Season Opener

ANEW: Thursday night, there was nowhere on Earth we'd rather be than sitting in Safeco Field for the Mariners' home opener. 

It has been a long winter, and baseball resoundingly signals the start to a new season.

We arrived at the field a couple hours pre-first pitch. We took that time to soak up the sights and sounds of the stadium.

After checking out the bullpen and walking the main concourse for a bit, eventually, we headed out to the fan zone on the third level, in the stadium's southwest corner.

 There, the kids checked out Nelson Cruz's "boomstick" and had fun with a bucket of Gatorade.

They posed next to a Felix photo. The King was last night's starter - an honor he's had now for 10 years running. That's the longest opening day starting streak in Major League Baseball.

After awhile, we moseyed on up to our seats of choice - the very top row of the stadium, on the Puget Sound side. We LOVE it there. We have a great view of the whole park, the scoreboard, the cityscape and the Sound. What's not to love?

We watched workers ready the field for the inaugural game.

The guy did a nice job on the "8," I thought.

Naturally, Home Plate had to be perfect, too.

They rolled out the red carpet for Opening Night. Below, "King" Felix Hernandez made a long, lonely walk from the dugout to the bullpen in centerfield.

The visitors on opening day were the Cleveland Indians. Their squad was announced first.

And then, it was time for the Mariners! Some of the guys were so excited, they jumped for joy coming out of the gate.

There were fireworks, of course. 

The loudest cheers were reserved for one Mr. Ichiro Suzuki. The future Hall of Famer is a beloved former Mariner, now back with the team.

 Suzuki is still going strong at 44.

 He looked stoked to be on the squad.

Pre-game festivities included a fly-over of a U.S. Air Force C-17 from the 4th Airlift Squadron at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. We turned and looked out the window behind our seats and saw it coming!

 It's a big bird!

 With a big belly!

The Mariners posted this photo of the flyover on their social media today.

Below is the obligatory first pitch photo (taken from the last row of the stadium).

Fans had to wait until the ninth spot in the batting order to see a favorite son return on offense.

All eyes were on him, even in the on deck circle.

 No mistaking his pre-bat stretching routine!

And it doesn't get any more iconic than this pose.

The kids will tell you a little bit more about the evening. CJ is up first. ... 

Yesterday, I went to the opening night of the Seattle Mariners' 2018 season at Safeco Field. The Mariners played against the Cleveland Indians, and won by a score of 2-1. Here is my description my experience at the game:
For much (if not most) of the game, I sat in one of the seats at the top of the seating areas. The Massive MarinersVision screen regularly displayed the portraits of whoever was at the bat, as well as the number of runs each team had. Early in the game, the Mariners scored both of their runs in the same inning, while the Indians' only run came much later in the game.
While walking through the stadium, I smelled several different food stands, staples at Safeco Field. For example, while near Fair Territory, I could smell the stand's fried pastries. At one point in the crowd, there was a short-lived attempt at a "wave," which never reached our area.

Toward the end of the game, my family moved from our high-up seats to an area just behind home plate. This meant that I got to see Edwin Diaz throw the final pitch of the game, immediately followed up by the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Fire (a song played after Mariners home victories).

Annabelle paints this picture of Opening Day. ...

Opening Day at Safeco is surrounded by people, yelling and cheering as they wait for the game. The crowd pushes through the concourse as the food stands begin to open, filling the air with the scent of kettle corn, salty and sweet. On the outer sides of the stadium, the wind blows against layers of hats and coats, protecting us from the trademark Seattle weather. Once the event really starts, the booming of the fireworks and the announcer’s voice fills the air, just as it has on opening day for years. The crowd cheers loudly during the opening ceremony as the players are introduced. The first inning brings down a blanket of silence, where between every pitch, every connection with the bat, the crowd sits completely still. During the second inning, the stadium erupts with cheers as a 2-run homer is hit, diving deep into center field. The following innings are mostly quiet, with the crowd bundled up as the night gets darker. No more home runs- a few disappointing pitches, foul balls, and a walk in the ninth- but the game is largely over. The fans rush through the gates, pushing past a sea of people as they cheer and converse, celebrating the new beginning of another baseball season.

