Friday, October 1, 2010

Egg Drop

At our Elementary school they do an egg drop in third grade. The kids can use any method they want to try to protect their egg from cracking being dropped off the roof of the school building. The principle gets to do the honor of dropping each kids carefully protected egg off the roof.

Hannah worked with her Dad to come up with an idea of how to best protect her egg from being cracked. Actually I mentioned the project to Paul, and that I thought this was probably something he would enjoy working with Hannah on. He quickly stated his idea and was off looking around the house to get all the supplies he needed to prove to me that it would work. When he told me the idea I had a bit of doubts that the egg would not hold up.
Hannah's teacher works very hard to make sure that the kids are listening and doing what they are suppose to be doing.
I was very sad that I didn't take a picture when they dropped her egg, but here is Hannah retrieving her well packaged egg. I think she was pleased that it survived the drop.

If you can not tell very well the egg is placed between three balloons, and the balloons are held together by tape. Paul put one together the week prior to the egg drop to show me that it would work. He took it outside and simply tossed it in the air. The kids thought it was to much fun to each take a turn and through it around. It held up really well until Connor through it and it landed in the grass the balloons popped, but the egg still held together. At that point I told Paul, "well, I guess this should work as long as the surface it is landing on is not grass."

I guess the kids were suppose to learn about disappointment, but lets be honest we all know that life is so much nicer when you don't have to be disappointed. I am sure that Hannah will have plenty of opportunities in life to learn about disappointment. I was pleased to see a smile on her face and a proud Dad who helped make that possible.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I had really considered doing the square foot gardening this year. I am one of those individuals that really does NOT care much for gardening. I am sure I have mentioned this before. I don't care that much about food. I realize that my body needs to eat, but I have NO problem with slim fast or drinking a whey protein shake. It is fast and NO clean up. I do try to be healthy. I make sure to take vitamins. Simply because I am sure my body is in need of more nutrients that what I probably give it. I would not say that I am an unhealthy eater, but food is NOT a priority in my life. I am pretty lucky to have married someone that likes good food, but again it is not a priority. So, when we decided to put our house up for sale. There was NO way I was going to invest my money and time into a garden. However, I thought it would be fun to try to grow something, so I decided to grow some flowers. I gave them extra attention. To make sure they got the water they needed. My kids were very excited to see little buds finally growing. With the direction of our house. Our flowers come out latter than the flowers on the opposite side of the street. For a lot of the summer. We had a very pretty green flower bed. We were all very happy to finally have flowers. I worried about my flowers during the crazy wind and rain storm, but they survived. I realized that the flowers I started outside seamed to be stronger and grow straighter than the flowers that I started inside and then planted outside. I feel like a learned a little and more than anything I feel like I accomplished something. Best of all. It didn't cost me very much, so it was a good way for me to get started growing something.

Looking at my flowers it often reminds me of my Grandma Bonnie. When she would visit my family she enjoyed driving around Salt Lake looking at all the flowers around people's homes. I can not say that I will ever be some lover of gardening, But I did enjoy having flowers outside our house. Who knows maybe one of these years we just might enjoy a vegetable garden to along with our flowers.

One Crazy BUG!

The kids are busy learning another play. They are in the Jungle Book. They have been having such a fun time learning the songs and their parts for this production. One day this last week as we came out of play practice we had a big bug on our windshield. We needed to stop at the store, so I told the kids "Hey, lets see if this bug wants a ride." As we started driving it walked up to the top of the car. At this point we all decided that we would look and see if it was still on the top when we arrived at Walmart. This is a short maybe two minute drive going about 40 mph. When we arrived sure enough the bug was still on top of the car. We only had a couple things to pick up, so we were not very long in the store and sure enough the bug was waiting for us. We drove over to Costco. I quickly little drive across the street probably only like 34 mph. When we arrived at Costco he was still their. Our stay at Costco was a bit longer. Paul decided to meet up with us and get pizza for dinner, but when we went back out that crazy little bug was still waiting for us. I wasn't sure if the bug would make it home, but again I talked with the kids. "Let's see if this bug wants a ride to our house. The drive is probably about a 10 minutes drive going around 70 mph. I will be honest I always go over 65, but I try to keep my speed no faster than 75. When we got home that CRAZY bug was still on top of the car. I guess he just needed to do something a little different today.