Scout Sunday

Yesterday was a very special Scout Sunday for my boys.  This week is the 100th anniversary of Scouting in the United States, and our troop master along with our pastor put together a nice service to honor scouting.

The boys participated in a flag ceremony and a reading.  John and Brock joined Cosette and me in a violin offertory.  We also had a church pot luck and the tables were all decorated with scout memorabilia.

I am so pleased that my boys enjoy Boy Scouts.  It gives us all opportunities to get to know people outside our normal circle of acquaintances, and it has exposed the boys to many new activities, hobbies, and projects.  I used to think that Boy Scouts was basically a camping club, but it is so much more than that.   It promotes strong character and morals while the boys stretch to try new challenges.  Teamwork and leadership training are definitely emphasized, and those skills will help the boys so much in the future.  We are also thankful for our wonderful Scoutmaster who truly invests himself in our boys.  It’s great having a Christian role model who is a wonderful example of humble, selfless service.

Here is another picture from yesterday that I thought was neat.  Our pastor challenged Brock to a game of Foosball.  Again, I so appreciate Christian adults investing in my kids–what a blessing that is!

Fixed!

Remember this?

Look at it now! All fixed and sparkly! (It’s almost as pretty as it was the day I got it, 2/17/96!)

**Now, if I can only get my Grandmother’s clock repaired. The same shop that fixed my ring has had that clock for 10 YEARS!!! That’s a story for another day!

2010 Pinewood Derby

We officially survived the Pinewood Derby last Saturday.  This was definitely our most involved year yet:  we had 7 official entries, 4 additional cars that we helped other scouts make, and Dan and John both helped with the actual race.  So, it has been a busy year!

We tried some new techniques this year to prepare our cars for the race.  We were more detailed on our sanding and paint jobs for one thing.  To improve speed, we did some “specialized” graphite application and sanding of the axles.  Believe it or not, these small steps did improve our rankings over previous years substantially.

John’s car placed 1st in the adult open class.  Brock’s car got 2nd in the second-year Webelos class.  Cosette’s car got FIRST in the youth open class.  (It was a ROCKET!!)  Luke’s car met with some stiff competition in the Wolves’ class and still pulled a ranking of 3rd.  Kara’s car was a close 2nd to Cosette’s car in the youth open class.

So, after reading my entry about Dan’s Pickle Car I am sure that some of my readers are wondering how the Pickle fared in the race.  Believe it or not, it took 2nd to John’s car in the adult open class, while my own Blue Ichthus Star took 3rd.

We had a lot of fun this year, and are already making plans for better, faster cars for next year! 

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Old Fashioned Fun: Paper Dolls

Kara’s New Look

Kara has recently updated her “look” with two new features:  a missing tooth and shorter hair.

We had not planned to cut Kara’s hair.  In fact, it had just gotten long enough to braid and looked so pretty.  For some unknown reason, though, Kara decided to give herself a haircut, and there was nothing we could do to fix it without just cutting it all.  So, we are trying out short hair while some of her snips grow out.  Sigh….  Oh well, she does look cute anyway!

She has looked forward to losing her first tooth for a long, long time.  I don’t know how many times she has asked me when she would be “big enough” to reach this milestone.  She was ecstatic when she discovered that her tooth was loose and tried several times to prematurely pull it out.  I kept telling her that it just wasn’t quite ready yet.  I am happy to report that she pulled her own first tooth.  In fact she said it just kind of fell out and it didn’t hurt a bit.  So, now she has officially joined the Big Kids’ Club.

A Unique Picture of Brock

Cosette got a camera for her birthday and has had a lot of fun taking random pictures.  Needless to say, she can get different pictures than I can because of her role as a sister.  One of the first pictures that she took was this picture of Brock.  He has such a great expression in this picture–so natural and fun.  I just love it!  Thanks, Cosette!

The “Pickle” Pinewood Derby Car

People who know our family know that when one of us is having a particularly “sour” day, we refer to it as a Pickle Day.  Well, this Pinewood Derby car is definitely a Pickle Car.  Let me explain…

This afternoon is the annual Cub Scout Pinewood Derby for our group.  Because there is a family class for entries, we have all made cars this year.  Yes, the Prairie Family has 7 entries in the derby this year!  We have been busy cutting, sanding, painting, decorating, lubricating, aligning wheels, etc.  All of the cars have turned out very cute, and we can’t wait to race them today.  The car pictured in this entry, however, has been such a HEADACHE!

This car was originally going to be my car when we traced the pattern onto the block of wood.  When Dan was cutting out the shape, though, it cracked and had some problems, so he decided that he’d cut out another car for me and make this one his car.  So, he patched up the cracks, added the weights, and all looked good.  We even got it painted and decorated.  Then more problems started…..

After we got it all ready to go, the Pickle Car was too heavy.  This is not an uncommon problem because in order for the cars to do well racing, they have to be very close to the weight limit, but not over it.  So, Dan decided to unplug one of the holes that the weights were in to lighten it a little.  Well, the silly weight was kind of stuck in there, and when he was trying to get it out, the car cracked some more!  Now remember, this car was already painted!  Dan put more patching putty in the cracks, and I told him that after it had dried and could be sanded, I’d put a fresh coat of paint on it to cover up the putty.

That is only the BEGINNING of the story!  True to my word, yesterday morning I put on a new coat of shiny black paint–and it crackled.  Yes, for some unknown reason the entire car crackled.  Dan had already left town for a meeting, so I had to make a quick decision on my own how to try to remedy this situation.  So, yes, the day before the race I sanded the silly thing all the way back down to the wood and started over with primer and a new paint job!