The Mariners shared this short video of Opening Day highlights. 

All in all, it was a joyous occasion. 
Welcome back baseball, welcome back.

Playing Catch Up

DINNER IS SERVED: Last Saturday night was the fourth Saturday of the month, and that 
usually means you can find us in the University District, serving up 50 or so dinners to homeless and hungry youth. 

I was the feed lead again this month, and on the menu was a burrito buffet. We had plate-sized tortillas, and filled them full of home made rice, beans and meat. Then the diners could choose from four kinds of hot sauce, onions, olives, jalapenos, sour cream, chips and more for toppings. 

At the end of the line we had a custom cupcake station. We had four kinds of cupcakes (carrot, chocolate, white and yellow), and three kinds of soda pop-inspired icing to choose from (orange Fanta, Mountain Dew and root beer). The diners really had fun making choices. Root beer wound up being the most popular, if you were wondering.

Not only did we get to feed dozens of hungry people, the effort paid off for an other non-profit. Through the Points of Light/All for Good project, we were able to earn 10 park hopper passes to Disneyland to raffle off to earn money. So it was a huge win-win for all involved.

By the way, the poster pictured up top was one Annabelle made. 

GAME DAY: On Saturday, CJ, Annabelle, and Kennedy spent some time at the Skyway library, just a couple of blocks from our house, for their monthly game day. 

Annabelle will tell you more about it. ...

The Skyway Public Library holds a small event every month for board and card game developers to playtest their games. Anyone who wants to can come in between 12:00 and 5:00 to try out any of the games they like. This month’s theme was “dexterity games”, where all the games available challenged you in more ways than just dice rolls.

One of the first games we decided to try was A La Carte, which we’ve played before. In A La Carte, you are a chef in a very high-class restaurant, racing to compete some of the gross dishes the restaurant serves before your opponents do! When you play, you have a small oven with a real metal pan and a dial. In the middle of the table are the dishes, printed on small cardboard tokens with the “recipe”, or directions, on the back. 4 small plastic “spice jars” contain irregular pieces of plastic in 4 colors: yellow (lemon zest), red (bell pepper), black (pepper), and green (herbs). The spice jars also contain clear “salt” pieces that can ruin a perfect dish. The game uses dice to determine how you adjust the heating on the stove, and if you aren’t careful, it’s very easy to lose by over-seasoning or burning your dishes!

Another game, one that was open for playtesting, was T.A.G: That Acronym Game. The game includes small square cards with instructions, a 4-sided die (to determine the amount of letters in the acronym) and a 30-sided alphabet die with 4 “wild” judge’s choice spots. The cards are either standard cards (acronyms for anything) or a certain type of acronym. For example, the “Newsflash!” card requires you to make a news headline out of the letters provided. Examples include “Terrifying Attack Gorilla!” for the letters T, A, and G. It’s played somewhat like apples to apples where the winner receives the card, and the first to 10 cards wins.

The two other games available were somewhat simple. Fishing Hole, which the developer says will soon be re-themed into something more fantasy oriented, involved using “bait” cards and tossing them across the table to land on fish. You could collect certain kinds of fish depending on size, and getting a set of 3 would give you an extra point bonus. The one very specific rule about “throwing out your line” (tossing a card) is that you have to be standing somewhere around the table and your hand cannot go past the edge. You are allowed to walk around the table and experiment to see how much the specific table makes the cards glide, meaning each game is slightly different than the last.

Wok on Fire was the last game we played, where you use a spatula card to flip face down ingredient cards in the circular “wok” pool, and create combinations and meals that grant you the most points. The point values and abilities for certain ingredients seemed kind of random, such as the fact that when there’s chicken face-up in the wok, you MUST take all available chicken, but it only counts as one move. The game was already fully developed and released, it was just there for fun as part of the “dexterity” theme. Next month is supposedly focused on cooperative games, so I’m expecting to find some good family games to try!

