Party On

HEART PARTY: Today at the community center in West Seattle where the kids attend classes on Fridays, there was a Valentine's party. We'd made superhero Tootsie Pops and "bee mine" Valentines (pictured in yesterday's blog) for the occasion. 

Kids brought in decorated boxes and they were all placed on the floor of a classroom (CJ & Annabelle's are pictured above). Come 11:45, it was time to deliver the Valentines. I was instantly regretting our decision to put kids' names on them, as some of the boxes didn't have names, some were super hard to read, and there were 50 boxes in no particular order, and lots of people milling around. Just kind of a logistical nightmare/wild hunt. It took us 45 minutes to match our Valentines with the boxes in the room, and we still didn't manage to find them all, unfortunately. 

However, the kids were very happy with their Valentines, and I was impressed by the creativity and individuality of so many of them. 

BLUE SKIES: It was a gorgeous, sunny day and we enjoyed lots of outdoor time today. Annabelle and I hung out at the playground outside the West Seattle center for an hour while CJ took his Scratch programming class (Bee's Bollywood class was canceled). 

And then this afternoon, we went for a walk up to Ella Bailey Park. It was a popular spot today, with dozens of people enjoying the sunshine. 

On our way back down the hill, we noticed a tree with pussy willows on it. We stopped to 'pet' them for a bit. 

The clear skies meant we had a nice look at the International Space Station as it flew over Seattle at 6:49 this evening. Sweet! We never get tired of spotting the station!

KABOOM!: Like millions upon millions of others around the globe, today we spent some time watching jaw-dropping videos of the meteor that hit Russia's Urals region. 

According to the Russian Academy of Sciences, the meteor was estimated to be about 10 tons and 49 feet wide. It entered Earth's atmosphere at a hypersonic speed of at least 33,000 mph and shattered into pieces about 18-32 miles above the ground. 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/02/15/injuries-reported-after-meteorite-falls-in-russia-ural-mountains/#ixzz2L1b6RRZ8

LECTURED: We're winding down our week 3 lectures in the astrobiology class. Today we watched short talks about Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, and Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. Both are intriguing to astrobiologists, as both of those moons are suspected of having liquid oceans beneath their icy crusts. Naturally, one can't help but wonder if those oceans are home to any life.

Hearty

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian

HAPPY HEART DAY: Isn't this lovely? Per NASA, "Generations of stars can be seen in this infrared portrait from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. In this wispy star-forming region, called W5, the oldest stars can be seen as blue dots in the centers of the two hollow cavities (other blue dots are background and foreground stars not associated with the region). 
Younger stars line the rims of the cavities, and some can be seen as pink dots at the tips of the elephant-trunk-like pillars. The white knotty areas are where the youngest stars are forming. Red shows heated dust that pervades the region's cavities, while green highlights dense clouds." 

HEART FACTORY: "When will this Valentine's business be over?" CJ lamented early this morning. 

"Not until tomorrow," I informed him, much to his chagrin. 

And so, we powered through the rest of his 50+ superhero Valentine pops. 

We definitely had a 'consumables' theme going for the holiday. For example, here's what we made for a couple of their yoga class friends - "You are the apple of my eye" attached to some Washington state apple juice.

And for the kids' yoga teacher, there was this one ...A tea tag attached to some Yogi "Breathe Deep" tea. She loved it.

For the yoga friends, we also made these cereal-themed Valentines.So, so cute (and easy)! 

And of course I made CeeJ and Bee some Valentines. They found them on their computers this morning. 

And now, thankfully, the Valentine's Day business is over. CJ will be much relieved tomorrow. :)

Busy Bees

PRODUCTION LINE: We did some reading and math and science today, but most of our working hours were consumed by crafting handmade Valentines.

Annabelle had chosen some "bee mine" cards, since her nickname is Bee. We got the idea from a blog called Seven Thirty Three. There, we found a free printable we used to make the bee wings (though I did modify it in Photoshop, so we got four sets of wings per cardstock sheet rather than just two - waste not, want not!).

In the tutorial we found, they used Tootsie Pops, but when we were at the store and found some yellow suckers, we thought those would be cuter and match the bee theme better. Annabelle dug through the bins to find 50 yellow ones.

She also dug out 50 red Tootsie Pops for CJ's Valentines. 

We also had to hunt down 100 googly eyes, and craft 50 pairs of antennae out of pipe cleaners. 

Once we were home, the kids 'threaded' the suckers through the wings, glued on the eyes and antennae, and drew on some smiles. 

. 

They turned out super cute. :)

Up next were CJ's Valentines. Those involved turning Tootsie Pops into superheroes. Tonight, we made their 'masks' (out of thin colored foam sheets).

 Tomorrow, we'll affix their yellow felt capes.

Today, I also whipped up four dozen cookies for Rick's class to decorate. Tomorrow I've got to make pounds of fondant for that project, too.

Valentine's Day is a lot of work!

State of Affairs

STATE OF THE UNION:  The President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient... U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 3

Knowing tonight was the State of the Union address, the kids and I did some studying up on the history of the speech.  We read about the history of the speech on the PBS Web site, and watched C-SPAN for an hour or so ahead of the main event. From those sources we learned George Washington delivered the first 'annual message of the president' in 1790.

When Thomas Jefferson became president, he didn't like the speech. He thought it too 'royal,' and so in 1801, he sent a letter rather than address congress. For the next 100 years, other presidents followed suit. President Lincoln's 1862 letter contained "last best hope" message to Congress.

In 1913, Woodrow Wilson went back to the ways of old, delivering his annual message in a speech to Congress. It wasn't until 1945, with Franklin D. Roosevelt, that the address became know as "The State of the Union."

