CIimbing the Walls

 For Christmas, our cousins gave the kids passes to an indoor climbing place called Climb Zone.


It was amazing!

And super fun, and very photogenic, if you'll excuse another photo heavy post!

 They had walls for all ages and climbing abilities which allowed our noobie climbers to start slow and gain confidence.


And our expert climbers still had fun challenges.

Really a fun few hours!

Getting Ready for Halloween

 It's almost here!

 We've been painting pumpkins and webbing up the front porch.

This year we have a lot of actual spiderwebs which have been building up over the past month.  I'm not sure where the actual spiders came from, but the real and fake webs can stay for another week!

We will carve the pumpkins this weekend, which probably means roasted pumpkin seeds: yum!

I think I might also cook one of the eating pumpkins, maybe for pie,, or maybe to make candied pumpkin (double yum!).

Choclo and Oob haven't chosen costumes yet, which is fine by me.  I learned a long time ago not to set up costumes too early - they will invariably be tired of them and make something else at the last minute.

The older Zoomlians have picked out the candy they will be giving out, so the critical part is done!

More Fun with Dry Ice

 Since we had extra dry ice from the Astronomy class, the Zoomlians had fun experimenting.

We looked at putting the dry ice into water, alcohol, and hydrogen peroxide.

The alcohol was interesting because the bubbles were smaller (alcohol has less surface tension).

The hydrogen peroxide was interesting because it seemed to bubble at a faster rate.

One thing we found was that it's easier to see how much gas the dry ice is giving off if you capture it in bubbles - a simple matter of adding a bit of soap.

This also showed what was up with the hydrogen peroxide.  Some of the bubbles were misty with the cold CO2 coming directly from the dry ice.

But some of the bubbles were clear oxygen from the hydrogen peroxide breaking down into oxygen and water!

Then we took the rest of the dry ice outside where it was warm and humid.

It was lots of fun to watch the dry ice sublime in the breeze!

Wordless Wednesday: Great Falls in Spate

Wordless Wednesday: Paint Branch

WordlessWednesday: The Zoo

Two Busies and Two Funnies

Before

Well, we've had a crazy few days.  Last weekend we got hit with the edge of that giant storm.  We didn't get snow, but we got an alarming amount of wind- about 24 hours of howling 50 mph, with gusts up to 80 mph!

Leena and Oob were watching out our window when they saw our dear neighbor's tree come down!

After

On the plus side, it fell where it probably did the least damage (not on any houses, and missing her main car), on the down side, it took power lines down across the road, and it did hit her convertible.

After the winds had died down, we went over to help clean up.
Many hands, as my neighbor observed, make light work, and many hands are our specialty!

They came to fix the power lines the same day, but many others, including my parents, were not so lucky.  They live 200 miles north and were out of power for 5 days!  It's a bigger problem when no power means no water in the tap (well with an electric pump) and lots of water in the basement (no sump pump), and when you are also getting snow.  Fortunately they have coal, so they didn't freeze.

They are getting over a foot of fresh snow today...  Prayers are appreciated!


On another note, Leena and I have finalized our plans for the Easter flowers and decorations!

I thought we were really early this year, but then I realized that tomorrow is day 20, so we're already half way through Lent!

So, not early, but at least not late!

We found these great crosses at Hobby Lobby, but you'll have to wait for Easter to see what we are doing with them.

We also found this sign!

Also this week, I was waking up the Zoomlians when I stepped on saw this cute little duck puppet which I had completely forgotten about.

How sweet!  I decided I'd wake them up with it.

Who are you calling cute!

I hadn't realize it wasn't a cute cuddly duck puppet.

It was an angry bad tempered duck puppet.

The kids will probably recover.

Eventually.

Maybe I should have them set their own alarms.

Somewhat Wordless Wednesday

We have snowflakes on all the windows, but it's just a cold rainy day - hovering just above freezing.


 We had planned a museum trip, but wimped out hen the Federal Government had an ice delay.



We've been watching the poor wet birds at the feeder.


And reading. Doing a little math. Making bread.

 And making valentines!

Then the kids took the extra stickers and made a game.  This part of the game is Robots Versus Dinosaurs in the Abandoned Factory. 

Also, Choclo made this dinosaur lure hat. You stick a cookie on the fork in the front, and them the dinosaur will follow it around.

It's kind of a nice quiet day unless you have to be outside!