Ok, so we went sledding today. We were the first ones on the hill and we had it to ourselves for about an hour. It was so pristine and white and then it was covered in tracks and slide marks.

Did we do all that? I guess so. We finally got a chance to use our snowball maker and look at this, a perfect snowball.

They really hurt though; I might have to make a rule that you can’t actually throw them at anyone. We sledded and made snowballs (or snow volcanoes in Bethany’s case), sledded some more, snowboarded, and ate some snow.

Now Grace knows why you shouldn’t go down in front on my sled, Hannah was covered in snow by the time we got to the bottom.

On my last run I hit the bump at the bottom and spun out, fell out of the sled and skidded across the snow. That was fun!

After burning some calories we went to BK to play and eat. The guys played risk and poker and the girls played in the play-land and colored. It was some nice ‘mommy chat’ time (which is why I got to BK in the first place; I ‘m not the nice mom who just goes some my kids can play! I want something to do too!) Now I’m home waiting for an e-mail from the lady with the puppy she wants to get rid of. Pick me, pick me, he’s sooo cute! Hoping to have news by tomorrow of the little guy, is he still available? Can he be mine? Only time will tell, but I really hope this is the dog for us. We’ve been looking for 3 weeks now, fingers crossed!

We had a mini-blizzard last night. It was white out on the way home, nice puffy flakes made it nice and white. We got about 5 inches, sledding today!

shoveling neighbors
scrape together in the dark
hope to find sidewalk

Man, we had a gale last night. It wasn’t snowing on the way to pick up Joel from CAP and I was complaining about it. ‘Where’s my snow, 30% chance of snow my butt!’ Then we hit the hogback. Now it’s always windy right there anyway, but last night it was gusting about 60-70 mph. Then it looked like fog in the distance and in a few seconds it was blizzard white out conditions. Ahhh, there’s my snow. Sure enough it wasn’t just snowing; it was blowing the snow right out of the clouds. So we waited on Joel and listened to the howling wind and watched the snowflakes swirl above the cross of the church, a pretty sight.

Of course there wasn’t any snow this morning; it was really just blowing so hard, but not cold enough to stick. Or maybe it did stick, but then it got blown to Kansas. Either way we had a nice drive to Boulder today. We went to see the interactive art exhibit ‘Moths’ at CU Boulder.

Ignore the screeching of Hannah, she was mad because Grace was touching her orb. The longer you touch the orb the stronger your moths’ movements get. The light on the body flashes to your heartbeat, it was pretty cool.

They had some computers that were touch screen and showed projects, so we all had fun clicking on different projects and watching them. Joel wondered why everyone was staring at us while we ate lunch. I’m going to guess it’s because they don’t usually see kids on campus (and not because they thought my girls were so cute!) ((That red thing under Hannah’s nose is her boo-boo from the pool yesterday. She tripped and went face first into the concrete. The pacifier looking thing in everyone’s mouth is ring pop candy.))

Next stop was the natural history museum. I finally got to see the rebuilding the Mayan temple exhibit. It would have worked out nicely to have seen it last time we were here because Bethany was on Maya and Aztec in history, but it was still cool to see now.

The kids worked on a puzzle and colored.

We watched a movie about the reconstruction of this Mayan temple, here are some watercolors from the site.

We went across the hall to the dinosaur room. We worked on a bag for triceratops. Did you know that a triceratops would have weighed as much as 5 cars? Grace found out they ate plants and the word ‘triceratops’ means ‘three horns’.

Bethany drew a picture of this ammonite and I drew the triceratops skull.

Downstairs we read about bats, played with puppets, made felt pictures and looked at bones.

Before we left we saw the art prints and maps from the 1500-1700’s. It fun to see the old maps and see how wrong America looks (they even put California as a separate land on some of them!) Bethany and Grace drew some of the plant pictures.

Even Hannah tried to draw some birds.

They will watercolor these later.

Well, that’s all the art and science for today!

All 3 kids did Ancient China based on our trip to Forbidden gardens in Katy, TX. As an added bonus the library had a display for Chinese new year with pictures from the real tomb excavation. Neat!

Bethany - Hi, I am the Emperors favorite wife. He thought I was so beautiful he didn’t even wait for his mother to pick me out! Usually she would have told him who to marry. I am his favorite because my feet are so tiny they can fit into this shoe. I can wear the golden lotus shoe and that is saying something! My Emperor made me this wooden travel chair to sit in. Four strong men carry me wherever I want to go. He gave me jade ring and a beautiful comb.

To show how powerful he is, the emperor built the Forbidden City. The entry gate is 32 feet high and the city stretches for 17 miles. In the middle of the city is his house and behind it is mine. In the back we have a forbidden garden to enjoy. It is called that because not just anyone is allowed to be in there. We have koi and ponds and flowers. Sometimes I miss my children though; when they are born they are taken to another house in the city to be raised. Maybe my son will be emperor one day.

