November's Final Friday

HO HO HO: It's the last day of November. Too soon to be posting Santa photos? Probably. But nonetheless, here's the Jolly Ol' Elf outside a boutique in Ballard yesterday after yoga. 

Tho it's early in the season, Annabelle poor Santa had a rather large hole in his crotch. Ouch. Hope the poor guy makes it until Christmas.

ALL ABOARD: This afternoon we had to go to Group Health. I hate going there, because I think of the entire campus as a festering Petri dish. From the second we pull into the parking lot until we're back in the car, I'm hissing "Don't touch anything! Don't touch anything! Don't touch anything!" at them.

And then, we get up to the second floor, and there's this furniture/climb on thing shaped (rather poorly) like a train and the kids are DYING to climb on it. I relented, and then hosed them down with a stream of Purell afterward. ;)

MATH MATTERS: We're still plugging through the Singapore Math book, lately the exercises have been about dividing involving fractions. At times, there are differences of opinions as to what the answers are ...

NASA LAFFS: This morning my Facebook feed featured this graphic. ...

The kids and I LOLed, because we are huge nerds. :)

MAS MURAL: We spent a few hours today on the mural in Annabelle's room. We started drawing characters and some background on the wall today. The trick will be stitching it all together. I'm sure it will all turn out somehow.

Fire and Ice

AMANI: CJ and Annabelle each came out of yoga class wearing new bracelets today. They say "Amani" which is Swahili for "peace."

Next year, their wonderful yoga teacher will be going to Kenya to teach yoga to underprivileged children there as part of the Africa Yoga Project.

ICY HOT: imagine our surprise today when we read that Mercury (that's right, the fiery planet closet to our sun) has ice. In fact, there's "abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials" on Mercury, per a NASA press release.

Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Arecibo Observatory

Really? Ice? On Mercury? How is that possible, we wondered.

Turns out NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft has returned three sets of data that definitely point to ice on the planet's polar caps. Which led us to our next question. "Mercury has polar caps?" Who knew?

As it turns out, the reason the caps are there is because Mercury has almost zero tilt on its rotational axis, so there are pockets at each of its poles that never see sunlight. Amazing.

You can learn lots more about Mercury from the MESSENGER mission pages here: http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/  and here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/main/index.html

MARK YOUR CALENDARS: Good news - NASA says the world won't end on 12-21-2012.

Every few days or so, CJ will start making noise about the Mayan calendar and the supposed doomsday approaching, and each time he does, we do our best to debunk that myth, by pointing out things like they didn't account for Leap Year days on their calendar, so when you add those days in over all these years, it would have already happened. And I tell him that the calender maker(s) probably just got tired of carving stone and so they quit on that random day. Or they ran out of room on the stone tablet. Or any number of really boring but plausible reasons that the Mayan calendar isn't a written in stone (pun intended) recipe for the world's end.

All that said, he keeps asking, so I'm thinking he isn't quite buying into our reasoning. Hopefully he'll take NASA's take more seriously. One thing I learned from the article on SPACE.com, was that just because the calendar on your wall at home or work doesn't extend past Dec. 31 of the current year, that doesn't mean time stops. It's just the start of another time period. Apparently the Mayans had something called a long count period, and though one of their calendars ended on Dec. 21, 2012, another one starts right after.

PLOTTING AND PLANNING: Yesterday I borrowed an overhead from the kids' school up north as a tool to use as we finally get started on the murals in Annabelle's new bedroom.

Today, Bee and I spent a couple hours with the Internet and Photoshop, coming up with a design for her east wall. It was fun to cobble it together, print it on transparency film and put it on the overhead. She loved seeing what her walls will look like in the not-too-distant future.

ISTANBUL NOT CONSTANTINOPLE: This morning CJ asked me when Constantinople became Istanbul. Heck if I know. Really, I'd know NOTHING about it at all if not for a song by "They Might Be Giants" which was featured on a Tiny Toons music video when Rick and Kennedy were about CJ and Annabelle's ages.

Of course, after we listened to the song, I had CJ do a little research to find out the answer to his question. Turns out before it was even Constantinople, the city was Byzantium, from 660 BC to 330 AD. Then, it became Constantinople and remained so until 1453 AD, when it became . Istanbul, which it remains to this day.

