Creamers Field

Today I went with Abbie's class to learn about life at Creamer's Field. It was a nice day despite some clouds. Warm and no rain (or snow this time, yeah!)

Such a pretty place! I wish they would open the barns to the public, some wonderful spaces inside there.

We got to see some birds up close at the bird banding station run by the ABO. This one is a robin.

She had a fun day (me too!) and learned a lot. We will definitely have to plan a trip back here with fewer classmates.

Alaskaland

After 2 posts about Liam, I figure you would like to see one of Abbie. I took her to Alaskaland last Saturday for a birthday party, she just HAD to ride the carousel before going home :)

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!)