8 April 2012

  

After years of talking about it, we planted a bed of asparagus this week.  Asparagus starts look like bundles of roots.  You have to dig a foot deep trench to plant them in, so a raised bed is a good place for them.  Then you have to wait a year before you can harvest any asparagus.  We love to eat asparagus, so hopefully we'll be eating our own home-grown asparagus next spring.

We also planted a Camperdown elm in our backyard.  We had a eucalyptus in this corner of the yard that died.  Brandan had to use an axe to get through the roots left by the eucalyptus in order to dig a hole for the elm.

Helen and Abe are playing soccer this spring and had their first games this week.  This is Helen's first season playing soccer.  Brandan is coaching Abe's team and it's his first time coaching.

Abe turned 9 years old on Tuesday.  He asked for chocolate mousse for his birthday dessert and we crammed 9 candles into it.  We can't make substitutions for everything, but we can make very good dairy- and egg-free mousse.

 

On Saturday Abe had some friends over for a birthday party.  He had a mad scientist theme which was a hit with all the kids.  This experiment created a foaming fountain with dish soap, hydrogen peroxide and yeast.  The big rush of foam lasted less than 5 minutes, but foam continued to ooze out of the bottle for another half hour.

We got eggs stuck in a glass milk bottle by creating a vacuum.

One of the most exciting experiments was the easiest: adding alka seltzer to water in a film canister, snapping on the lid, setting it on the ground and watching it explode.  Some of the canisters shot as high as our house.  The boys blew through a box of alka seltzer fairly quickly trying to find the combination of water and alka seltzer that would make the film canisters go the highest.

Next up was biology.  We dissected a chocolate frog cake.  Brandan and Becky made the cake together.  All the boys wanted an internal organ to eat.

The last activity was also very simple and very popular.  We had a stack of spare parts (paper cups, straws, skewers, washers, tape) and challenged the boys to build something that would carry a ping pong ball down a zip line made of fishing line.  The boys worked together, testing and retesting their designs.  A note about Abe's hair: we put some pomade in the bathroom and encouraged the boys to create mad scientist hair dos for themselves.  Abe's hair got wilder and wilder as the party progressed.  

Gibson is holding the carrier that he and Brandan made.

Becky spent a good part of the week trying out science experiments she read about in books and online.  It was surprisingly hard to come up with 5-6 experiments that were impressive or interesting and actually worked.  Here are some of the flops (removing iron shavings from cold cereal and making a battery out of a lemon) and a demonstration that worked, but was boring (hovercraft made from a CD).

We've enjoyed a beautiful Easter today.  Gibson is squinting because he thinks the sun is in his eyes.  We felt pretty spoiled to walk across the parking lot after church to take photos in front of the temple.

We usually have an Easter egg hunt the Saturday before Easter, but this Saturday was very busy with 3 soccer games and a party.  Instead, Becky hid a few eggs every night this week for the kids to find.  However, after church the kids asked if they could have a big Easter egg hunt.  Becky got out the last of the Easter candy and the kids helped fill the eggs, about 1 jelly bean per egg so they would have more eggs to find.  Sofi hid all the eggs in the backyard.  Abe and Helen gave Gibson a 6 egg head start before they started looking.