Stay Curious

IN REVIEW: Today, CJ FINALLY got around to actually reviewing a root beer for the Rootbeer Kid blog he established weeks ago. His first subject: Henry Weinhard's Root Beer.

We talked about the formula he should use for his reviews. He wanted to keep it short and sweet (as in a sentence or two, with a rating). I, however, want to make this part of his language arts education. I'm older and the adult, so I won this one. :)

We decided that his review would include product information, such as a little history on the brew, when available, and ingredients. And while there would be a rating, of course, he would also justify or qualify his rating.

Using the Internet, of course, I showed him how to try to research Henry Weinhard's root beer. There wasn't much info on the label's actual Web site, but for whatever reason, we found a big ol' PDF entitled "Henry Weinhard's Root Beer Sales Activation Plan" from 2011. It was a treasure trove. From it, CJ was able to glean a bit about the brew's history, as well as a complete ingredient list. Nice!

He worked hard on writing up his review, and had many requests for revisions from his editor (me). We also had to come up with a graphic for his rating, and decided on clip art root beer mugs. It wasn't hard to find a clip art beer mug online (we found several on Microsoft's clip art site). With the magic of Photoshop, we easily changed the beer's yellow color to brown, transforming it into a rootbeer mug. Sweet!

If you'd like to see his finished product, hop on over to therootbeerkid.blogspot.com!

MODEL BEHAVIOR: It seemed like we hadn't been to science class in F-O-R-E-V-E-R, but in reality, w'd just missed a week due to Thanksgiving break.

Today, the class started a new unit, about landforms. For their first activity, they worked in small groups to make models of the school grounds.  First, the class did a walking tour of the perimeter of the property, noting manmade structures as well as objects of nature (trees, shrubs and such).

During this walking tour, Annabelle managed to make herself bleed. :/ As we were walking along the playground, she apparently couldn't resist the urge to at least walk on a curb, balance beam style. Two problems with that. One, she was wearing big sloppy snow boots. Two, it was wet and slippery.  The combination resulted in her going down, rather hard, really. I was standing close by and had a front row 'seat' to the slow-motion type fall. (You know, one of those tumbles where you *almost* catch yourself a couple of times but wind up wiping out in the end.)  Her 'resting' position was her sprawled flat on her belly, straddling the curb. Ouch.  Besides damaging her pride, her right palm had a couple of small puncture wounds. Bummer. But she managed to limp and snuffle her way through the rest of the tour, and shook it off by the time we'd gotten back to the classroom.

CJ and Annabelle wound up at the same work table, with one other boy rounding out their group. They had a sand filled tray, some blocks and some sticks to work with to make their school grounds model. For the boys, it rather rapidly devolved into some storytelling thing, involving thieves, wrong way drivers and other flights of fiction. Annabelle stayed on task, with some help from the teacher.

And here's an overhead shot of the final product.

The colored blocks represent cars, the craft sticks are trees in front of the school, and the H shape in the sand represents the school itself.

This evening, I fired up Google Earth, and showed them an actual overhead shot of their school. Annabelle was pleased that their model was a semi-reasonable representation.

GAME ON: I received a text message today from Redbox with a code for a free video game rental, so of course we had to take advantage. The kids chose "Wreck-It Ralph" for Wii.

I haven't played it myself but it looks like it plays homage to the old school 8-bit platform games, but has enough next generation gaming elements to keep others interested, as well.

COOL FIND: A week or so ago, I posted the kids' favorite new music video, 'Dumb Ways to Die." It's gone viral, which means there are parodies popping up now.  Imagine our delight when we discovered one today called "Cool Things to Find" starring none other than our favorite Martian rover, Curiosity! Love it!

Twinkies Tuesday

LET THEM EAT CAKE: One of the first things I saw this morning was a Facebook post from Trophy Cupcakes declaring it National Cake Day.

So, when CJ asked me a few minutes later if we could try to make homemade Twinkies today, I quite naturally had to say 'yes,' right?