FACTORING IN: CJ and Annabelle seem ready for some new challenges, so I'm looking at getting them enrolled in college sooner rather than later. In our state, high school students in grades 11 and 12 can participate in Running Start, earning college credits for nearly free.

However, on paper, CJ's just in 9th grade now, and Annabelle's in 7th, and I don't really think they need to wait that long to get started, so we're looking at pathways to earlier enrollment.

One thing is for certain: They'd have to pass entrance exams. CJ has been experimenting on the ACCUPLACER website with online practice tests. He totally smokes the reading/language arts related ones, which is great. So far, he's not done as well on algebra. He passes the tests, but it would be nice to go into it knowing you have a pretty good chance of nailing it.

So, we're working on concepts and challenges that our sorta Swiss cheese approach hasn't covered yet (or, we covered it so long ago, it has kind of been forgotten. One of those instances was absolute values, which he now has a handle on after being reminded. 

Another question involved factoring. We reviewed simple factoring of a single number, but then watched this video from Khan Academy about factoring a polynomial with two variables. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=MZl6Mna0leQ


Unfortunately/interestingly, the problem on the test was super different from the examples in the video above. However, CJ knew enough about how one would factor the equation that he was able to correctly deduce which answer was mostly likely to be correct out of four choices.

I took the opportunity to point out to him that's a good example of not just learning to do the math, but also learning how to effectively take a test.

FREE FALLING: You might want to wear a hardhat this weekend, depending on where you're living. The sky is falling!

Well, not the sky, but a big ol' Chinese space station. Named Tiangong-1, (which translates to "Heavenly Palace-1"), it was launched without anyone aboard on Sept. 29, 2011. For a few years, it maintained an orbit about 217 miles (350 kilometers) above Earth, which is just a little lower than the International Space Station (which averages an altitude of about 250 miles, or 400 km).

Reportedly, Tiangong-1 was designed to keep operating for just a couple of years, and China put its first space station into "sleep mode" shortly thereafter the Shenzhou-10 visit. The original plan was to have Tiangong-1 de-orbit in a controlled fashion, using the craft's thrusters to guide it down into Earth's atmosphere. However, in March of 2016, China announced the space station had stopped sending data back to control, and that a controlled re-entry was no longer an option. So, the station is being pulled down to Earth by atmospheric drag.

Scientists are tracking Tiangong-1's descent. While hopefully the vast majority of the station will burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, and any remains will just land in the ocean, there's a chance parts may make it back down to Terra Firma. 

Here's a graphic showing where debris is most likely to hit.

Stay safe out there! :)

For the Record

WEEKEND REWIND: We spent most of our weekend working around the abode, purging, organizing, cleaning, and then purging and organizing some more.

There was some time for fun, however. On Saturday, the kids spent 3-plus hours at the monthly game day at our neighborhood library. I will have Annabelle write up a review of that tomorrow. 

On Sunday, CJ, a fledgling collector of vinyl records, was dead set on attending The Northwest Record Show at Seattle Center. 

Here's what he had to say about the experience.  

The Northwest Record Show is a biannual event held at the Pavilion Building in Seattle Center. At the Northwest Record Show, dozens of record dealers come with thousands of vinyl records, compact discs, 8-tracks, and cassettes, selling to eager buyers like me. The Northwest Record Show has been an event at Seattle Center for over 30 years.

Yesterday, my dad and I attended 2018's first Northwest Record Show. I went from stand to stand, and ended up buying four different records.

The first two records were Pink Floyd's A Collection of Great Dance Songs (ACGDS) and The Alan Parsons Project's Pyramid. ACGDS is a compilation from the early 1980s. The version of the iconic song Money on ACGDS was a different recording than the original, due to copyright laws concerning the record labels. Notably, my copy of ACGDS was a promotional record intended for CBS (SALE IS UNLAWFUL, it reads in letters on the back). I bought Pyramid because it was the Alan Parsons Project's next album after I Robot (which I had got from a thrift store in Kent).

The third record, Pink Floyd's Obscured by Clouds, was the band's last album before The Dark Side of the Moon. Obscured by Clouds was a soundtrack album for the obscure French film La Vallée. Pink Floyd fans often refer to Obscured by Clouds as un underrated album, overshadowed by both the band's preceding and following albums (Meddle and The Dark Side of the Moon, respectively).

