The Colorado Adventure

What a day! It’s days like today where I’m glad I’m a HS’er. (Not because of free candy and tea.) We get a chance to put book learning into a real world situation. I do it all the time anyway, but today I see that (among other things) we saw the concept of 1,000 lbs of sugar and thought about what that would be in grams and kg. We saw art from Tajikistan and not just art, but actual wood engraved by an artisan from another continent and rugs woven by someone from far away. We tried dishes from other cultures and tea from around the world. We saw ancient pottery and thought about who the people were who made it and how they lived. We measured out a 40ft. cord and got to imagine the sight of a dinosaur with a wingspan of that length flying towards us. We read books about bats and dinosaurs, pirates (that was in the car) and listened to Jewish reggae/rap on the way to Boulder (yes, there is such a thing, imagine!) We got to practice being in front of people and performing, with juggling balls and song. We did all this and never sat down in front of a schoolbook, now that’s education!

First we went to Hammond’s candy and took the tour. Did you know they start every day with 1,000 pounds of sugar and 1,000 pounds of corn syrup? We saw them making ribbon candy on one side of the factory. They hand pull it, cut it into a small strip and then it gets ‘crimped’ through the ribbon machine (a relic from the 50’s.) On the other side a guy was making peppermint pillows (the small fat candies that look like a wanna be candy stick.) First they mix the inside of the candy (that part is always white) adding flavor to it when it’s hot.

Then they put on the ‘jacket’, in this case a red and white striped one.

Then the candy goes to the stretcher and then the cutter where it got cut into small bit size pieces. Hammond’s candy hand makes most of the candy.

They use the ribbon machine and cutters for certain candies (but even the ribbon candy was being cut into strips by a guy with scissors.) They were also making Martha Stewart’s candy canes for Macy’s (and you thought she made them herself!) Bethany decided that she wants to work here when she gets older, the lady on the tour asked her how old she was and told her to come back in 10 years.

The factory room is hot, it’s kept at a sultry 85 degrees, I don’t think I’d want to be in there (they can’t keep it any cooler than that or the candy would get too cold and not be pliable.) Next we saw the packing department where boxes of candy were being carefully placed into a box and then covered with a kind of foam that melts into place, thus securing the candy for its (hopefully) unbreakable journey.
Here’s the biggest candy cane they make, a 40 pounder.

They tried to make it bigger, but it was hard to shape it correctly. Here’s what the machine that makes that cane looks like.

We got to sample some candy, of course, and then we bought a bag of broken candy (it’s cheap.)



Then we were back on the road to Boulder for Celestial seasonings tea factory.

We arrived at the tea factory with minutes to spare until the tour.

Unfortunately no children under 5 are allowed, so Hannah and I sat in the shop and sampled every tea they had to offer. Gingerbread spice is definitely a winner! Here’s the dress and accessories made out of tea bag paper and boxes.

After the tour we went to the gift shop and got 6 boxes of tea for $2.00; strawberry, a calming one and a green tea. There is an advantage to buying from the shop, you can get stuff cheap because it’s going out of style or discontinued. Joel said that the factory smelled so good. Each little room had it’s own smell because of the tea leaves in it. They liked the peppermint and wintergreen room the best.


After sampling a few more teas we went to Pearl St. mall to have lunch.

Pearl St. has nothing on the 16th st. mall in Denver. It was smaller and the hot dogs were overpriced, but the kids liked playing on the boulders.

Joel even juggled his clubs for a few minutes and got a few compliments and a dollar (he would have done it longer, but I think he was embarrassed by the compliments.)

Grace sang her favorite song (for right now) ‘Light of the world’ for passersby. We went into a bookstore on the mall and walked around for a bit. Then we hit the tea house.

Why so much tea? Well I wanted to visit this tea house because it looked like an interesting place. The Boulder Dunshanbe tea house was assembled from 200 crates full of carved wood, art, wall hangings and furniture sent to Boulder from its sister city Dushanbe, Tajikistan.


