Please Pray!

My favoritist grandpa of all is in the hospital. His heart is not very strong and his defibrillator went off on Saturday morning. He was immediately admitted into the hospital and the doctors are doing tests on him to see what happened. The one thing that they know for sure is that the defibrillator saved his life on Saturday.

Please pray for my grandpa. He's the best grandpa ever.

Science Part 1: The Colorful Milk Experiment

For the rest of the year, at school, we're going to be learning about science topics. Next week, to kick off our study of science, I want to do a "Play with Science" week. My favorite teacher ever, Mr. Wayne, led a conference session last summer and he was talking about how so many kids are turned off by science and don't find it exciting. I kind of knew what he was talking about because I've tried to do experiments with my second graders in the past and they just don't really care. Unless there's an explosion or something, they aren't interested. But then he had us think about how most experiments in school are done.

The teacher gives the list of procedures, you follow the procedures, see the result, and write it up using all the correct steps of the scientific method. The problem is that there is no authentic excitement in that. It's not genuine. The kids aren't doing an experiment the way the original person who figured out the experiment did it. That person got to play with it. He or she had to try it lots of different ways to figure out what would make it happen and what wouldn't.

So Mr. Wayne showed us an experiment that involved crushing a can. He showed us the whole thing, including the can crushing as the result. I said, "But weren't WE supposed to discover that?" He said, "No, YOU'RE supposed to play." Then he gave us all the materials that we needed and told us to try to replicate it, but to also play with it and try other ways of making it happen. Before we knew it, we were laughing, playing, using different materials, different techniques, trying to get it to happen, and 45 minutes went by like it was no time at all.

At the end, we all kept talking and talking about what we tried, what worked, what didn't. He said that THAT was how the original scientists did it. They played with it, kept careful records, changed one thing at a time, did it over and over again, etc. THAT'S what makes science fun - trying out your own ideas...being curious...PLAYING, not just copying a list of procedures that somebody else already figured out.

So that's what we're going to do this week. I'm going to follow the same model as Mr. Wayne and show the kids how to do something first and then let their ideas control what happens next. Here's one of the demonstrations I'm going to do:

so funny!

More pics of Calabaza and his snake

Here are some more pictures of little Calabaza and his snake. He just loves his little friend.

softest, sweetest kitty ever

Is he not the softest, sweetest kitty you've ever seen, sleeping with his snake? His fur looks so soft in this picture. It makes me want to hug him!

the kid who's never seen snow...

As you all know, yesterday was Martin Luther King Day. This is incredibly important because it means we didn't have school. It's incredibly important for many other reasons as well, but the most direct consequence of this day is that I got to go snowboarding at Wintergreen! Miguel has been dying to go ever since I took him back in December so he came with me yesterday. Let me just say this:

For a kid who's never seen snow before, he has taken to snowboarding like a fish to water.

It's insane. He stands on the board, naturally balanced, and after two days of snowboarding (separated by a month, remember), he can already make turns and he was landing very small jumps yesterday. Insane. He even keeps his arms down by his sides instead of flailing around in the air like most beginners, as if he's completely comfortable and completely in control.

Yesterday was such a beautiful day too, perfectly sunny and the perfect temperature for such a sunny, clear day. The snow was soft and powdery and we saw a ton of friends that we both knew! We saw six other kids from our school! Miguel saw one of his friends from his grade, Quinn (you might recognize him from many baseball pictures I took last spring and summer).

They stayed together for the whole rest of the day, skiing and snowboarding and helping eachother up when they fell! Thank you, God, for days off of school!

Calabaza Meets Bubbles

Well as I was going about my day yesterday, I realized that my good friend Calabaza had never experienced bubbles before. Who am I to deprive my friends of a splendid bubble experience? So I made some bubbles for him and was he ever confused! His response to the bubbles was so funny I had to grab the video camera and film it! It might be kind of choppy...I'm trying to figure out how to get it NOT choppy...but here it is!

Stinks for you, South Georgia

That's really too bad that South Georgia doesn't get snow days. BECAUSE WE HAVE SOME HERE!!! We, in fact, have a four and a half day weekend because we don't have school on Monday either! Yay for snow!

SNOW!!!

