This summer so far...

     It's going to be an action packed summer this year, full of trips, events, and goings of on. There's the usual summer activities, like birthdays and holidays, not to mention Ragnarok (more on that later), but we've also a wedding in Reno and a big-time camping trip. Probably the biggest thing going on this summer is right here in our apartment everyday. I'm watching my nieces, Olivia and Gwyn, while school's out, so I've got a seven y/old, a five y/old, a four y/old, and a soon to be two y/old.

     I figure the only way I'm going to survive, let alone retain what little sanity I still have, is to treat it like school. I've got a schedule for the whole day, science projects lined up, art projects to keep them busy, and even field trips. Once the girls get used to following the schedule instead of running amok, like most summers, I think it's gonna work well. So far we've gone to the Oregon Zoo and the Tualatin Commons fountain. The zoo was fun. We took the bus to the MAX (Portland's light rail system) in so we wouldn't have to deal with shitty parking. We spent most of the day there and let the kids run out all their energy. On the way back, we figured Gavin would crash pretty hard but he stayed up the whole time. He loved looking out the windows. Jillian and Gwynny on the other hand both conked out within minutes. All in all, a day well spent.

Ride 'em Dinoboy! (and Dinogirls)

Tuckered out

Too tired

Bright eyed and bushy tailed

Yesterday was our first day of "Uncle Nicks Super Science Summer School". The day started out with some fun science experiments with friction. You can do it too if you want. All you need is two paperback books of fairly equal size. I grabbed Merchant of Venice and Julius Caesar

Take the books and interlace the pages, kind of like shuffling a deck of cards only slower. It can be a bit of a pain in the ass if you pick really thick books. When you're done, it should look something like this

 Then all you have to do is grab each book by the spine and pull them apart. Here, watch Gwyn give it a go...

That's the trick, you can't pull them apart, even two people pulling can't get the books to budge. Each overlapping pair of pages has it's own friction and when you have that many pages pulling at the same time, the friction is compounded. Mythbusters did this experiment with phone books. Here's their results http://youtu.be/hOt-D_ee-JE. Try it, it's fun! After Gavin's nap, we tried some experiments with bubbles and surface tension, but my bubble solution was crap and our bubbles never lasted, so no pictures. Stupid bubbles.

     When Belinda and Christina got home we packed up and headed to Tualatin Commons to play in the fountain and cool off. Gavin didn't quite grasp the concept of "Walk or you'll slip" so I strapped his backpack/kid leash on him and followed him through the water. The kids had a blast and, once again, fell asleep pretty quickly, rarely a bad thing.

     Today, we went on a nature walk down by the river and saw some deer tracks (and deer scat) and watched some newly hatched spiders. We were going to eat lunch there, but there were too many bugs for girls liking so we hoofed it to Jurgens park nearby. After lunch I brought out my science toys and we played with the Bernoulli blowers, paper helicopters, and Wright Fliers. Now we're chilling out at home, watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. Not sure what we'll do tomorrow, but I'm sure it'll be fun!