It opened in 1998 and it’s a neat piece of art inside and out. We had some tea and some appetizers - you’d be impressed the kids tried some:
SOUTH AMERICAN AREPA: Griddle corn cake, pulled chicken, asadero cheese, red chile, and creme fraiche
MIDDLE EASTERN HUMMUS PLATE : Housemade hummus drizzled with olive oil and served with cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, pickled onions and pita.

Here is the ceiling.

Here is one of the hand carved seats.

All the kids deemed the chicken too spicy, Hannah ate the hummus and at least everyone tried something.

After the tea house we went by the CU museum. Wouldn’t you know it; they changed the exhibit I wanted to see. It’s now a temporary exhibit for day of the dead. But we did see dinosaur bones and we did a discovery pack on pterodactyls.

Then we went downstairs and saw the pottery and played in the discovery den.



Here is the outside of the building.

I thought I’d have trouble finding it, but we walked right to the front door of the museum no problem.

I was going to do a field trip here, now I know that if we do we need to do a hands on part to the tour (like weaving) because otherwise the museum is really small and the kids would get bored quickly.

After that we headed home, but took the scenic route. I was tempted to stop at a few places (like white ranch open space) just to check it out, but the kids wanted to get home (more specifically Joel wanted to get to Wal-mart to buy a game.) So, now we’re here and waiting for James to call and tell us that he had an exciting day in Houston

We did school this morning and Joel had a math test. I finally got the turning the repeating decimal into a fraction (I didn’t get it the other day.)
It’s like this: 0.36 (with a line over it indicating it repeats.) Say n = .36, so n = .363636.
100n - n = 36.36 - .3636
99n = 36.00
divide each side by 99
n = 36/99
n = 4/11
I think it’s easier to not try to change the decimal in the first place!

Bethany was reading about the Greeks, so she wrote a myth/fable about Turtle guy. I’ll post that later under Bethany’s page. Grace is having trouble writing 2’s and 5’s. I suspect more practice and whining will follow.

Today was observation day at worship dance. Here is Bethany stretching in her class.



Click here to see her dance.
Here is Grace in her class.




Click here to see her dance.
Here to see her skip.
Here to see her pirouette.
(As my uncle pointed out the video is crappy. That’s because it’s taken with a camera that’s so old now they don’t sell that low of a mega-pixel anymore. Just think of it as an old 16 mm movie with no sound, now it looks great huh?!) Aren’t they cute? Bethany said her class is a lot harder this year, more stretching and a harder dance to remember. I’m impressed that she is keeping both dances she has to learn separate (although he Nutcracker one is definitely easier than this one.) These girls that teach are awesome. They have such a hunger for God and it spills out into their dancing. I don’t know how they keep the choreographing of all the dances separate (Bethany’s teacher teaches 3 levels and has 2 of her own classes to take, each have different dances.) It’s going to be an awesome recital December 10th.

After a quick trip to the library we went home and got Joel for CAP. We ate at Mcd’s and then dropped off Joel. Then I went back to Mcd’s to let the girls play. Then back to pick up Joel. Next week is 5th Monday so it’s goof off day. They don’t have to suit up and they will be watching the game (Rockies) and playing video games. Tonight they had drill and a speaker (a cop) who talked about winter river safety. Now Joel doesn’t want to go to Georgetown or Evergreen lake because the guy told them about drowned people he pulled out of the river when they fell through the ice. ‘But this ice is really thick’, I say. ‘Ok Mom, this was a professional and he said you could die if you fall through the ice.’ So, I think winter ice-skating on Evergreen lake is out. I’m sure the guy was talking about thin ice on a lake you don’t know, but, oh well. In 2 weeks Joel will take the written Curry exam and try to get his patch for airman basic. Also his name patch should be in next week, so he won’t be cadet nobody anymore. He said that at drill tonight the leader tried to trip them up by saying, “Present arms, order…….pizza!” and he walked around with a cardboard mask with a silly face on it and taunted the cadets, “You know you want to laugh, go ahead, laugh!” Joel can’t wait to try to yell at the cadets and trick them.

I’m printing out directions for tomorrow. We’re going to Hammond’s candy, Celestial seasonings tea factory, Pearl st. mall and CU. Busy, busy.