Merry Christmas!

Santa brought a full-on tap dancing star make-over trunk for Abbie Rose!

Santa brought Liam a paint ball rig, you can't see it but there is a big grin under that mask!

Liam got AR a 'Liv Girl' she liked it, can you tell??

Smiley boy.....and a happy girl. Christmas morning a rousing success. Now to try out the paint ball outside and some make-up inside and on to Christmas at the Swaim's!

Merry Eve

We had a wonderful Christmas Eve, loving family and friends, great food and pretty packages with thoughtful and wonderful surprises inside!

O Tannenbaum

Jr. FLL 2010

Abbie Rose's group was in the junior category they got to make a presentation but not compete this Saturday. The Jr. FLL has to study and make a report on some form of biomedical engineering, they also have to build a lego model with at least one moving part. Their group chose an ambulance to study and they built a rolling ambulance, a syringe with a moving plunger, and a gurney that will move up and down. They also created a poster as a group to present to the judges.

They were presented with medals and recognized at the awards ceremony in front of all the older lego teams.

Happy girl! It was a great experience and one we will be repeating. This was the first year the younger kids (5-8 years old) could participate in the program. Only 2 teams were there this year, but hopefully more will hear about it an enter next year!

FLL 2010

Saturday was the First Lego League tournament for this year. The contest involves building and programing a robot and a presentation project about the theme for this year. This year the focus was on biomedical engineering. The 10-14 year olds group had to invent a new device for helping people Liam's group studied a heating/cooling jumpsuit. This project has to me presented to a panel of judges as a group...they also make presentations on the design and programing of the robot.

The robot has to be programed to do tasks on a playing field without the kids controlling it. Each team has 2 min 30seconds to get their robot to do as many tasks as possible. Each task is worth points and penalties (for having to bring the robot to the base by hand, breaking the course, etc.) are assessed by removing points. The tasks are themed to each challenge, this year they had to fix a broken bone, install a pacemaker in a heart, deploy a syringe, sort diseased cells, and so on. Liam's team high score was 130 (the highest for this year was 180).

It is fun can you tell?

Ready set go!! This is an excellent program and it is a great opportunity. We got to see some of the robotics program from Lathrop High School in action this year, larger bots using real metal parts on a more challenging course, Liam is already excited!

On the twelfth day.........

Abbie Rose had her Holiday program today! They sang four songs together as a grade level. Abbie Rose enjoyed it very much and so did we (two Grammas and a Mama!). Rose wore her holiday dress and her favorite boots with some keep you warm socks as it is -15. She and I are sharing some pretty clip in flowers and she chose the nice white one for today. It makes it easy to pick her out of a crowd and looks fabulous!

The kids did a northern rendition of the twelve days of Christmas for their final number:
Hmmmm, I was going to post a video but it didn't load. I will have to consult with the tech support around here.......

House of Cards

Liam has been practicing building elaborate card houses. These houses were built using 3 or 4 decks of cards. He says it is hard to get cards of different types to stack together. We have been looking at some of the champion card builders on youtube. It is almost as fun to watch them come down as to watch them go up in time lapse. Liam used a nerf gun and an RC truck to smash these.

Happy Belated Thanksgiving

I couldn't resist one picture of our feast:

Baby, baby.....

And more babies! Rose's Girl Scout troop is making up gift boxes for the local rehabilitation center and asked for donations. I had seen this pattern for dolls to donate a while ago and fell in love.....They were a big hit with the brownies, especially mine!

A bag of dollies! I am definitely keeping this pattern to use again, so sweet :)

Jr. Honor

Liam made the Honor roll again this quarter!!
This is the first honor roll in Junior High, a little different than grade school. An assembly with his whole team to show what good grades everyone has. Liam's school does a team program, students have a group of core teachers for their regular subjects (math, english, science and social studies) that are shared with everyone on your team....maybe 100 students per team, 2 seventh grade and 2 eighth grade teams. This works out really well as all the teachers coordinate homework and projects.
In case the pic is too blurry, his GPA reads 3.5714

SAVFD

Today for Jr FLL we had a visit from an Ambulance! The Junior First Lego League program is new this year in Fairbanks, but I couldn't pass up the chance to get Rose involved. For this program each group must choose some form of biomedical engineering to study and do a lego model and presentation about. As you can see our group chose to study an Ambulance. The very nice folks at Steese Area Volunteer Fire Department were nice enough to bring theirs by to show us.

Patriots

Abbie Rose's second grade class went to the Pioneers Home today to preform a patriotic program for the residents in honor of Veterans Day.

They whole class sang some songs and some of them also had a short speech. Rose said a quote from Martin Luther King.

The residents all enjoyed it very much (especially Great Grandma!) and so did the kids!

Skiing!

We all have skis now! Today was our first day of skiing as a family, we went up to Birch Hill Ski to use their arena. A nice flat groomed area to learn in. Sorry the pics are a little blurry, the camera was cold and having a hard time getting moving...next time I will remember to put it in an inside pocket!

Bouillabaisse

This time with traditional fish! Loosely based on the Cook's Illustrated chicken bouillabaisse. Very tasty and added to the list of really good things to make for dinner :)

For those wondering, bouillabaisse is a fish stew with potatoes, fennel bulb, tomatoes and wine sauce spiced with saffron. You serve it with something called rouille, a sort of spicy saffron mayonnaise sauce.

Late trick-or-treats

A big mama and her this years calf came to eat the frozen pumpkins late last night. We spooked them off long enough to toss the pumpkins off the front porch, can't have them breaking my duck (or the porch!) But they must have lost intrest as the punkins were still there in the morning. I'm going to stack them up out in the yard today!

Trick or treat preview

The retirement home where my Grandma lives has trick or treats before Halloween so there isn't too many kids. So we will get to go twice! The best part about TorT-ing there is the walking inside...while it is not too cold this year (25 and snowing!) it is still too cold for wandering around with no coat.

Liam AKA Big Al

Abbie Rose AKA Alisha the vampire

And Dr. Horrible the evil mad scientist! (cue the maniacal laughter)

dadadaDAAAAAAAAAAAA!

All this week at Liam's school they have been doing Red Ribbon theme dress up. Today is super hero day:

Militaryman!

Pumpkin carving!