Once again, most of my time is devoted to getting the grade school yearbook out. It's my last year to work on it for this school, then I move on to the next school up and work on it there. (I tend to volunteer for things. Have you noticed?) Sammy's 2nd grade concert was yesterday. He was embarrassed to be in front of so many people. He was also a person selected to be one of the dancers and dance with scarves while his class sang. (There were about 7 or so other kids selected, so it wasn't just him.) Needless to say, he wasn't a very happy kid when it was over. I do wish he wouldn't take himself so seriously, especially since I know that he's good at the things he tries and he'd enjoy himself move if he would loosen up a bit. But he is who he is. I felt the way he did as a kid, too.

Finished Cars

pinewood derby 002
Originally uploaded by zedthezonk

Here are the boys' cars in their finished state. Sammy's is the yellow one with the red bird on top and Henry's is the purple one two to the right from it.

Sammy ended up getting a trophy for coming in first place in his den and second place overall for the pack. Henry finished in 6th place for his den.

This means that we get to go to the Tournament of Champions at the mall once again.

Pi Day!

pinewood derby 007
Originally uploaded by zedthezonk

Henry was exuberant over Pi Day, March 14, so I made my mother-in-law's recipe for spinach pie for dinner and peach pie for dessert. It's the only time I've known Henry to pick out his outfit the day before. His enthusiasm was contagious, so I picked up mini pies for his G&T teacher and his classroom teacher.

Angry birds

Angry birds
Originally uploaded by zedthezonk

Sammy's been on this Angry Birds kick lately, so that was the theme of his car. The middle bird is the polymer clay bird that we made for the top of his car. (He did a lot of it himself. I had to roll the ball for him -- can't do that easily with a cast on.)

Henry Works on His Car

valentines 005
Originally uploaded by zedthezonk

Henry did a lot of the work on his car by himself this year. He used a hand saw and a rasp to make all the cuts and shaping.

Pinewood Derby Time!

valentines 003
Originally uploaded by zedthezonk

Despite his cast, Sammy was able to sand his Pinewood Derby car. (He'd been begging us to work on it for weeks. Despite saying that we'd be finished earlier when the derby came around last year, we started the Sunday before we needed to be done.)

FIRST Robotics

DSC08854
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

DSC08815
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

DSC08779
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.