Camping with the scouts

E found her friend E (also in Daisy Girl Scouts with her)

Roasting marshmallows. Notice the fire extinguisher nearby.

V fishing in the watering hole

We went camping with the scouts last weekend. It was just mommy and the kids, as V had to work. He came up on Sunday morning for breakfast offering me Starbucks, and donuts for everyone. We enjoyed a day of fun... fishing, paddleboating and hiking. Lucky me, the boy scouts set up a tent for me before I arrived, so all I had to do was "move in". When we got there everyone was in the swimming hole and having water balloon fights (they had a water balloon launcher). I was a little concerned, wondering where all those latex balloon carcasses were going. Some popped when they hit, others sank to the bottom. I hope the fishies and ducks are not affected by all those balloons. As much fun as they were having I just couldn't bring myself to sharing that dirty water with them. I saw whole families of ducks, glimpses of fish, and who knows what else was living in there? E dipped in for a minute until she saw all the floaties along the edges and made it high-tail out of there. I guess she didn't want to damage her delicate complexion!
We went on a sunset hike Saturday night, and I lost our most expensive flashlight. It was the one that Santa brought for V at Christmas. It must have fallen out of my pocket when I had to carry the youngest one (for a half mile, I might add). After a tasty taco dinner, we roasted s'mores over an open barbecue (they wouldn't let us have a campfire because of the high winds) and told stories and jokes until very late (well 10 pm is late for little kids).

A was privy to a Madhatter's tea party this week at dance class...only she wouldn't wear her hat! But she did wear her party dress.

Live It and Learn It

N and I spent the night on an aircraft carrier with other cub scout families from our pack. We learned all about Navy life on a ship! We slept in the sailor's bunks, ate their chow, used their heads. We had tours of all the parts of the ship... the barber shop, 6 chow halls, chapel, store, laundry, bridge, radio room, officer country, Captain's quarters and Admirals quarters, hangar and flight deck. The kids got to use the flight simulators, aerial combat simulator (Strike Fighter 360) and motion simulators. The overnight program was called "Live It and Learn It". The next day we attended the Scout Fair and N earned his Volleyball and Chess belt loops for boy scouts.
Flight simulator

Flight deck fighter jet

"Pilot"

Steering the ship

I can't see anything!

another flight simulator

panning for gold at the Scout Fair

Serving in Volleyball game

Easter Today!

We barely made it to church this morning. We forgot the pastor reminding us last Sunday that today was the big outdoor Easter service at 8 am. (Let me add, the kids were up this morning at 6:30 am). We showed up at 9:30, just as everyone else was leaving the church. Confused and bewildered until we remembered, we headed over to Sunridge Community Church. They have a late service which meets at 10:30. So we did make it (and very early too).

The kids really enjoyed tearing through their easter baskets and an early morning pajama-clad easter-egg hunt. For dinner we are trying out a new recipe for Braised Lamb Shanks I found on allrecipes. It's cooking right now! We're also having grilled zucchini and yellow squash, asparagus and fresh-baked yeasty dinner rolls. Warm peach pie a la mode for dessert.

Before...

....And after. Here it looks like N is sorting and categorizing his loot.

A blu-ray? How will we play that?

To remind us of the first Easter

Finding the first egg

Easter Sunday best

Tooth fairy visits our house....

Next....

the Easter bunny?

Tuesday we made a trip to the dentist for N. He left there minus three teeth (and plus two gifts from the treasure box). This is a good thing, because he was starting to look like Sharkboy with his two rows. After much deliberation, he decided to put the teeth under his pillow for the tooth fairy. She is pretty generous at our house, especially since all of his lost teeth have been under somewhat stressful circumstances.

Before...

...and after

The next morning

This week E had some strange sort of homework. Decorate eggs and count them? Wish I had homework like that in Kindergarten. If we did, I don't remember it. N is learning fractions at school, so we also talked about dividing the dozen eggs into different fractions. Faithful mommy boiled some eggs and cracked 11 out of 12. We decorated anyway.

Aww...E loves her Grandpa!

Saturday we went to our first soccer game of the season. Spring season the teams are co-ed and the Red Dragons team has 5 boys and 4 girls. They weren't keeping score, but the other team won with a score of 0-3.

Saturday night V and I went on a date for our eleventh anniversary. Dinner and an outdoor concert at a local winery. We froze our *&^% off. We had to come home after dinner and put more clothes on. Other than that, it was great fun. Sorry, no pictures.

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo...

How about you, you, you?

We decided to take advantage of the the one day the second week of spring break without soccer practice, or gymnastics, or dance, or physical therapy, or other appointments and made a trip to the zoo with Grandpa. We have annual passes, so I like to go at least once every few months.

We spent a lot of time looking at monkeys (why, you may ask?) and at the petting zoo.

Nuclear Fusion

We went on a cub scout field trip (called a Go-See-It) to General Atomics, a company where they do fusion energy research, specifically the DIII-D Program. This program is a large international one, with 90 participating institutions and a research team of 515 users. General Atomics operates DIII-D for the Department of Energy through the Office of Fusion Energy. The hope is someday to be able to produce an endless supply of safe and clean energy from fusing isotopes of hydrogen into helium. These are the same processes which take place on the sun and other stars and provide practically limitless energy. One of the scientists gave us a tour of the facility (specifically the Tokamak) and all sorts of fun science demonstrations, mostly about energy and different states of matter. There are other (larger) Tokamak machines throughout the world, but this one is the largest in the United States. The kids were entranced with the plasma ball, liquid nitrogen experiments and the gas tubes. I had fun watching the scientist freeze a wiener solid in liquid nitrogen and drop it on the floor, only to watch it shatter like glass in a hundred little pieces, then he asked the kids to imagine what would happen if they put their finger in the liquid nitrogen, then gave their friend a high-five. Meanwhile, their mother was imagining Lorena Bobbit and what damage she could have done with the liquid nitrogen and that other wiener. I have to mention the kids favorite thing was the over sized cookies and cans of soda pop for everyone.
Last night I tried to use my $40 Old Navy Bucks Back certificate at Gap.com. The Bucks Back can be used like cash online or instore at purchases of Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic or Piperlime. It was expiring and I hadn't been to the store in awhile. After I spent 20 minutes picking out a pair of jeans (they have a neat feature where you can turn the ladies in jeans around 360 degrees), I tried to place the order to no avail. The site wouldn't accept my coupon code. So I called customer service and they said I couldn't use it because it had expired at midnight. That was odd, because it was only 9:20 pm. With clarification, I found that midnight really means 9 pm for the west coast. That really ticked me off, because it is so hard for me to do any online shopping until 9 pm, after the kids are tucked in their beds. I wrote a complaint email to old navy customer service and they referred me to the bank that services their credit cards who agreed to send me a new Bucks Back coupon. Problem solved. Moral of the story? Don't wait until the last day to use your Bucks Back certificate.
This evening N started soccer practice. What can I say? Here we go again!