The last record I got, Nirvana's Nevermind, was an original pressing. While Nevermind reached the top of the Billboard 200, the original vinyl pressing is sought-after, as when Nevermind came out (1991), vinyl was fading in relevance, being replaced by compact discs. The sleeve, insert, and the record itself are in pristine condition.

Obviously, CJ was quite pleased with his purchases. He has been listening to them ever since, and we've all enjoyed his acquisitions. 

2K: Over the weekend, Mars Science Laboratory marked its 2,00th Sol (or Martian) day on the Red Planet.

To mark the occasion, NASA released a mosaic photo that is a preview of what the rugged rover will be investigating next.

The image below was assembled from dozens of images taken by the Curiosity’s Mast Camera (Mastcam) on Sol 1931, in January of this year. On the right side of the frame is Mount Sharp, the central peak in the Gale Crater where Curiosity landed back in 2012. 

Since September of 2014, the rover has been mountain climbing, all the while collecting drill samples to get a better understanding of Mars’ geological history.

Image of the mosaic taken by NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover in January of 2018 (Sol 1931). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Flying High

WINGING IT: This morning, we dropped Annabelle at The Museum of Flight for a Women Fly workshop. Lucky girl, I wish it wasn't limited to middle school students only. 

Here's what Annabelle has to say about the experience. ...

Today I visited the Museum of Flight for their annual Women Fly event. Today was middle school day, so girls from around the region in middle school were invited to participate.

In the morning, each girl was assigned 3 workshops to visit before lunch. The first one I went to was called “Exploring the Solar System” where we used magnets as a substitute for a gravity assist around a planet. The gravity assist would help a metal marble (representing a spacecraft) roll into one of 4 cups representing moons the spacecraft was supposed to visit. I did this same workshop last year, and it’s equal parts frustrating and rewarding as you attempt and eventually succeed in getting the trajectory and speed just right.

The second workshop I visited was about how Alaska Airlines uses GPS to plot flights when there’s little to no visibility. The pilots even use iPads in the cockpit so they can communicate with the satellites and show the path they’ll take.

The final workshop I visited before taking a lunch break was about how professional pilots fill out flight sheets that tell airports where and when they take off, how much fuel they have, and anything else notable such as the plane’s ID code and colors. This form is usually in case the pilot crashes, has to divert course, or doesn’t make it for some other reason. The instructor showed us how certain terms are shortened to make the chart easier to fill out and understand (such as Direct Flight being shortened to a D with an arrow through it).

The final activity for the day was the activity fair; a series of booths in the great gallery where we were allowed to learn about career opportunities for girls in STEM. While I didn’t stick around in the fair for long, I was able to grab some cool souvenirs from the stands and I was drawn as the winning ticket for a model airplane raffle! Women Fly is a fun community event and there’s a day for each age group, so if you can attend, I encourage it once the time comes next year!

Here's a video Annabelle took of a robot going through some motions. Annabelle reports it wasn't being operated via remote, it "was just there, doing its thing."


HAMMING IT UP: We are still in our obsessed-with-Hamilton phase. A couple of nights ago, we tuned into a Public Broadcasting System program about the revolutionary musical.

I'll have CJ tell you a bit about it. 

One night, while our TV was tuned to our local PBS station, we watched the documentary Hamilton's America. Hamilton's America is a documentary about the making and success of Hamilton: An American Musical, a Broadway musical written by playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda. Hamilton's America came out in late 2016, approximately a year after the Broadway debut of Hamilton: An American Musical.

Throughout Hamilton's America, there was footage of Lin-Manuel Miranda during the development of Hamilton: An American Musical. Prior to the Broadway debut of Hamilton, Miranda had a piano in his house, which he noted was out of tune. At the time the documentary was finished, the piano was still not properly tuned.

If you have a PBS Passport, you can watch the documentary for free at PBS' website. Otherwise, you can watch a (poor-quality) upload on Vimeo. The documentary is fascinating, and is worth a watch if you have the time.

