The Science of Science Fairs

Evan completed his first science fair project this year.  I guess he had the opportunity last year, but didn't want to participate.  This year he did, so we started brainstorming ideas with him as soon as we found out about it.  Steve suggested an experiment on the evaporation rates of different liquids.  A friend had told me about her daughter's on which type of cup keeps hot chocolate warmer and I suggested that one.  Evan decided to go with the evaporation, so I started making plans to carry it out.  We tried to perform the experiment the weekend before it was due and the results were the following:

1. The method I selected (and discussed with Steve) was not a good one for this experiment.
2. We needed more time to complete the project.

So, we went with Plan B (a.k.a. "Keeping Hot Chocolate Warm").  After church on Sunday I picked up a digital candy thermometer.  When I got home I made a new caramel hot chocolate recipe, and we proceeded to experiment.  It took Evan, Steve, and me to keep the experiment going.  The first time we tried to measure the temps every minute, but that was pretty hard.  I basically was measuring the entire minute.  The second time (since my husband is an engineer we had to do two trials) we measured every 2 minutes.  We only kept the every two minutes measurements from the first trial, too.

 Guess which cup kept the hot chocolate warmer

Evan had worked on the wording of the purpose, hypothesis, etc. with me the day before (because I had a feeling we would be using plan B and wanted to be ready).  After the experiment it was time to analyze the data.  Steve kind of took over that part, with me throwing in things every now and then.  Evan then came to me to write the results section.  This is where the whining started.  I was about to lose it.  I wanted to finish so that we could relax and watch the playoffs.  He apparently wanted to do that, too, but without finishing the project first.  Steve took over for a while, and we were able to finish the project.  Phew!  Then Steve took over the formatting of the document into slides for printing.  I wanted to rearrange part of it and it took me a while to figure out how to get it to do what I wanted.  We have new "stuff" on our computer (Windows 7 and different Office programs) and while I like some of them, I know how to use the old stuff better.  And I haven't used PowerPoint in a long time anyway.  But ... it got done in time to get printed and put on the board way before bedtime!

And we did enjoy some caramel hot chocolate in the "winning" cup.

Surprised?  We were (except that this was my friend's result, too.)

The first thing Evan told me when I picked him from school the next day was that he won at the science fair!  It was hard to figure out what he won, but it was an honorable mention!  I think that they judged all of the kinder-3rd graders together and had a 1st, 2nd, 3rd place winner and then some honorable mentions.  He was excited and so were we!  I think he learned some stuff, too.  I wasn't sure he would want to do one next year after all of the "torture" of working on the results section, but I think that the joy of winning may have replaced the pain in his memories. 

Winter Wonderland

I have been negligent in posting again.  We have enjoyed some snow recently, but it makes me long for more!  We only got a couple of inches and it was only "playable" for one day.  Thinking of snow always takes me back to our early days in Virginia (when we lived there for 9 months about 3 years ago).  The boys were so much smaller then and they had never really seen snow before.  The wonder and excitement really were magical.  They still love the snow, but it's not quite the same.  I have the physical pictures, and I hope I will always have the mental pictures, too.

This post has been submitted to an I Heart Faces photo challenge.

Another attempt at catching up

I realized a couple of weeks ago how many pictures I have that I haven't posted and how many stories I haven't told ... and then another few weeks passed and the number grew!  I posted a bunch of pictures onto facebook, so in an attempt to catch up more quickly, I will just be posting the link to the facebook albums here with a little synopsis of each.

After our trip to the Smokies, we had a birthday party for Joel at home.  I put a picture or two up on the blog, but there are many more here if you want to see 5 year olds celebrating like Iron Man.

Before Thanksgiving, our city has a holiday parade that has become a tradition for us.  I think we all enjoy watching the parade, although the boys probably enjoy the candy more.  We were able to go again this year, and while I didn't get too many pictures of the parade this year, we did get a family picture with Santa.  We also ran into some friends and had fun visiting (adults) and playing (kids) with them after the parade while we were checking out the booths and activities.

Evan's school had a lot going on for Thanksgiving for this year.  All of the second-graders in the school decorate a turkey and then the school votes on the best one.  With all of the traveling and partying we did between Halloween and Joel's birthday, I completely forgot about Evan's turkey.  Thankfully someone reminded me the day it was due (after Evan was at school).  I was able to "magically" guess how he would want to decorate the turkey and start cutting out some supplies that morning.  (My good friend helped by punching out some letters for us to use, too!)  I then picked him up from school at lunchtime and he missed lunch and recess to put it together.  He also added a few details of his own.

