FIRST Robotics

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Originally uploaded by zedthezonk

The boys and I went to the robotics competition today. Sammy declared it to be the best one he's been to. Henry enjoyed collecting the buttons from each team and being able to dance with pretty much everyone in the Gordon Field House doing the "Cupid Shuffle". ("To the left to the left to the left...")

Presidents Day

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Originally uploaded by zedthezonk

The boys made these guys for Presidents Day. Then the Abe Lincoln brothers danced and sang their way around our house.

I'm scanning in more recipes from Grandma's house. The current project is a collection of recipes put together by the Corlett PTA as a fundraiser. The project is a history lesson in itself since they have some ingredients I haven't heard of, like Postum. (It was a roasted grain beverage like instant coffee, popular with Mormons because it was caffeine-free. Mister Coffee Nerves was the villain of some of its commercials. It was discontinued in 1997.) I also did some research on Corlett Elementary School. It was in the city of Cleveland and closed in 2010. The neighborhood where it existed is still called Corlett (after Irish immigrants who founded the school). One of the websites about it said something about Czech immigrants building there. I wonder what Grandma's connection to the school was. A lot of the recipes call for 2 tablespoons of fat (sometimes bacon drippings) to fry things in and there are a couple that call for MSG. It's definitely different from the vegetarian Moosewood cookbooks I have around the house.

Volcanoes

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Originally uploaded by zedthezonk

The Blue & Gold cub scout dinner was a couple weeks ago, and Henry's den was in charge of doing floor decorations. The boys put it to a vote and came up with volcanoes for their decoration. After much thought about how we could make them, these are what we came up with. They have half mailing tubes on top of traffic cones inside. Then we used a sheet to give it some support (you can see the bottom of one of our dinosaur sheets there) and taped some crumpled kraft paper to it. Add some spray paint and spray foam (and more spray paint so that the foam looks like lava) and you're done!

Of course, the boys were disappointed that the volcanoes didn't really spew lava & smoke.

The boys told me I don't blog enough. Mike & they spent the time I was out teaching people to make gum paste flowers going through the blog bits around when they were born and laughing like crazy. Now they want to see the old baby swing (which is still down the basement -- we've been meaning to bring it to the curb one of these trash days). It doesn't seem like that long ago that they were little enough to go in the swing. :) Last week was break week and the adventure of the week was dealing with Sammy's broken finger. A huge wooden lid fell on his pinky and broke the middle bone in it, requiring surgery for them to set it. Fortunately, the doctor was able to manipulate his finger while he was asleep so that the bone was set correctly. The thing that upset Sammy the most that day was removing the IV from his hand. (They didn't put the IV in until he was asleep. Lucky him!) I told Mike that I wanted to come there next time I needed my gallbladder removed -- Sammy got Legos and the surgical staff bandaged up Yoshi's and Luigi's arms to match Sammy's. All I got was a missing gallbladder. (On a related note, I just read about a place that sells plush organs -- I Heart Guts.) Sammy's almost back to his old self again with the exception of having his fingers in a cast (which he's not allowed to get wet). They'll check to see if it can be removed in a couple weeks. He was happy to learn that his video games playing days were not over. In fact, that's a lot of what the boys ended up doing over break. (We did do at least some of what we were planning on doing, though.) Sammy did say that his favorite part of break was working on his fish project with me, though. Not completely sure if he was just humoring me or not, though. I'll get a picture of it up eventually. We handed it in. The next task ahead of us is getting the boys to finish up their Pinewood Derby cars.

Sammy's play was very cute. We weren't in a position to get good pictures, though. :( I'll see if someone I know has some I can share. We've been letting Henry make tea on his own lately. He's been feeling so grown up about it. Plus, when I wasn't feeling so well when he came home from school today, he made tea for me, too. He's a pretty good kid.

Fondant animals

Fondant animals
Originally uploaded by zedthezonk

I've been making little fondant animals for Sammy's class play. Sammy was worried that the human roles weren't going to be represented as well (especially since he was playing a biologist). So, in addition to the animals, also represented here are the careers of biologist, tv host, gardener, and zookeeper. (There are also a couple plant roles.)

Alligator

Alligator
Originally uploaded by zedthezonk

These are the bits of alligator costume I made for Sammy's class play. The mask pattern can be found on Sew News and the tail (which you can't really see) was just something I whipped up myself. If I get a chance to, I may make some alligator feet to go with everything else.