Here's a trailer for the program: https://youtu.be/_KsTjxKi5JE


NIHONGO: We continue plugging away at learning Japanese via Mango Languages.

Every time we follow a lesson, I am so impressed with how quickly the kids pick up the new words and phrases and how well they remember what we've already learned.

Conversely, I am mortified by how poorly I am doing. I mean seriously, NOT well at all.  I can't even remember the really important stuff, like asking where the bathroom is.

Hamiltons

THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED: We have been busy, busy, busy these past few days. And a fair amount of our activity has centered around the musical "Hamilton."

We were lucky enough to score tickets to the touring production for one of its Seattle shows. 

Last Wednesday night, we made our way to downtown. We had a fun dinner at Blue C Sushi before the show. The kids love the conveyor belt delivery of food.  The wrapper on the chopsticks made me smile, and reminded me of a line from Hamilton, "Talk less, smile more."

After dinner, we walked to the theater. We were excited just to see the semi!

It would be fun to see this trailer rolling down the highway.

The show was at the Paramount, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year.

The doors opened at 6:30, and we eventually made our way to our (nosebleed) seats for the 7:30 show. Even though we were far from the stage, we were just happy to be in "The Room Where it Happens."

I'll have Annabelle tell you a bit more about the show.

Hamilton: an American Musical is a production centering around the life of Alexander Hamilton and his part in the founding of the United States. What separates Hamilton from a traditional musical, though? Almost all of the music is in Hip-Hop and other non-traditional genres for theatre, such as Jazz. The humor throughout is hilarious and perfectly timed, while there are plenty of sad moments and songs to balance it out.
The first song, “Alexander Hamilton”, briefly introduces almost every main character while detailing exactly what happened to Hamilton before he arrived in America: His father left while he was young, his mother died from a horrible sickness, and a cousin he moved in with afterward committed suicide. As he moved to America via donations from his community he began to really grow, becoming George Washington’s secretary and eventually manning his own battalion.
The songs in the musical are quite catchy and I frequently find myself singing them. With this being a musical, the lyrics are almost always about a major event or otherwise help tell the story. There’s hardly any spoken dialogue in Hamilton aside from transitions between songs. I think most of my favorite songs are included in the first act (partially due to the sheer number of them) but I do also enjoy a few songs from act two like “What’d I Miss”, “The Room Where It Happens”, and “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story”.
I believe the musical is a great way to use modern media to tell the story of a remarkable founding father and the founding of the United States. Perhaps the most impressive thing about Hamilton is that Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote it, composed it, and played the lead role of Alexander Hamilton himself. The play is best enjoyed live, but even just listening to the soundtrack is a great way to experience it. When we attended a performance at The Paramount Theater on March 14, the actor for King George the III provided an even wackier voice than the original cast recording and some of the other funny moments were much louder and clearer. I could tell there were people who hadn’t seen or heard Hamilton before, as there was quite a bit of laughter in the crowd at those points. I would strongly suggest at least researching the play and listening to it, if you can’t afford or acquire tickets. There’s a reason it’s somewhat kickstarted Broadway again.

And, of course, CJ has a review, too. 

Since making its Broadway debut in 2015, Hamilton: An American Musical has been a commercial and critical success, having once grossed $3.3M in a single week on Broadway, and has won several awards (list courtesy of the Wikimedia Foundation). Hamilton details the life of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, referred to in the musical's intro song as the "$10 Founding Father without a father."

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the writer of Hamilton, got the idea for the musical after reading the book Alexander Hamilton, by historian Ron Chernow. Hamilton, unlike most of its "peers" (as in, other Broadway and West End musicals), is largely a hip-hop musical, a prospect that seemed unlikely to be successful. For most of hip-hop's existence, the genre seemed confined to 8-tracks/cassettes and CDs rather that the stage of theatres. This, in large part, was due to the economically disadvantaged backgrounds of many rappers.

