Mythbusters

We invented a new game earlier this week--Moon sand Mythbusters. In this game, you use moon sand to create "bench test" characters to test various myths. Just like the crash test dummy on mythbusters, I named my moon sand guy, buster. We've tested a lot of myths using Buster. For instance, if I hold Buster up to my knee level and drop him, he falls without incident. If I hold him up to my chest and drop him, his head falls off from the fall. So the myth that you can fall from a 20 story building and survive is totally busted in the bench test. You can, however, survive a fall from a 5 story building.

Watercolor

Today, we got out the watercolor paints. I forgot how much fun this is since we hadn't done it in a long while. I made a lot of cool stuff. An American flag, some houses, a picture of our fireplace, and a volcano. I always make sure to sign my name when making a picture so everyone knows who the artist is.

Golf Ball Civil War

Lately, one of my favorite games is golf ball civil war. In this game, Daddy reads selections from Shelby Foote's Civil War series and we act out the battle using golf balls to represent troop formations. The yellow golf balls are the union while the white golf balls are the confederacy. One great thing about golf balls is that they roll nicely, so it's easy to simulate charges and retreats. We also have golf balls representing the main generals leading each side.

We recently replayed the Battle of Murfreesboro (or Stones River if you're with the Union). The leading general on the Union "team" was William Rosecrans or "Old Rosey" as he was known to the troops. We found a pink golf ball for him. I also have incorporated a couple of horses from my Thomas set to represent the cavalry on each side.

We've done a bunch of these battles including Gettysburg (1st day), Chancellorsville (2nd day), Haines Bluff, Murfreesboro, and a cavalry raid by General John (Hunt) Morgan.

Aidan and the Alligator

One of the best things about downtown Walnut Creek are the variety of animal sculptures that I can perch on. As you know, my favorite is the cougar. This past weekend, I spotted a very nice alligator to sit on. This was especially appropriate since the letter of the week in school was "A". The "A" poem was Allie the Alligator.



Check out the complete slide show here.

An "A" for Effort

One of the trickiest letters to write is lower-case "A". I can never remember which side of the circle the line goes. This is really troubling since this letter is in my name, Aidan. To get around this problem, I've taken to using a capital A in all circumstances, so when I sign my name it's "AidAn" or, sometimes "AidAN". While this sort of spelling convention seems to work well for dot-com firms (like eBay), it doesn't wash in Miss Nelson's class.

As a result, Mommy put into place a cunning plan. Every time I successfully make a lower-case "A", I get a penny. Yesterday, I made 4 "A's" and, as I proudly shwed Daddy that evening, this netted me four whole cents. While I used to view making this letter as quite a chore, it's a whole different ballgame when I get paid to do it. This morning, I talked about my day with Daddy. I told him

Today I'm going to make a thousand lower-case A's. How much will I mkae for that?

I learned two things from this conversation: First, one thousand A's is worth $10 and second, if I actually did this, my hand would be sore for a week. Maybe I'll stick with smaller amounts for now.

Christmas Morning

It was a wonderful holiday. I got lots of great presents. Since we had Christmas in California this year, I thought I'd try to give you something of the flavor of the gift-opening festivities.

Opening presents:


A crab puppet:


You can see the slideshow here.

New Orleans

Daddy just came back from New Orleans where he was at a conference. He intended to take some pictures, but few of them came out well. Click here for the highlights (such as they are).

Snow!

I was very lucky when I went to wilkes-Barre this holiday season. It snowed! In fact, there was one terrific morning where there was a whole bunch of freshly fallen snow. We made two snowbears. (I don't like snowmen since they're human--only snow animals).



We also had snowball fights.







Here are some orderable photo highlights:

Snowy scenes
Snowball fights