The speech was first broadcast on the radio in 1923 (that was president Calvin Coolidge), and the first televised State of the Union was in 1947 (President Truman). Historically, the speech had been given during the day, but in 1965, Lyndon Johnson shifted to an evening event, to attract a larger television audience.

The first time the annual speech was postponed was in 1986, because on the morning of the scheduled event, the shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after lift off.

We watched tonight's speech, and afterward, I found a transcript online. We copied and pasted it into the free word cloud program Wordle, and pasted the text in, producing the graphic at the top of the page. 

YESTERDAY ONCE MORE: Yesterday's blog was full of photos from this weekend, to the exclusion of photos from our Monday fun.

We saw some pretty camellias on a walk around the top of Queen Anne hill. 

We spent a little time down around the Pike Place Market area. There, we saw the hammering man outside the Seattle Art Museum. 

And we appreciated the pretty sight of ferries crossing the sound. 

PRODUCTION LINE: The kids have a Valentine exchange on Friday, and they need to bring 50 cards apiece with them. I showed them some fun homemade Valentine ideas from Pinterest. Annabelle decided she liked a bee-themed one, so we printed out the bodies of the bees and the kids got started cutting those out today.

CJ suggested that we go to the store and buy boxed cards for him. I vetoed that idea. :) So he's thinking we'll be making some superhero suckers. Stay tuned. 

HALFWAY THERE: Today, we listened to a total of four lectures for our astrobiology class through Coursera. Most of them had to do with the habitability of Mars. 

In the first lecture, "Habitability," we learned that in order for a planet to be habitable for life as we know it, it has to have a source if liquid water, a source of energy, a source of elements (nutrients) and physical conditions that are within the boundaries which life can exist.

We learned that the habitable zone of a solar system is planets that are neither too close nor too far from the star. And in order for a planet to be habitable, there has to be an active geochemical turnover, or ongoing energy supply, and the physical conditions need to be relatively stable over a long period of time. 

In "Search for Life on Mars," we reviewed how people have speculated about Martian life in the past - and how often they were terribly wrong. We also learned more about the early Viking probe experiments on the surface of the Red Planet.

In "Mars as a Location for Life," we learned about Mars' three Epochs, or time periods. They were Noachian, when there were many meteorite or comet impacts, and abundant water covered the planet; Hesperian, when there were lots of volcanic eruptions and the water on the planet became acidic; and Amazonian, the time when there were no longer any standing bodies of liquid. We also learned that Mars does have many of the six key elements required for life. There's carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfate. However, as far as we know, the planet lacks nitrogen. (Maybe MSL will find some!) And there seems to be no geotechnical turnover right now (no exploding volcanoes, no plate tectonics). Presently, many think the most likely place to find life on Mars will be in the subsurface. No wonder MSL has been drilling! 

The fourth lecture was intriguingly titled "Could we all be Martians?" It talked about Panspermia, or the theory that life exists throughout the universe and it was distributed by asteroids, meteoroids and planetoids.

In order for life to be transferred from one planet to another, it has to be able to withstand being launched from the planetary surface, survive the journey through space, and survive the atmospheric entry.

WANT: We read a story online about a girl who sent her Hello Kitty doll to the edge of the atmosphere. Talk about the ultimate science experiment. The kids and I sooo want to do this! .

Snow Good

SUMMIT AT SNOQUALMIE: This weekend, we had a guest up from SW Washington. He got here Saturday evening and Sunday morning we were up and at 'em early to head up to a winter wonderland.

Hard to believe in our 6ish years of living here we've not been to the Summat at Snoqualmie before.

We left home at 7:42 Sunday a.m. and pulled into the parking lot at the ski resort at 8:43. One hour door to door - can't be that!

The scenery was just gorgeous. Beautiful snow-dusted evergreens, dramatic mountainsides with jagged edges.

Christian and our friend spent several hour skiing the many, many runs on the mountain  The kids and I had our own style of fun.

 We spent hours playing in the snow, building snow men, doing snow angels and other silly stuff.

And then from 11:15 a.m. to 1:15 p.m., we soared down this inner-tube course.

The course was great fun, but the experience would have been WAY better if the employees 'working' the attraction had been doing their jobs. It was a cluster*&%^ at the top of the hill, trying to get in line for the runs. When there were only X amount of tickets for sale for each 2-hour session, so I didn't understand why it would be so terribly oversold/crowded. Until I started looking around in line. We had tickets for session 2, and I saw MULTIPLE people in line who had session 1 and session 3 tickets. Not surprising since at no point anywhere along the line anyone remotely looked at our tags. I have no doubt could have printed almost anything out at home of the right shape and size and we could have slid to our hearts' content.

The management will be getting an email from me, for sure. But lame ass employees and nightmarish overcrowding aside, I accentuated the positive with the kids and we worked hard to have fun in spite of it. He's a video of CJ after his run and Annabelle coming down the hill behind him.

And here's another photo from Christian's perspective ...

and a quick video of his experience.

We were on the move most all the day, stopping at the fire just twice to warm up.

SATELLITE: This morning we tuned in to NASA TV for breakfast. On today's 'menu' - the launch of the  Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) satellite.

LDCM is a collaboration of the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA. Since 1972, the program has been providing uninterrupted imagery of Earth from on high. Landsat gives Earthlings the chance to observe changes to our globe, for better or for worse.

It was a picture perfect launch. Clear blue skies and a took off at 10:02 a.m., right on time!
 79 minutes after launch, the LDCM spacecraft separated from the rocket and just 3 minutes later, a station in Svalbard, Norway, received its first signal.

Check out these amazing "Earth as Art" images from previous Landsat images:
http://eros.usgs.gov/imagegallery/collection.php?type=earth_as_art