All of the characters are distinctive, even those that are played by actors with more than one character. For example, the same actor (Kyle Scatliffe, on the night I saw the play at the Paramount Theatre) plays both Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, yet the characters would be hard to confuse. Near the beginning of the second act, Jefferson is introduced with fanfare. The character of King George (played by Jon Patrick Walter in the show I saw) is also distinctive, only appearing by himself, almost never with other actors on stage. In all of King George's songs (You'll Be Back, What Comes Next?, and I Know Him), he sings about the United States becoming independent from the British Empire.

The musical's beginning has at least seven strong, memorable songs in a row. These songs, beginning with the titular "Alexander Hamilton", and ending with "You'll Be Back", make up the most well-known songs in the musical.

While the musical tells a story that ended over two centuries ago, there were still surprises to be seen. For example, the absence of Thomas Jefferson in the first act is surprising, making his appearance in the second act a welcome presence. The musical also has the potential to make theatergoers care about Aaron Burr, the man who shoots Hamilton at the end of the play. From the first song (in which Burr introduces himself as 'the damn fool who shot [Hamilton]", the audience is shown Aaron Burr's development from a rival of Hamilton to the man who would kill Hamilton in a duel several years after the revolution, in 1804.
The musical featured a diverse array of songs, from clear hip-hop (for example, the Cabinet Battle songs) to songs that I think are hard to describe (for example, Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story, the final song of the musical). My family and I saw the performance of the play at the Paramount Theatre in downtown Seattle. The Paramount Theatre is a very old (turning 90 this year) venue that I have visited multiple times in the past. 

Friday night, we were treated to more Hamilton fun. This time, an event at a local spot, Luther's Table. A talented group called "Rise Up" performed a number of songs from the musical.

CJ had this to say about it. ...

Recently, my family attended a production of the Broadway musical Hamilton. More recently, this past Friday, we went to a Rise Up concert at Luther's Table. Per its Facebook page, "Luther's Table is a non-profit coffee shop and community gathering space in downtown Renton." Rise Up describes itself as follows:

A tribute to the songs of "Hamilton" and its musical influences. Rise Up is an 11 piece pro ensemble featuring several top Seattle vocalists.
==
Rise Up is a non-dramatic cabaret performance of selected individual songs from “Hamilton” and other sources. 

The event at Luther's Table involved a buffet dinner at 6 P.M, prior to the show (though Rise Up did one song at that time). Among the food served were slices of pizza, as well as bread, salad, and potato chips.

Rise Up performed renditions of many of Hamilton's songs (I don't remember an exact setlist), with an intermission in between the two halves of the performance (which, if I recall correctly, represented the first and second halves of the original musical). As stated previously, not all of the songs Rise Up performed were from Hamilton, but rather, from other musicals. However, I don't think I recognized any of the non-Hamilton songs.

And here is Annabelle's take on the evening. ...

Rise Up, a Seattle-based Hamilton tribute band, recently had 2 performances at Luther's Table, a local non-profit that serves buffets and usually has live entertainment. The performance we attended on March 16th was sold out, although a few tables were reserved for walk-ins and the homeless who regularly came to Luther's Table. Rise Up had five singers and a small band on the stage, and they performed fairly accurate renditions of some of the most popular hamilton songs such as "You'll Be Back", "Guns and Ships", and "Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)". They also squeezed in a few songs from other musicals ("Song That Goes Like This" from Spamalot and "Waving Through a Window" from Dear Evan Hansen) and an original song called "Beyond the Stars". Near the end of the show, they also invited people on stage to sing a group rendition of "My Shot". The volunteers at Luther's Table provided good food throughout the show, and it was very entertaining to watch the performer's reaction to a table next to us that had a few huge musical fans. It was really enjoyable and I suggest supporting Rise Up at one of their future shows, and if you live in the Renton area, Luther's Table has weekly events like an open mic night!

Of Pi, Protests, and a Phenomenal Physicist

IN REMEMBRANCE: Tuesday night, shortly before midnight our time, we heard breaking news that world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking had died at his home in Cambridge, England.

Hawking wound up dying on Pi Day (3.14) and Einstein's birthday. Seems fitting, somehow. 

