Candy Friday

 Stop the press! Penelope the hermit crab has moved into a new shell! It looks a little big for her, but she looks ravishing in this little green and brown number.

 To ease end-of-year burnout, we're taking one field trip a week now. Today we visited the Hammonds candy factory in Denver. I imagine that their tour traffic has increased since the Jolly Rancher factory closed down.

 The cool thing about this factory is that all of their equipment is really old, which makes their candy look very old-fashioned. Their fudge table was built in 1919, and they still use it for all their fudge. All of their other equipment is from the 20s, 30s, and 40s. They say it breaks down less often than the modern machinery. That's depressing, isn't it?

 I wore my paper hat all the way home. I like it. It feels nice on my head.

Spencer's First Swim Meet

Spencer joined the Barracuda swim team in March, and he's been working hard. He had his first swim meet yesterday and competed in 4 events: 100m Freestyle, 50m Backstroke, 50 Breaststroke, and 50 Freestyle. He won his 50m Freestyle race! It was funny to see some of the kids drawing sharks and mustaches on themselves with Sharpees before the race. They talk smack with those markers. I saw several kids with "Eat my bubbles!" written on their backs. I'd never seen such a thing.

You can see a "tattoo" on Spencer's left wrist. This is how the kids keep track of their events, heats, and lanes. It looks like a fancy little graph on their arms, but it really does help with the organization.

Spencer's Winning 50m Freestyle

Engineering

 Eva looks down at all the engineering students at CU. The seniors were all displaying their senior projects.

This project was a ferris wheel ice cream dispenser, which actually dispensed ice cream, maraschino cherries, chocolate chips, and M&Ms. My kind of engineering project.

 This is a device that allows wheelchair-bound people to use the Wii fitness pad. Ben is downhill skiing as he sits on that wobbly chair.

Spencer enjoyed this project that allows people to virtually navigate around a 16th century Roman city in Switzerland. They worked with the University of Switzerland on the project.

Science Fair

Grandma met us at the Wildlife Experience in Parker for the COVA Science Fair. Eva's project is on the right (light blue), and Spencer's on the left (green). After the judging was over, we got to go explore the museum. My favorite part was the frogs. They were awesome. I love their tiny round sticky blue fingers up against the glass. But enough about the frogs.

Eva studied the durability of vegetable dyes and found red cabbage to be the most durable when given the laundry and sun-bleaching tests.

Spencer studied how well Lego buildings withstood earthquakes (aka the shake table at CU).

Rebecca studied the viability of using distilled salt water for irrigating crops, and she won third place in the 6th-8th grade division.

Here's Eva charming one of the judges.

Shake it again.

Shake it, Baby!

Another Science Fair Project

 The science fair isn't until Thursday, but we've gotten some pretty good mileage out of it so far. Spencer decided to investigate how different structures hold up during earthquakes. So he made a bunch of Lego buildings (and I think Eva helped build at least one), and then he took all of his buildings to a lab at CU that has a shake table. It's fun to build things with Legos, but it's even more fun to velcro said structures and shake them until they fly across the lab in a million pieces. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration, but you get the picture.

 And speaking of the science fair, next year the kids won't be participating in the COVA science fair. They'll be participating in The Academy science fair. The kids all got into a charter school we've been hoping for, so come August, they'll be packing their lunches and carrying their backpacks out the door. And Spencer and Eva will have to wear UNIFORMS. And tuck in their shirts. And wear belts. And march in straight lines. Like the children Von Trapp. Liesl! Friedrich! Marta!

Look how nice and neat their feet look all lined up like that.

But back to the science fair. Rebecca actually did her project almost a year ago, so all she had to do was pull it out of the crawl space, dust it off, and spiff up the graphs. She investigated whether or not distilled salt water could be used to irrigate crops.

Happy Day!

 It wasn't a very exciting day for Rocco.....

but it was a very exciting day for the rest of us. Our good friend Ava was baptized today. It was her 9th birthday, and she decided that what she wanted for her birthday was to be baptized. She looks stunning here in her white jumpsuit. She said it was very comfortable. Eva was nervous because she hadn't said the prayer at a baptism with so many adults there before, but she did a great job.

Friday Afternoon Frolics

 Eva lives for Fridays, and not just because she likes Rebecca Black's song. Eva loves Fridays because that's when she gets to go horseback riding. Here she is with her excellent teacher Becky, and the horse is Quincy. Eva loves horses like crazy, but she always takes a shower as soon as she gets home because she doesn't like smelling like horses.

Three Signs that it's April

 The pencils are all worn out!

 Science fair projects are in their finishing stages.

Aw, man!

New Toy

 The kids got up at 5AM this morning so they could have their jobs finished when the sun came up. Why?

 Because this was waiting for them all night while they slept. Our friends Jerry and Lois were looking for a new home for this scooter, and they asked if the kids would like it. Would they ever!

Grandpa Tolman, look what Eva did during conference this weekend.

Eva: Crabmaster and Fashion Designer

 With her very own money, Eva bought two hermit crabs. Here she is at the mall kiosk, learning all about how to take care of hermit crabs. She didn't get this particular hermit crab. It was a very big crab. Uncle Jon Tolman, if you have any words of wisdom regarding hermit crabs, we're all ears.

 She also experimented with different materials for designing fashions. The above Barbie is dressed in rope.

 This Barbie's outfit is made of paper and masking tape.

This Barbie is wearing pens and pencils and a big fat yellow marker. The only problem with this outfit is that the Barbie can't sit, stand, and walk.