Isn't that cute of Calabaza looking through the window at me in all the snow, wondering what in the world I'm doing out there and why don't I come back inside where it's nice and warm and dry? What a crazy day. So it started off crazy when I woke up to the sound of over 80 school division closings being named on the radio station and Albemarle County and Charlottesville City were the ONLY two in the "winter storm warning" area that were NOT closing school. So that made me pretty mad that we were going to school.


Then when we got to school it started snowing immediately and within 30 minutes they had already made the decision to close and get kids back home. So then all the buses couldn't get back to school because the roads were so bad and only half of the buses actually could make it. The other half were stuck in traffic accidents or had had accidents themselves. So for an hour we had a handful of kids left in our classrooms that ride the missing buses. We were fielding phone call after phone call from angry parents wanting to know why we sent the kids to school today, as if it was OUR decision to send them. I was like, "Trust me, my friend, I don't want to be here right now any more than you do." Meanwhile the kids were asking endless questions like, "Why aren't they calling the buses? Why aren't the buses here? How are we going to get home? What if my mom has to come and she has an accident? Why can't we just go home?"


I had FINALLY gotten the kids to calm down and we were playing with Legos on the floor of the room. Everything was fine. The phone calls had stopped. The questions had stopped. We were just playing with Legos and waiting...when we have the next brilliant idea... An announcement came over the intercom that said, "3 buses are still missing. Please bring all of your students who ride those 3 buses up to the front hall and wait with them there." I have only one thing to say: WHY????? We were fine in the room, playing with Legos. So now we had 100 kids crowded into the front hall where they wouldn't stay in one spot. Try getting 100 puppies to stay in one spot and you'll get the idea. And then...

The fire alarm goes off. One of the kids pulled it. I finally just burst out laughing which made everyone else start laughing. It took about 7 minutes of annoying, excruciating fire alarm noise to get the alarm turned off. Then the fire trucks arrived with firemen who jumped out of the trucks with axes and ran towards the building. Meanwhile with the kids, we were like, "It's fine, guys, everything's fine."


Finally the last bus came and all the kids were out, an hour after they were supposed to be. I made it home safely and introduced Calabaza to the glorious white stuff known as snow. He was less than interested.


And the end of the story is that apparently Albemarle County got a flood of complaints from furious parents about sending the kids to school today because as of 6:00 PM tonight, they were one of the first school divisions that announced they'll be closed tomorrow. Hahahahahahaha! Why I find such humor in that, I don't know, but hahahahahahahahaha!

Upstream Balloon Challenge

Here's my latest video! It's of the youth group at my church doing a balloon challenge!

a fun way to beat traffic

Thanks to technology, Miguelito and I had a fun way to beat the Friday rush-hour traffic! Using a laptop with a built-in camera, he entertained both of us with dozens of pictures of funny faces. By the time we finally got bored of it, we had made it to our destination!

Calabaza's Snake Goes for a Ride

I finally finished building my Lego train this Christmas and I've started building a street as scenery for it. My sister and I like to torment Calabaza by attaching his pet snake to the back of the train and then turning the train on. Calabaza will chase the snake over and over again until he yanks it off or derails the train. Here's a video of him chasing the snake. The quality of the video isn't totally great, but you'll get the idea. If you look in the video, too, you'll see part of the street that's completed (the hotel and blue cafe). I'm currently working on an ice cream shop to go next to the cafe. Oh, and in answer to Katie's question, yes I did get a new video camera! How did you know? :)

Annhead, can you tell my trip to Best Buy was successful?

January 5 News Report

So Beth, what exactly did you do today on this glorious Saturday?

LOOK IT'S CALABAZA!!!

Here's my little gatito playing with his beloved pet snake. He is obsessed with that thing, which I found in a dusty old box. I don't know where it came from. I'd never seen it before and I was just going to throw it away when I noticed Calabaza was eyeing it with an intense look of desire. Ever since, he plays with the snake CONSTANTLY, throws it down the steps and then chases after it, pushes it under the refrigerator, etc. He's pretty funny to watch!

YAY 2008!!!

Hip hip hooray! 2007 is OVER!!! Yay for the beginning of 2008! Hmmm...so far the first 34 minutes of 2008 have been uneventful. I hope that's a sign of good things to come. After the past week/month/year my family has had, we could use an "uneventful" period. (Don't even ask why the police had to be called on Christmas Eve.) Let's just say that "uneventful" would be a welcoming break. YAY FOR 2008!!! Here's a picture of a friendly giraffe picking his nose with his tongue to celebrate 2008! Hahahahaha