I feel so, *so* fortunate that we were able to share the same space with Hawking on a special evening back in 2012, as part of the (now-defunct) Seattle Science Festival.  The photo below is terrible of the kids, but it was a terrific night!

Diagnosed with ALS when he was just 19, it's amazing that Hawking lived as long as he did. (To think that as a young man, he was counseled not to waste money on college, since he'd be dying soon!)

If you haven't seen it yet, we recommend "The Theory of Everything." It was a compelling biopic about a brilliant man.

REJECTING THE SILENCE: Wednesday morning, there was a nationwide school walkout for 17 minutes at 10 a.m. across every time zone to protest lawmakers' inaction to do more than tweet "thoughts and prayers" in response to the gun violence plaguing U.S. schools. The walkouts were primarily student-led. 

We didn't have a school to walk out of Wednesday morning, but wanted to mark the occasion in some way. Silence didn't seem like a good way to honor the victims, as there has been too much silence about school shootings. Instead, we chose to read aloud an article from CNN about the victims of the latest mass school shooting, in Florida. Among the 17 dead were kids as young as 14, and adults who died trying to protect children. 

The article is overwhelming, of course. Vibrant lives senselessly snuffed out in moments by a disturbed young male who had obvious warning signs, which people around him had reported. And yet, 17 are dead, anyway. How often has this scenario been repeated?  How many more times will it be carried out? Why are mass school shootings so common in America?

Obviously, there are more questions than answers, and the answers are complicated, which is part of why people continue to send #ThoughtsandPrayers and then just move along.

PI PARTY: On Wednesday, we helped organize a Pi Party. It wound up being big fun, with 80 plus attendees, I'd guess.

The star of the show was a pi(e) potluck. There were probably 20-plus pies contributed, as well as several pizza pies. 

We also shared some Pi Day videos with the group, including an entertaining BrainPOP video (https://www.brainpop.com/math/geometryandmeasurement/pi/) and one from PBS Kids. 

We had a recite pi contest, seeing how many digits students could manage to memorize. A friend of the kids' recited pi to the 118th digit, making him the grand champion. The runner up made it to 108, also mighty impressive. (CJ and Annabelle just listened, rather than participating.)

We had cute prizes on hand for the pi reciting people. Right after Valentine's Day, the kids and I were in Wal-Mart and checked out their post-holiday clearance. We spotted these adorable pie slices and I thought, "Bingo! Perfect Pi Day prizes!"

Deeply discounted, they were 74 cents apiece. Score!

We brought pizza to the party, but didn't bake any pies. Instead, we chose to make cookies that look like pie slices. They were fun, and it was pretty easy to pump out a few dozen of them!

The miniature non-pie pies were a hit. I'd definitely make them again.

Sweet Stuff

SQUIRRELING AROUND: Here were are on Tuesday, still playing catch up from last Friday. 

Friday was a rainy day, but our morning was made brighter by a fun field trip to a local gelato establishment. 

I'll let Annabelle tell you more about it. 

Friday at Nutty Squirrel Gelato in Magnolia, I learned how gelato is made, what differentiates it from ice cream, and why they use fresh ingredients.

Nutty Squirrel is a family-owned business with three locations- Maple Valley, Phinney Ridge, and the Magnolia location we went to. The store has a pleasant atmosphere, although it's rather small. They slow-churn small batches of gelato from milk that are shipped from Smith Brothers farms at most 48 hours after the cows were milked, resulting in the freshest gelato possible.

They gave us samples of some unflavored gelato that finished churning as we walked into the room, which tasted like delicious, creamy milk. Afterwards, we got a small lesson on what gelato means ("frozen" in Italian) and why they're dedicated to using little no no artificial ingredients. They allowed us to decorate our own small bowls of vanilla gelato and everyone got free coupons for one free regular-sized scoop whenever we wanted! Nutty Squirrel gelato was great experience and I recommend trying their gelato - it's delicious, and you help support a local business!

I loved how these cones were artfully arranged, and the (fake) spilled ice cream prompted many a smile from our field trip group.

 A couple of tasty looking flavors ...

Below is a very pleased CJ with his creation.

 And Annabelle was plenty happy with hers, too!