Christmas morning

We had a wonderful Christmas, thank you to all our family and friends who made our holiday merry and bright!

Merry Christmas!!

New food

I the continuing quest to expand our families pitifully narrow food horizons, I made chicken lo mein for dinner tonight.

With the exception of the veggies, this is what happened to it:

Lego cake

Had to post a picture of the cake I made for the robotics end celebration. Shaped like legos, of course!! They kids got a big kick out of it, and it was demolished in short order.

Had to be Leigh's special chocolate cake with vanilla butter cream.

Mr (and Miss) Roboto

Waiting to compete, silly kids.
Today was Liam's Lego Robotics' group competition. It was a day long affair but very fun and exciting! They get three 2.5-minute-long chances to complete the challenges set up by the First Lego League (details here) They also presented a research project done on a transportation problem in their area. Our team chose the parking/access for Birch Hill Rec. Area. They also had to talk to the judges about the design process and the programing challenges with their robots. The teams were also judged on their teamwork and something they term "gracious professionalism". The FFL feels that the team interactions and learning process are just as important as the robot preforming well. The team, called the Weller Lab Rats did very well! The had a high score of 150 points(the highest scoring team got 220) and won an award for being "rising stars". The team that that they wanted most to see return. A good time was had by all!

Blog Interrupted

Sorry for the lack of blog posts, but our life has been put on hold for sickness, a little thanksgiving, more sickness and now LICE! Yes, we now join the ranks of parents of school age kids dealing with this tiny traveler. I am a little surprised Liam hasn't come home with it before, I guess his hair is too short. Abbie's is thick and inviting though...Kyle is the only one to escape so far but I am still making him use tea tree oil shampoo and get checked every day. On the advice of the school nurse, I went with a pesticide free gel and nit comb for Abbie and coconut oil soak and nit combing for Liam and I(followed by the tea tree oil soaping) The combing was about as bad as I had feared and will need to be repeated. But the washing is what is causing me the most angst. 6 loads and counting....with water at $.10 per gallon. Plus fuel to heat the water and lots of electricity to heat the dryer. Not to forget the lice killing stuff I bought today.....sigh. End of ranting, perhaps the day will be better tomorrow.