Again, all looked good until I noticed a rough area on the top, and when I tried to smooth it out a little, I put a big scratch down the middle!  Instead of starting all over AGAIN, I sprayed a little paint on a paper plate and used a brush to touch up the area.

Last night we were finally ready to attach the wheels.  Now it is commonly known that the alignment of the wheels is really the most important speed factor for these little cars, so we were quite meticulous on all of our cars.  I noticed a difference in the Pickle Car right away:  one of the front tires just slid into the groove while the others had to be hammered.  That didn’t seem quite right, and it wasn’t! The axle groove that is already carved in the original block of wood when the kit is opened must not have been carved correctly.  So, we did our best to get that silly tire in, and tried multiple times to get it as level as possible so the car would track straight.  Because the axle was so loose in the groove, we got it where we wanted it and put glue on to hold it.

Believe it or not, this morning I went to check on the Pickle, and the tire would not move at all!  Glue had gotten into the tire hole and had secured it tightly to the axle!  Not cool!  So, we had to take that wheel off AGAIN, relubricate it, and try once more to get it all straight and flat.

After we got the car put back together, we weighed it–AGAIN–and it was way too light.  So, we added some weights to the bottom, and we are calling it good.  In fact, we are scared to touch the Pickle anymore lest it fall apart entirely! 

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the Pickle ended up winning the race??!!  We’ll find out later today!

A Beka Academy Week 21: 7th Grade Science Project Finished!

Well, John has reached a major milestone in 7th Grade A Beka Academy DVD Program 1 Homeschool:  he completed his science project!  (Yes, I am very happy!)  This project is really a big part of 7th grade science.  He began it in October and just completed it this week.  There were several components to this project including a research paper, a scientific experiment, a display, and an oral presentation.  John is, of course, our oldest son, so he gets the “privilege” of trying out all of these great things first!  By the time Kara works on one of these projects, it’ll be a piece of cake–yeah, right!

John’s project was about DNA.  The goal of his experiment was to determine if the amount of extractable DNA in fruits and vegetables increased with the number of chromosomes.  Sounds complicated, doesn’t it?!  Basically, he liquified 6 different fruits and veggies, and then using a process involving soap, rubbing alcohol, meat tenderizer, and other household items, he extracted the DNA from the liquid.  The DNA collected in a layer, and then he measured the depth of the layer.  This was not as easy at it sounds because sometimes the layers were pretty well defined, and other times the DNA “blobbed” making measuring pretty difficult.  He then charted the measurements with the number of chromosomes to see if there was any correlation between the two figures.

Fortunately, John has a Dad who is an economist and works with charts, trends, and the like all of the time.  Dan helped John analyze the data, and then John and I worked together to make the display according to the directions given to us by A Beka.  It was quite the process…..

So, what were the results?  John determined from his experiments that there was a very slight correlation between the number of chromosomes and the amount of extractable DNA, but this correlation was so slight that it is statistically insignificant.  In order to be conclusive, the experiment would have to be conducted many, many times and measured with highly sophisticated equipment that we just simply do not have access to in our house! 

So that’s one science project down, and, if my figuring is right, we should have 29 more to go….. Yes, all five kids will have these kind of projects each year from 7th grade through 12th grade. That means that we will be doing science projects every year until 2022!  There will be a few years where 4 out of 5 kids will all be doing them.  What will that be like???  Our house is going to look like a laboratory!

I am going to add a slideshow of John’s project along with a video of him doing his oral presentation.  He worked very hard on this project, and I am proud of him for sticking with it and doing such a great job! (By the way, the sound on the video will probably need to be turned up.  The room we were using had a lot of echoes.  Sorry about that!)

Make a Smilebox slideshow

A Beka Academy Week 20: January Scripture Memory

Ugh!  I am SO behind on my blogging again!  We have been extremely busy the last couple of weeks.  This time of year always gets so hectic with school and scouting projects.  John’s science project is nearly finished, and he will be giving his oral report to Brock’s Webelos group tomorrow night.  The pine car derby is Saturday, so we have all been working on cars.  Those silly things sure take up a lot of time!  Hopefully things will slow down a little in the next week or so, and then I will try to catch up my blog with what all has been going on.

In the mean time, the kids have all had memory verses due, so here is our video installment for January 2010:

Twins

The weather this week has been a little warmer, and the house has actually gotten hot at times.  It has been so warm in the house, in fact, that the kids have asked me if they can get out some short sleeved shirts.  I should have known which shirts the girls would get out first: their matching purple V-necks.

Believe it or not, I did not pick out these matching shirts on purpose.  Kara’s came in a box of hand-me-downs from my cousin’s family a couple of years ago.  Last fall, I found the bigger one for Cosette in a local second-hand store.  Cosette couldn’t believe it when I showed her a shirt like Kara’s but in her size!  Unfortunately, though, the weather hasn’t been exactly conducive for wearing these shirts since I got Cosette’s, so they eagerly took advantage of our warm house to try out being twins!

The girls actually came to me to take their picture three times before they were satisfied that they were twins.  In the first picture, Kara forgot to put on her glasses, so she didn’t match with Cosette.  Then Cosette decided to put on her flip-flops which required a change of shoes for Kara too.  Then they thought it would be fun to put on their matching bunny ears.  I noticed in our final picture that the girls are even holding their hands the same–that wasn’t even planned!  They sure had fun with their matching shirts.  I am sure they will be worn a lot when the weather warms up this spring!