2010 memories

I’m consolidating down some old posts to not have about 2 million posts that are odd, but I don’t want to completely remove some of these memories from here, so here are some 2010 memories consolidated down into 2010 memories.

Homemade explosives, okay not exactly

I wanted to start this off by showing you all these movie clips of people who’ve claimed to “invent gun powder,” and then the silly uses they put it to in the movies.  Offhand I remembered Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, where they use it to distract the Sherriff.  And, the horrid movie Scorpion King where there’s some crazy inventor who is being held prisoner by the bad guy and he invents it, and they use it to escape somehow.  I know there’s a lot of others.  And it cracks me up/annoys me every time.

However, that would not happen without my taking a long time to watch through lots of clips labeled Robin Hood 5, or 12, and while I enjoy the movie.  If I want to write more than one post this week I can’t do that.  So, I guess I’ll just tell you about what we did.

Important note: I have learned there really is a reason they tell you to wear safety goggles when doing experiments.  I was always somewhat mocking of those warnings, especially for simple little experiments, and then I did this:

So, that is what not to do.  My boys thought that was hilarious and kept trying to get me to do it again.  Yeah, so not happening, it was rather painful.  I got lots of sympathy comments on Facebook, and was even told I got a free chemical peel facial doing that, still……..

Here’s when it went right:

Now to the science of this.  What you are doing is taking a bottle full of vinegar, and then adding a piece of napkin of toilet paper filled with baking soda, and then stuffing a cork into it somewhat tight so the gas produced from the chemical reaction will force the cork to go out.  This is the same reason that when we do baking soda and vinegar volcanoes you get this foam that overflows the cup.

Things I learned in our 5 or 6 failures:

1.  Don’t put the cork on too tight, it needs to be tight, but not too tight.

2.  I think a normal water bottle would have worked better, think the soda bottle cap width.  Beggars can’t be choosers, and a friend was nice enough to give us a water bottle from her recycle bin.

3.  Make sure you have enough supplies to do it several times.  Either because it didn’t work the first few times, or because the kids want to do it “Again, again!”

4.  Wear safety goggles, and don’t lean over when the chemical reaction is still going on.

5.  Be aware of your current weather.  I had another explosion I was going to do and had bought most of the supplies for, but once I had bought them, it became too windy for me to want to experiment with shooting matches.

I think Almost Unschoolers has done this before, or I remember watching a video of vinegar and baking soda overflowing in their backyard.  I know I first learned about this back when it was an object lesson for our Sunday School class.  I don’t remember what we were teaching the kids, but I know the class full of boys loved it and each had to take a turn at it.

So, has anyone else injured themselves in a science experiment?  I was just glad it wasn’t too serious, it just stung for a couple of hours.

As always, add up your science-related post.  It doesn’t have to be an experiment, it could be a cool new book, a nature walk, or whatever you did or found for science this week.

Can you go home again, July 3

Does that sound suitably cryptic?

I remember reading a Batman comic as a kid, in it Robin has grown up and is now Nightwing, and has come back to the Batcave.  He looks at the new Robin and says, “I’d always heard you can’t go home again, I guess that’s true.”

And to those of you who are wondering, yes I am that much of a comic book nerd.

Well, today we’re staying in the town I went to college in.  And this evening we wandered around my alma mater, Abilene Christian University.

It was more than a little surreal to me.  Since I graduated they’ve added a couple of buildings and completely redone some of the buildings I spent most of my time in.  It was odd to see the redone campus center and to see the giant building they’re creating right now in honor of the last president of the school.

The picture to the left is rather illustrative of my feeling.  When I went here there wasn’t really a need for a big huge map.  There were maybe 10-15 buildings total, and it was fairly easy to figure out how to get around.  This map had 40-something things labeled.

For all the surreal feeling for me, the kids had a lot of fun running around, and Jeff was rather indulgent.

I wandered around with a sense of unrest and not quite loss, and we wandered into the Bible building and climbed down the stairs, and looked up at the globe.  Usually, it’s lit up with dots of all the missionaries around the world, but today it was turned off.

As I looked up at it, and wished I could show the light of God spread around the world, another pair of lost people came in.  The Mom was in the process of having her son go over and stand next to the globe, and I asked if she wanted me to take their picture.  I found out she had attended a few years before me, and then transferred to UT in Austin.  I told her I lived in Austin and found out she did too.  It was a nice feeling of “it’s a small world,” and helped me with my feeling of lostness.

So because of that moment of serendipity, you get to see a family picture.  Here we all are at the bottom of the Bible building underneath the globe. 

What was going to be our final stop was the Quiet Rooms.  These are a section of study/prayer rooms in the Bible building.  I spent many an hour here in this quiet area studying and reading.  Come finals there was never a free room.  It was fun to read through the journals put there and see the prayers of different students in many languages (I have no clue what the prayer in Chinese said, but it looked pretty).  Batman added his own prayer to one of the journals.

We continued our way through the campus, stopping to splash in puddles along the way.  I still am amused at the “new Gata fountain” (new as in almost 15 years old now).  When I first started at the campus it was an actual fountain with water in it.  The tradition was on your birthday you’d get thrown in the fountain, clothes and all, regardless of the time of year.  Then, my sophomore year (does anyone else love that sophomore means wise fool?) they changed it to this new thing, where when Abilene isn’t in a drought it shoots up water, but there’s nothing to be thrown into, and not really much of anything for the Gatas to gather around and sing at Homecoming, but oh well.

Here the kids are “praying” in front of the praying hands.  My friends and I have posed for many a picture in front of these hands, and it was fun for me to have the kids pose in front of the hands for me to take a picture.  Of course, they weren’t quite as cooperative in posing.