There are a million Twinkie knockoff recipes on the Internet. Last night, Christian found one on a site called Leite's Culinaria. We decided to give it a go.
The first thing we had to do was make Twinkie molds, for a Twinkie's not a Twinkie unless it's shaped like, well, a Twinkie.  The recipe had a link to a video of a man who has made a mint in the knock-off-recipe realm, Todd Wilbur. The video was helpful in showing how to take rectangles of foil, fold and mold them into the oh-so-familiar little loaf shape. It involves a small spice jar.

I had Annabelle read the many, many steps of the recipe to me. Sifting the dry ingredients, melting the butter, whipping up the egg whites, whipping the yolks, combining the dry ingredients, yolks and whites and gently mixing them and then immediately pouring the stuff into the foil molds we'd painstakingly made.

I had the molds all filled when I spied it on the stove top - 'it' being the pan where we'd melted the butter and mixed in the milk. AAAAAAAAAAArgh!

And it wasn't like we could just pour the batter out, mix in the butter, and pour them back in, as the little aluminum tins had to be generously greased before the batter went in.

So, back to Square One.

The second go round was a bit faster and, fortunately, they seemed to turn out just fine.

While they cooled, we whipped up the filling. There were lots of filling recipes on the Internet, too. The one suggested by the Twinkie recipe we used would probably have been delicious, but I wasn't keen on stuffing our Twinkies with fluffed up raw egg whites.

So, I searched for another alternative, with a requirement being the ingredient list wouldn't mean another trip to the store for us. We settled for a "flour frosting" recipe billed to be a great Twinkie filling. It was tasty, but I not a clone of the authentic filling, to be sure.

The kids had fun rooting out three holes in the bottom of each cake, and then filling them, using a pastry bag.

In they end, they were both thrilled with the result.

I thought the things were waaaaay more work than they were worth. Hopefully some day soon, the hungry masses will be able to buy bona fide Twinkies at the grocery store.

By the way, when I Googled "National Cake Day" tonight, imagine my surprise when I found out it was actually YESTERDAY, the 26th. Oh well. ...

GET IT TOGETHER: Our travels today took us to IKEA, where we had to get a number of little items for the ongoing transition of Annabelle to her new bedroom. One of the things we bought today was a new laundry basket for CJ's room. It's basically a box of fabric over a wire frame. When we got home, I handed the thing to CJ and told him to put it together. That was interesting.

The instructions showed three simple steps for assembly. For quite some time, CJ chose to ignore those instructions. Can't really fault him for that, since many people probably would have done likewise.

However, when he passed the 10 minute mark and was no closer to having an assembled laundry basket, I basically forced him to read the instructions. He was able to assemble it within a couple of minutes then, much to everyone's relief.

NERD HUMOR: Seattle Science Festival posted this graphic today on its Facebook feed today.

I called the kids over to the computer and was happy that they both started laughing, knowing that mass x acceleration = force.

CRACKED UP: Bad news, NASA fans. We've had our eyes on the Orion crew capsule for years now. Hailed as "America's new spacecraft for human exploration," we've watched cool drop tests, in preparation of post-mission splash down some day.

photo credit : NASA

We've checked out a scale model of Orion at Kennedy Space Center, in Florida.

                                                                                                 photo credit : Me!
And we've pored over photos of it being built to exacting specifications.

                                                                         photo credit : NASA
All of this, with the anticipation that Orion will be strapped atop a rocket and carry NASA astronauts to space - beyond low Earth orbit - in the hopefully not too distant future. Presently, 2021 is talked of as the targeted year for a crewed flight to launch aboard Orion from KSC.

Now, we're hoping that future isn't even more distant after learning that during a recent "proof pressure" test (pictured below), Orion developed some cracks.

                                                                                               photo credit : NASA
Florida Today reports that NASA is now working to diagnose the cause of the cracks, and repair them, with a second load testing to be held early in 2013.

One Year Ago Today

HISTORY IN THE MAKING: One year ago today, atop an Atlas V, an Earth-built rover began rocketing its way toward the Red Planet.

As we all now know, it successfully made a 352,000,000 mile or so flight, stuck the landing like an Olympic gold medalist, and Mars Science Laboratory has been roving around Mars working like a champ ever since.

Here's a retrospective, in photos, of my visit to the Space Coast to see the launch. 

