut would be perfect! Maybe even go to Mars... and be THE FIRST PERSON TO STEP ON MARS. It would be awesome, if I do say so myself. So, happy exploring... And may you find great things!

GOOGLE DOODLE: This morning, Annabelle was remarking on how cool looking the Google Doodle for the day was. I looked at it and told her I thought it had something to do with communications or computers. Not until I read Washington STEM's Facebook post tonight did I figure out that it was a tribute to Ada Lovelace, the world's first computer programmer. The daughter of the poet Lord Byron, today marked the 197th anniversary of her birth.