I got a kick out of seeing the education majors are no longer relegated to the basement of the English building, now we get a whole building, complete with lots of cool statues the kids had fun posing and goofing off with.  It was a fun ending to the quick campus tour.

Albuquerque, where New Mexico gets mountains, July 5

And in the middle of those mountains is the Old Town of Albuquerque, you can kind of see why people might settle here.  We spent a few hours in the Old Town area and got to see some of the local history and get a few birthday presents for friends and family.  There’s some truly gorgeous jewelry here, and that says something from someone who doesn’t wear much beyond a necklace.

We got to see one of the missions that was founded with the town and learned that it was named after a Spanish Duke with a very long name.  This mission is still a functioning Catholic Church, and had just had services that morning, and before going in we had a short talk about how we act in this church.  “This is a quiet church, and we’re not going to be loud or run.”

The kids were intrigued by the bar they had for kneeling on for the prayers because our church doesn’t have these.  So, I explained that at this church they kneeled to pray and so we each took a turn kneeling and saying a prayer to God (and I’m not Catholic, so this is just my best understanding of Catholic tradition, feel free to correct me).

We talked about who the different statues were and why they were important.  To be honest, I wasn’t really sure of who a lot of them were, I’m just not that familiar with the Catholic Saints to say who all of them were.  I could recognize Saint Francis (who’s not in this picture), but I’m not sure who is in this picture.

Then the kids took a second to pose for me in front of this sign put up by the Sons of the Confederation (some group like that), in honor of Albuquerque withstanding the Union army attack.  Jeff and I had fun disagreeing on why the Confederates were triumphant.  I thought it was because Defenders tend to have more to lose and fight better.  Jeff thought it was because the Union army was only willing to take the town if they could do it with minimal casualties.  So, we had fun discussing our random bit of history trivia with no real knowledge of the battle.

We left Albuquerque (I’m having fun reveling in my newfound knowledge of how to spell it), and headed on to the Arizona border.  We enjoyed watching the mountains and the like pass by and enjoyed looking at the rock formations.  We go to the Arizona state border and I was very disappointed to find out the Welcome Center was closed for the 4th of July.  Oh, the sadness and horror of it all!  And, we also saw a sign that convinced me we’re not moving to Arizona.  I’m thinking I don’t want to move somewhere that has to warn people about poisonous creatures as it welcomes you to the state.

Grand Canyon is Grand, July 9

So, this is my second time writing this post.  I apparently didn’t save my draft last night when I went to bed, and so when I restarted the computer this morning I deleted the entire thing.  GROWL.

Well, I have a lot of pictures like this, but since I know I”m only a so-so photographer, and I imagine myself to be a much better storyteller, so I’ll tell stories instead.

Now, when you first get into a national park the first thing you should do is go to the ranger station and get the junior ranger guide.  Then your kid has to complete 4 activities and go to a Junior Ranger program and then they can become junior Rangers.  It’s a very cool program.

So, they had a lot of fun running around and looking for different types of rocks and wildlife.  It’s a really good program, and
Huh, I stopped in the middle of a sentence and I’m not quite sure what I was going to say.  Needless to say I’m planning on trying out this program at any other national parks we come to.

I learned that 94% of the people who visit the Grand Canyon never go below the rim.  I am proud to say that my entire family is part of that 6%, granted Superman, Princess, and I only made it about 30 feet below the rim, but still, we made it below.  Now Batman and Jeff kept going much much further.  I left the camera with Jeff for this part, so here’s his pictures (Future Ticia 2024 when changing this into a memory post I did not transfer the pictures in the same place, but made a collage):
   
  Jeff and Batman walked down about a half mile or a mile or so, I’m not sure below the rim and then hiked back up.  They agreed they’d come back in a few years and hike all the way to the bottom (which is an overnight stay).  I was so proud of how well both of them did, but in particular Batman.  I’d say from Superman’s response he has inherited my fear of edges, which I thought I had done a good job of hiding, but apparently not good enough.

We finished up the afternoon by having the kids draw pictures of what they could see and what they liked best.  Batman drew a picture of him in the cave he walked down to.  Then he added ninjas that were attacking him.  Princess drew a very involved picture of the ravens we kept seeing (I think) and Superman drew Blue Arrow fighting bad guys.  We tried to explain he was supposed to draw something he’d seen, but he insisted he’d seen Blue Arrow.

Then we sat and waited in the hot sun for the bus to come take us back to the welcome center.  Batman entertained himself by taking pictures.  Princess took pictures too, but I don’t want to share the 20 shots she took of my legs.

We ended our day at the Grand Canyon with the kids being sworn in as Junior Rangers and getting their badges.  They promptly put them on their shirts, and then told me how it was actually a (insert the name of their favorite super hero) badge.

We went back to the town of Williams, that we were staying in, and watched a Wild West shootout.  Which the boys loved, and Princess was okay with it until the bad guys came up and tried to steal her dog.  Then she didn’t like it so much.  And the day ended with a meal that took two days to get there and then was cold.  Which was a real shame.

So, that’s the Grand Canyon.  Jeff and I are already talking about going back there in a few years (read when kids are old enough to do some serious camping and hiking) and also not doing it in the middle of summer, so I won’t end up with another sunburn that took me most of this week to recover from (my own stupid fault).  And hopefully tomorrow night I’ll get in early enough to write about the zoo.  We just have been out so much and not in the hotel room (because we’ve been over at my friend’s house) I haven’t had any time to be on the computer.  Which in the long run is probably good for me to be away from, but has my Mom screaming for more pictures.  Hi Mom!