martinzoo

I updated my Iditarod Unit page to include Thursday and Friday’s itinerary. We are really having so much fun with this unit. This one is even interesting to Aquagirl and Jabem. Everybody wants to know how their musher is doing. Mine is out because of a broken hand. And Aquagirl and Jabem’s mushers are very close together around the 40th place.

But the big contest in our house is between Godzilla Boy and his Dad. GB is rooting for Jeff King, who is currently in 2nd place and Dad is rooting for Martin Buser, who is in first place. This has been so exciting! We run to the computer to check places everytime we return home from anywhere. I even caught Aquagirl checking, on her own, this morning

We had to take our schnoodle, Peatsy, to the vet today for a check-up. While we were there GB took the opportunity to ask Doc Jordan the question he sent to Jeff King in an email. He wanted to know why the dogs eyes don’t freeze. We had read that last year Martin Buser had finished the race with frozen corneas. And today we had learned the “30-30-30″ rule. If it is -30 degrees, and the wind is blowing 30 mph, skin will freeze in 30 seconds. So we didn’t understand why this was only for people. We knew that they had fur all over their bodies, so that part made sense. But dogs eyes seem to be just like ours. Here is the disturbing part…. they are. Doc Jordan said that he has a good friend who is a vet at the race each year, and they don’t like to publicize the fact that the dogs do have physical problems from the race, including frozen corneas. They worry that animal activists will protest the race if it becomes too widely known. So now we will probably worry about all the puppy dogs in the race. They DO appear to love the racing. You can see the excitement in their eyes.

On Thursday GB did a soapstone sculpture, like the Inuit’s do. He carved a little duck and I thought it turned out so cute, that I would share.

We also made Chocolate Tortilla Snowflakes (precise recipe is on my unit page)

Fold the tortillas in quarters and snip out shapes just like a paper snowflake. Bake in oven for about 5 minutes. Sprinkle chocolate chips on baked snowflake and reheat for 1 more minute. Spread chocolate around snowflake and shake powdered sugar over the whole thing. Yummy!