We are off to Radford, VA, today. I am taking Jabem and five other young men off to Radford University for a programming contest. We are pretty excited because Radford is one of the colleges that Jabem was accepted into, and we are curious about it’s program. The prizes for this contest are scholarships and there are only six high schools and three colleges who’ve sent teams. We have two teams. I am SO hoping they will do well. I just love their initiative. The boys were the ones who found the contest and pressured the head of the computer technology department into entering them. So I’d like them to show well. 
It will be a grueling trip for me. I’m hoping my Lupus won’t flare it’s ugly head. It’s a four hour trip there. Then a hotel bed…egads! Sometimes the beds are so bad in hotels, I’ve actually slept on the floor. All of Saturday on campus, the awards ceremony, then the trip home. By then, I know I’ll be pooped! But it IS exciting because I love to travel and see new places. And who knows? I could be making this trip a lot in the future… Plus, I didn’t want them to miss out on the trip, so I AM the chaperon….LOL
I really like ALL these boys, too. They are just the nicest group you’d ever want to meet. They come over to our house all the time for LAN parties. That’s where each person brings their own computer and they hook connect network them all together and then play each other in these fantastically intricate video games. Usually they are up the entire night and then sleep until 1:00 or 2:00 the next day. It’s a fairly easy party for us to host, just provide food (pizza) and drinks (tons) and they are happy.
So, Steph, I’m going to be passing right by your little neck of the woods. I’ll wave as I go through!
We planted 78 little plants today….. whew!
Yesterday we got the seeds for our Tomatosphere project in the mail. So today we planted the seeds and printed out our data recording sheet. GB is very excited to be doing something for the Space Program. Essentially we are experimenting with tomato seeds that have been exposed to similar conditions that Astronauts will be exposed to when they set up a Space Station on Mars. Since it will be a 2-3 year mission, they are hoping to be able to grow vegetables while there. But you don’t want to find out once you get there, that your seeds won’t grow because of the Mars atmosphere. We also have a control group of seeds that have only been exposed to Earth’s atmosphere.
So today we planted 30 tomato seeds that have been exposed in space, and 30 seeds that are normal. We don’t know which is which until we report our findings. You can learn about the Tomatosphere project here. Theresa, over at Lapaz Farm Home Learning, is doing this project also. And I can’t wait to see what cool things she and Superboy will do. If you are interested in this project, there is still time to sign up. I’d love to see everybody’s posted pictures.
We had 10 peat pots left, so we decided to plant some sunflower seeds that we had hanging around, either for the birds or the hamster. We also planted one rose bush, two pots of pansies, and two pots of vinca into some container gardens on my deck. And we repotted three apple tree seedlings that GB insisted we plant from his apple a few weeks ago. When we were done my deck looked so pretty and peaceful that we decided to hang for a while and appreciate our hard work.
Today we went to see the bone doctor. She confirmed that GB has nicely healed from his broken foot. She is still quite concerned with his tip-toeing, but I’m not ready to do anything drastic, yet. I keep expecting him to just one day get sick of walking on his toes. But I did promise that we would do some stretching each day to try and keep the muscles in his lower legs from tightening up. She said that swimming, especially with fins, will help a lot. If it gets worse, we’ll call her and go back. Our ped doc doesn’t seem concerned at all and he’s been taking care of my kids since Aquagirl was 3, she’s now 19.
I updated my lapbook page ( located over on the sidebar, under “pages”) to include the projects and lapbooks we did while I was recovering from surgery. Looking at the projects made me feel as if we made very good use of my infirm time. I really like having something concrete to show what “we” have learned. I’m thinking I should include a picture of the Dog Unit wall and the Iditawall, but not tonight. Don’t you think it’s funny how often I say “we learned”? It’s so amazing to me how much more interesting all this stuff is to me as an adult. I get all excited by what we are learning and it helps me to convey excitement to GB.
Spring is starting to peek it’s way into my yard. My pear tree and my lilac tree are just starting to get blossoms. I LOVE the way Spring looks, but I hate what it does to my nose. That has already started too. And, oh, the birds! They are spectacular this year! This morning, my dh and I saw an American Goldfinch and it was really beautiful! It’s a great way to start the morning: coffee and birdwatching.
We had a bit of bad news this week. Jabem found out that he didn’t get into James Madison University or Virginia Tech. He was pretty upset about that. We haven’t heard from UVA, but we don’t have much hope on that front anymore. He did, however, get into Radford University and Virginia Commonwealth University. Since we are chaperoning a trip to Radford for a computer programming contest this weekend, we’ll really be able to check the place out. At this stage there are pros and cons for both. So it’ll be a big decision for him.
As you can see, I also changed the format on my blog page. I get bored kind of easily. So, I’m trying out this one now. Do you like it?
Now, instead of being a vet, GB has decided he wants to be an Astronaut. He thinks he can do that first and then become a vet. OR, he’ll be a vet in outer space, where he will be able to search for alien life forms and THEN take care of them.
Today we went to the Science Museum of Virginia. GB always enjoys going there, but this time he had a new appreciation, since he is going to be an Astronaut. The following video shows GB in a simulated moon walking exhibit. He had more fun with it than the girls who proceeded him. But he weighed so little that he couldn’t get the full effect. He thought it was super-cool, though.
After the moon-walking exhibit, he got to try the land rover-type of exhibit. He had three missions: one ~ fire a laser beam and hit a target out in space, two~ make the space ship rotate using his space vehicle, and three ~ he had to park the vehicle in a special hole-in-peg parking spot. He was a successful space man, and thrilled to boot. This activity had to be performed twice, because it was SO fun. He would have done it again, but I told him other kids needed to try. They were shy and didn’t want to try, but once we moved on they did give it a try. I thought the missions looked hard, but I guess video game playing comes in handy. In this video you can see him trying to park the vehicle after the other missions had been completed.
This is a picture of GB in a space shuttle, on his way back to Earth. He enjoyed messing with the controls for quite a while. I, personally, cannot imagine being in such tight quarters.
As we were leaving, we decided to hit the gift shop. I love museum gift shops and this one had tons of Science stuff in it. GB found some Astronaut ice cream (real ice cream, but 90% of the water has been removed) and had to buy it. He got mint chocolate chip for himself and an ice cream sandwich for Daddy. We opened the packages after dinner, and we all sampled….. GB thought they were pretty good. Daddy thought the ice cream sandwich tasted like a cookie. I’ll just say that I’m glad I’m not an Astronaut, because I thought they were rank.