MAKING A LIST:  It's not even December yet, but there has been much talk of Christmas lists already 'round here. 

Last night at dinner we were talking about realistic Christmas wishes and what is a reasonable request and what isn't. I said I thought "The Worst Christmas List Ever" would make a good story starter, so today, I had the kids do some writing on the topic. 

Annabelle came up with this. 

My Christmas list by (insert name of girl here)DollsDollsDollsDollsMore dollsA doll limo for the dollsA pony that looks like Pinkie PieA unicorn that looks like Twilight SparkleA pegasus that looks like DashieA pegasus that looks like FluttershyA  unicorn that looks like RarityA pony that looks like A.J.A huge barn for my poniesA life size replica of PonyvilleThe ability to make the Pinkie Pie pony really bake stuffSaddles for the poniesRainbow Dash making a Rainboom!Thanks Santa, -(insert same name here)

I don't think Annabelle will be getting any dolls this year. 

And now, with out further ado, is CJ's. ... 

The Worst Christmas list EVER: A Story by CJ Moki:
One day for Christmas, A boy named Tyler wanted to get his Christmas list ready. So, he asked his mom if he could write his Christmas list now. Tyler’s mom said that he could, but he should be cautious about what he should put on his Christmas list, as he may regret what he puts on his Christmas list AFTER Christmas happens, so Tyler’s mother told him that he should put what he REALLY wants on his Christmas list. After hearing that, he made this Christmas list:
 I WANT A REAL RAINBOW, A FART, SOME CAMEL POO, SOME FUNNY FACES, A INSIDE-OUT GUITAR, EVERY SEA ON EARTH, EVERY SINGLE DIAMOND, A PONY, A DROP OF WATER FROM HURRICANE KATRINA, AND YOU AND YOUR ELVES.
 On Christmas day, Guess what Tyler found in his stocking? A note. It said this:
 Dear Tyler, I am sorry that I can not get you all the things that you wanted, and that is because your requests are hard to do. Sorry, Tyler.  –Santa Claus.
 After this, Tyler ran screaming out of the living room. THE END.

That made me laugh and laugh. 

THE RIGHT STUFF?: We continue to work our way through the great worksheets to go along with "D is for Democracy." Today, the kids did a page titled "There Ought to Be a Law" about how a bill becomes a law in Congress.

The second sheet they competed was titled "Could I Be President?" It reviewed the qualifications, and asked the kids to "make a list of the characteristics that you think a good leader should have." 

Here's what Annabelle wrote: "They should trust congress, believe the government and be a good leader." 

I'm not sure I agree with her, but she's entitled to her opinion. ;)

In answer to that same question, CJ wrote, "A good leader should not be milk toast. He/she should give good speeches. And he/she should make sure that the country is safe."

I must say, I love that he included "she" in his answer. Oh, and I love the "milk toast." LMAO. 

The last question on the sheet was, "Do you think you will someday have all of the qualities of leadership and the requirements necessary to be president? Write a short paragraph explaining your answer.

CJ wrote: "Yes. I was born in Oregon. I also think that I will live to 35. And I am sure that I will stay in America for awhile. I think that I would write my speeches well." 

Interesting, CJ. Not sure the points are strong enough to campaign on, however. 

Annabelle answered: "Yes, because I was born and lived in America, and am still living in America at the age of eight, and I will grow to 35 soon." 

I think their answers were too centered on qualifications, not characteristics or "qualities of leadership."  So, we're going to have to revisit that.

BY DEFINITION: I'm sure I've mentioned on these 'pages' that one of our favorite Seattle spots is   a convenience store turned tap room, Chucks on 85th. Next to the delicious and exotic beers they have on tap, our favorite thing about the place is their collection of board games. There, we discovered our Favorite Game Ever, Dixit. We also play "Ticket to Ride," a fun train and geography game, and the wacky always-changing game Fluxx. But sometimes we make up our own games. Case in point - we use the Bananagrams tiles (which are identical to Scrabble tiles) to make up our own words, and then players vote on which definition they like best (kinda like Balderdash).

Here's a recent board. .,.

All of the words are interesting, but CJ's MUGREEX had us in hysterics. He gave a definition of "That rare occasion where you do an armpit fart and a real fart at the same time."