Out and About in Boulder

 For our weekly field trip today we went to Boulder Ice Cream and took a tour. It's a small operation with just 9 employees, but they have free samples. You may be beginning to see a motivation behind our field trips (free candy, free ice cream). Boulder Ice Cream is in an industrial area, and next door is a shop that welds metal stuff. They made this cool snowboard bench.

 But even cooler than the snowboard bench and much more exciting to us is this picnic bench on wheels! We usually walk to church on Sundays. It takes us 30-35 minutes to get there. So when we had 9:00 church we often discussed our plans to make a motorized picnic table that would allow us to eat our cereal on the way to church. I just can't believe somebody else had the same idea and actually executed it. Of course, this one doesn't have a motor; it has bicycle pedals. But bicycle pedals are good, too. Only one person would have to eat breakfast before leaving, and it should be a big breakfast because it would be hard to pedal 5 people and a picnic table up Kohl St., especially since everyone would have their scriptures and various other church things to carry.

 And then we went to Pearl St. to see all the pretty flowers and the Art Deco court building and to listen to the dreadlock guitarists, who were actually quite good.

Do you like Rebecca's superhero hair?

School is Winding Down

Here's what lunch looks like when Rebecca gets creative:

 Yesterday I finished up marking off all the kids' lessons on the Online School. When I clicked on the last "Submit," I squealed with delight. One of the kids heard the sound I made and asked, "Did Rocco fall down the stairs?" I can't tell you how exciting this is. I calculated that I've spent over 90 hours marking off kids' lessons this school year alone (that doesn't include any teaching time--it's purely administrative). Boy, do I have plans for the time I won't be spending marking off lessons.

 Today is Rocco's birthday, so the girls are making special dog treats just for him. They found a dog cookie recipe that contains meaty baby food. I think this is one cookie I'll be able to resist.

Tenaglias' Baptism

 Aw, look at 'em.

Happy, happy, happy! Julie and Olivia were baptized yesterday. Never one to give people a break, I asked Julie if she'd help me teach in Relief Society today. She did such a wonderful job, I think I'll ask her to speak every time it's my turn to teach. She was a natural.

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.