The day before Thanksgiving was the big feast, complete with a visit from a Pilgrim couple and Squanto.  They talked about life in the colonies and the Indian village around the time of the first Thanksgiving.  They also demonstrated how to plant corn.  That was also the day of a school-wide Run for the Cures (kind of like a turkey trot).  I hung out with all of the grades a little to take pictures.  Basically I was at the school most of the day taking pictures of one thing or the other before we left for Mississippi for Thanksgiving.

Somewhere in there was an awards assembly for the second six weeks.  Evan got an award for all A's and a Pearson Pride award.  All of those things have a picture or two represented here.

We traveled to Mississippi to have Thanksgiving with my family there.  We saw more people in my family this year at Thanksgiving than we have in a long time!  It was great!  Of course, I didn't get pictures of many of them.  Both of my brothers were there and that was really nice.  If only all of my nieces and nephews had been there, too!  I did get a few pictures from some of our fun (but not black Friday shopping) and I borrowed some from one of my cousins.

Joel is continuing to amaze us with his Lego skills.  He can now follow the directions with the kits, but he will also look at a picture and figure out his own way to make it.  That is all he wants for Christmas this year, too.  Our house runneth over!

We are prepping for Christmas, but I think we are mostly done.  I have a few more things to do around the house before I host a cookie exchange for my Bible study group on Wednesday, but that is mostly cleaning.  I have been working on my sewing skills some as I prepare Christmas decorations, but I will have to share those pictures later.  For now, I need to go and finish some cleaning and organizing.  Then I can do some more of the "fun" stuff later today and maybe have more to share!

Happy Birthday to my baby!

Tomorrow my baby will be celebrating his 5th birthday.  He has been celebrating for over a week now, but that's not really the point. 

It's hard to believe that he is 5 already!  It seems like just yesterday I looked like this:

And then Joel looked like this:

 And our family looked like this:

But, that wasn't yesterday ... that was FIVE WHOLE YEARS AGO!!!!

Today, Joel looks more like this:

Oh, no!  That's Iron Man!  Joel looks more like this:

Joel has had 2 birthday celebrations so far.  Last Saturday he had a party in Chattanooga with family, and this past Saturday he had one at our house with some friends from school.  On his birthday he will also be taking a special snack to school.  What a full week of birthday celebrations!  And now that it is almost over he has started planning what he wants for Christmas and for his next birthday.  Time never stands still!

Fall in the Smokies

I know that's not a very original title for this post, but I don't care.  Because I got to go the Smokies this year in the fall!!!  I have been wanting to do that again for years, but something kept coming up to prevent it from happening.  We planned a trip this year (as in recent years), and I sat back and held my breath to see if we could finally make it happen.  The Monday before we were going to leave (on Thursday morning) Evan came home from school saying he felt sick.  Then he threw up.  I began to get worried.  He threw up one more time, but no one else got sick!!!  In our family, this seems to be a small miracle.

So, we headed to the mountains on Thursday!  We stopped over for the night outside of Nashville and made it into Chattanooga around lunchtime the next day.  We had a relaxing afternoon with some family, and then Evan and I saw some more family that night at my nephew Nathan's last high school football game.  I had never gotten to see him play football, so I was very excited that I was getting to see this game.  I was not so excited when he went down with an injury with one minute to go in the 3rd quarter.  When he didn't get up I got even less excited.  He ended being taken to the hospital and was diagnosed with a broken back.  The injury is more like broken ribs, as it is where the ribs connect to the spine that is broken.  He could move around, but was in pain.  Thankfully, he should heal in a few weeks and be back to sports (specifically, basketball).

 
The next morning, we had a family birthday party for Joel at a park.  Joel's birthday is fairly close to Thanksgiving so family doesn't get to visit often for his birthday.  I was excited that he got to celebrate with his cousins this year.  Of course, they couldn't all make it, but we had quite a few people there! 

We were planning on going to a trunk or treat that afternoon, but everyone was having so much fun playing in the park, that we just got some pizzas and stayed at the park longer.

We went to visit the laid up football player that afternoon, and from there some of us went trunk-or-treating.  Joel's only objection to this trip was that he wouldn't be home for trick-or-treating, but we took our costumes and got candy so that made it better.  We went to two churches and had a lot of fun.  They had games, candy, and real food, too, so the parents were pretty happy, too.

The next day we went higher into the mountains.  We hiked up a trail (about 1 mile) to visit a waterfall.  Everyone did great!  Joel got a little tired and upset toward the end, so he was carried the last little bit.

After the hike we went to my favorite mountain store - The Apple Barn!  I had an apple dumpling for the first time and it was so good!  I also bought some goodies to make my own apple goodies at home.  I can't wait to get busy with those!

