MAVEN Away!

Photo: NASA
ON OUR WAY!:  With great anticipation, we watched the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft launch aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral at 10:28 this morning, our time.

Months ago, we'd submitted our names via a NASA portal to be put aboard MAVEN.  Here's the spacecraft in the clean room (photo courtesy of NASA/Kennedy Space Center).

In its upper righthand corner, affixed to it is a special DVD bearing the thousands upon thousands of names of folks like us who wanted to hop on board. :) The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics was kind enough to email us the photo above, as well as the closeup below, showing our "seat" on board.

We watched live coverage of the launch via NASA TV http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

More info on the MAVEN mission here: http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/features-news/events/.

BUSY DINOS:  Dinovember has taken our house by storm. They started last Thursday night, and Friday, Saturday and Sunday the dinos amused the kids greatly.

Saturday morning, they woke up to finding dinos roasting on the open fire. Er, I mean, dinos roasting marshmallows over the closest thing to fire they could find - our electric insert into a '60s vintage freestanding fireplace.

Saturday night, the dinos were super busy, because come Sunday morning, the kids woke up to this ...

The dinos had tried to build a time machine to get back to their era.

When he discovered it, CJ started wantonly turning knobs on the time machine. Horrified, I told him he's lucky we all didn't wind up back in the Jurassic period. You do NOT EVER wantonly turn knobs on a TIME MACHINE, I scolded him. Geez.

Annabelle noticed that one of the wires the dinos used to connect one knob to a receiver on the front was a wire coated in plastic. Noting that there's no way that would conduct electricity, she suspects that was their downfall.

Monday morning, the big dinos revealed they have a bit of bully in them.

They had lured some of the smaller guys into a trap, using the classic Mousetrap game.

Annabelle was delighted that when she sprang the trap, the cheese eating dinos were trapped.

They did not suffer, though. In fact, after they were freed, they enjoyed engaging in a conga line.

GUITAR GIRL: "I think this might be a callous, Mom!" Annabelle announced excitedly in the middle of "Feliz Navidad" this afternoon. Yay for callouses! That means she's been practicing more.

Speaking of needing to practice more, today I tried an experiment with my newish phone - recording a quick video clip. It's Bee, covering Macklemore.