Rocket 1.2

After hearing how cool Liam's rocket was at school, Kyle decided they should build one for home too! No bike pumps for these guys...we have an air compressor. The first launch ended up in the trees and resulted in the destruction of the nose cone. After some quick repairs, it was back to the launching pad.


The replacement nose cone (after hitting the house and the ground).

Filling the fuel...soapy water.

Clear the launching pad!!

LIFT OFF!! If you click on the picture you can see the rocket as a smudge slightly to the left of center above the tree tops. I don't think it flew quite that high, it was higher than the house roof but not the monster birch trees. Too much fun!

Rocket man

I went to Liam's class to see them shoot off the rockets they made. They are constructed of soda bottles and use air pressure to launch. Liam's had a few problems on the platform, it fell over and headed through his classmates! Luckily no one was injured, but the rocket didn't fare too well.

Getting 'pumped'

I think this is just as the rocket fell over. You can see the cloud of water from the propelling system.

Happy Mother's Day!

Some mom-loot, a flower pot and card from Abbie, a card from Liam and a spoon made by Kyle!

And some cute kids, sleepy morning time; working on cards and eating some breakfast.

Kyle's Birthday

I have been delinquent on posting! We had a 2 part celebration this year, waffles on his birthday day and 'cowboy dinner' on Tuesday. (Cowboy dinner= grilled chicken, beans, tortillas, salad, and salsa.)

Our BBQ Chef!

Lemon meringue pies!

Birthday loot and a lonely waffle.

Blueberry cake for sharing at work.

For some reason Kyle got lots of gun paraphernalia for his birthday....

Outdoors Days

I went with Liam to the BLM sponsored outdoors days today....it we had great fun and it was a really well done project. But. It was the coldest day we have had so far this spring. Not a good plan for hiking outside and listening to lectures on various outdoors jobs!
They got to do hands on experiments with fisheries (a stream life and bio-cumulative contamination game), animal tracking (finding a transmitter using an antenna and receiver), archeology (doing a mini dig), forestry (taking a core sample of a tree and finding its height, ours was 73 years old and 66 feet high), mapping (the kids got to make a map and Liam got to tell what radar is, smartypants!), and Liam's favorite, mining (they got to pan and keep the gold they found).

Learning how to dig at the archeology site.

Doing their digging, they found a campsite and learned how the bones and other clues could help determine how long the people had camped there.

At the mining site...see the snow??

I told Liam he had found more gold just now than his dad had in all the time he has been doing prospecting! (and took the picture at just the right moment!)

Art by Liam

A small sculpture by Liam.

He requested I post about this. In case the picture is too blurry, it is a horse/camel the head is on the left and the tail on the right. Amazing what you can do with a little trash! We look at this blog pretty frequently and have the book published by the author. Fun stuff!

Aha!

So we took the kids in for their yearly eye exams. Liam still does not need glasses. The doctor says he will either need them in the next few years or not at all. As his body grows taller (only another few inches, right? :) his eyes might also which will cause him to be nearsighted. His eyes are nice and healthy and the doctor had no concerns for us.

Abbie was diagnosed with something called Streff Syndrome. It is a problem with the communication between her eyes and her brain, brought on and aggravated by stress. Basically the more upset she gets, the worse she can see. She doesn't need prescription glasses, but she will get some good out of "cheater" or magnifying reading glasses.

What provided such an AHA! moment for me, was when the doctor started describing the symptoms. It is most common in girls 7-12 that have had something stressful in their their life (she was switched out of an unhealthy learning environment partway through this year.) She might be behind in reading and math. Her vision problems will come and go, so she might do fine one day and not be able to read a simple story the next. This syndrome is sometimes misdiagnosed as ADD because of the changeable nature of the problem. (Something that had been suggested by a past teacher.) On further reading on my own, I learned this is related to your fight or flight instinct. You brain can't decide which response is the appropriate one when faced with the visual stress of some tasks. Interesting, huh? Your brain is an amazing place! Unfortunately not a whole lot is written about this so if you care to do any further reading this article is the most comprehensive without being a medical journal.

So she has a very fancy pair of glasses to wear for reading or close-up work. These should be enough of a help to retrain her brain to see more clearly. It may take from 6 to 18 months, but hopefully over the summer we can also work on some stress management which should help also. If all of this isn't enough, there are some vision exercises that should correct it. Finally, an answer!

Cheese!!