We still had lots of daylight when we finished at The Apple Barn, so we headed back up the mountain to Cades Cove.  We were on the lookout for bears, but we just saw some turkeys and some deer.  Normally when we go there we see lots of does and fawns, but this time we saw several bucks.  We got pretty close to them, too.

The next day we started our trip back.  We were able to see one of my older nephews, Shane, in his college town on our way out.  We too him out to eat at Mello Mushroom, which I had heard about, but never visited.  The pizza was great and the company was, too!  I am so glad that worked out!

We spent the night in Little Rock and had a rainy drive back to our house the next day.  It was rainy, and I slept, but we were safe!  We had a great time and I am so thankful that we got to see everyone and make this trip.  It just makes me wish I lived closer to my family, though.

This and that

I haven't shared a funny kid story in a while, so here is one about Joel.  The other night he told me that his dad had drank all of my water.  I said, "Ohhhh, I am gonna have to have a little talk with him."  A few minutes later, Joel told his dad that I was going to be talking to him about drinking my water.  His dad gave him a little grief for ratting him out, in good fun.  The next morning the first thing Joel said to his dad was, "Did Mom have a talk with you last night about her water?"  I got a laugh out of that.  At least one of my guys is looking out for me!  ;-)

Evan got new glasses this week!  It was a good thing we had ordered them last week because his current pair had been badly battered over the last year and finally broke on Saturday.  He was having to wear a really old back-up pair that was hurting his nose.  I was looking forward to the new frames because the legs are so much sturdier!  And the part over the ear is a neat material that looks comfortable, but also has a little grip to it.  I am hoping it will keep them from falling forward even if they get loose.  Evan liked the new frames for an entirely different reason.  He thinks the design looks like Clone Troopers' helmets.  I think they look pretty cool, too.

Last night I made chicken and dumplings for the first time ever.  I can't believe I call myself a southern cook and had never made those before.  Actually I can believe it.  I watched my granny and mom make dough from scratch and the thought of doing that was very intimidating.  I used a recipe from Southern Plate that called for canned biscuits for the dumplings.  It was much easier and turned out pretty good.  Not like I remember from my childhood, but I think I need to work on the technique some more.

And, I have injured my pinkie toe in a freak shopping accident.  I kicked a wheel on a shopping cart and cut my toe and lost part of my toenail.  Now, I have kicked many a shopping cart wheel (on accident, of course) and never had anything like this happen before.  I was in Ikea when this happened and happened to already be on my way to the bathroom.  I tried to clean it up, but loose toe nails bleed a lot.  I was able to get it mostly clean and then I got some assistance from the really nice and helpful Ikea employees.  Someone came to me with a first aid kit and doctored me up, too.  I was able to finish shopping and get back in time to get Evan from school.  Then I propped it up for most of the night.  Today I am going to try to work out.  I will let you know how it goes. 

Pumpkin ... it's what for dinner!

When we went to the pumpkin patch the other day, I bought several pie pumpkins for cooking up.  I have only recently decided that I like pumpkin and I like it mostly in breads and cookies, but I have been wanting to branch out and try something new.  One of my friends passed along a pumpkin penne recipe and I finally made it this weekend.  Since I have been reading so many food blogs, I decided to take some pictures to share, too.

I didn't take any pictures of the pumpkin before I cut it up, but I added a similar one to this picture in case you weren't sure of the size of a pie pumpkin.  I cut the pumpkin up, put it in a bowl, added two inches of water and cooked it in the microwave.  I also washed and saved some of the seeds for roasting.

Joel had to jump into the picture and "smell" the pumpkin. 

 Once the pumpkin is cooked, you can scoop it out with a regular spoon.  Sometimes you can pull the shell off, too.  It was still a little hot so I opted for the spoon.

 Once you have all of the insides scooped out, you can use an immersion blender to mash it.  My little pumpkin made 3 cups of mashed pumpkin.  I only needed 2 cups for the pasta, so I will be making some pumpkin cookies soon.

This is what the pasta looked like!  If only we could smell it, too!  Steve and I liked it.  The pumpkin had a mild flavor in this dish. The boys did not like this, but I think it's because they heard that there was pumpkin in it before they tasted it.  

The sauce looks a little lighter in this picture, but that brings up an interesting point about cooking with fresh pumpkin.  It is not the same color as canned pumpkin.  I am not sure why that is true, but just know that your dishes will have a slightly lighter color if using fresh pumpkin.

I think that we will be having our leftovers of this dish tonight.  The first time I served it with ham.  Tonight we are going to try it with turkey meatballs.  I am also going to add a little nutmeg to my serving tonight to see what that does. I will let you know how the pumpkin cookies turn out, too.  ;-)