The Emperor Yongle built this city and made Beijing the capital of China, he unified China and now all can see how powerful he was. The forbidden city was built during the Ming Dynasty in
the 1400’s, it take up 250 acres.

**(Joel’s note: doesn’t matter how pretty you were, the Emperor wouldn’t have chosen Bethany without his mother picking her out first!)

Joel - To prove yourself a good soldier to Emperor Chin, you must first battle with no amour. If you survived then he would give you arm leather. If you continued to survive battles you would receive leg amour, back amour and then chest amour. Finally you got a helmet, but it wasn’t very good for protection; you really just wore it to weddings and funerals - hopefully not your own!

The Emperor made a special weapon called the green dragon sword. It had metal rings along the staff so that when you pulled it out of you opponent you disemboweled them. The emperor used gongs and drums to talk to his armies that were up to 2 miles away. I think the emperor went mad at one point though; he thought it would be a good idea to entomb all of his men when he died. We thought it would be better if he put a copy of us in the tomb. So he made a mask of every soldier and filled up his tomb with them.

One strategy we used in fighting was to turn out the end flank to face every direction. This way we could see an enemy coming from any direction. The army mainly used swords, but also used axes, double headed spears, broad swords and halberds. The armor used was made of leather strips that were laid on top of each other. This would usually stop a long range weapon, but you really didn’t want to meet that green dragon sword up close, especially if you didn’t have chest armor on.

The Emperor Chin gave China it’s name, he unified the states by standardizing the laws, weights and measures, the currency, and the writing system. He built roadways and a canal system linking the states. His reign was during the 3rd century BC.

Grace - The emperor loved art and placed statues in his home. There are statues of horses, dragon dogs, cows and people. If you ate with the emperor you might be eating chicken feet or baby penguin. Silk was used in ancient china to make beautiful clothes like this shirt or these toys.

We had fruit ka-bobs for lunch today. Grace made a pattern with hers and Hannah just stacked oranges all the way to the top of her stick.

Everyone wanted to do this everyday, well I’m not sure I’m up to cutting that much fruit EVERY day.

Later we went to the park and read Blueberries for Sal and brought our own blueberries. This was Grace’s story for the day; so much better to read it near trees and with blueberry props (and a bucket to make the ‘kerplunk!’ sound.)

It’s not the right season for picking berries, so we picked the seed heads of the bushes.

The creek was iced over and Bethany had fun sliding down the hill of ice on her coat.

Grace and Hannah played with some little kids and then after gathering a few more nature items we went home.

We got a pamphlet about eggs from the stock show yesterday and one of the things they did was glue nature items onto a blown eggshell. Stuff like this.

It looked neat and maybe our nature eggs will come out good, we need a few more bits of stuff to glue onto them though.

Tomorrow is presentation club (ancient China for my kids) and school, then its movie night at church (Evan Almighty.) Yeah, junk food and laughter!

Well, to the stock show, we didn’t see an actual rodeo with cow roping and stuff, they don’t have that during the day. There were 943 people signed up to go from our virtual school and I actually bumped into someone I knew! We sat and watched the horses prancing around the arena and then went to the kid area.

The kids wanted to take their pic on the giant horse so the girls all got on his back and Joel stood beside him.

Hannah thought it was way cool to be up that high. See, we don’t need 4 horses, just 1 big one and everyone can ride on it together!

Grace says she wants this chicken and this bunny for a pet.

I’m pretty sure you can’t have a chicken in Highlands Ranch; I’ll have to check on that. Look at the baby cow, isn’t he cute?

Too bad he’ll grow up to be a big slobbering cow. We put our names in for a chance to feed the baby cows, but we didn’t get drawn, so we went over to the play area. Once again, why do I need 3 swings if I can fit all the girls on 1?

Over at the petting zoo Hannah had a blast.

She thought the pigs’ tail was the funniest thing and kept touching it to make it wiggle. The goats followed her around because she was the easiest to reach. Grace kept holding her food and yelling at the goats chasing her, “No, I don’t want to feed you, I want to feed him!”

Hannah then went around hugging every pig, sheep, lamb and llama.

Bethany thought the llama looked just like the one on Kuzco. Saying llama reminds me of the llama song.

We wandered down to the stables and saw these highland cattle, this one is named cinnamon swirl. She loved having the girls pet her.

The sheep were getting sheared which resulted in them wearing coats like these.

Hannah said, “I hear it.” every time the sheep said, “Maa-aaa-aaa.”

I don’t think that one liked being sheared. We caught the Brahma bull on the way out and then watched some more horses jump and ride around.

That was a lot of walking around, it’s a big place. I told the kids one day we’ll actually pay to see a show at night (perhaps the dancing horse’s one, that looked cool.) But, once again the stock show visit is over until next year.

We did school today in between this and this. No, really, we did get some done before I called “dance break!” and we did this.

We had another lesson today, how to hug a cat. First sneak up on a sleeping cat (from above he looks like a porcupine!)

Now get in the chair and give him a hug, pinch his nose and repeat hug. (Now, if he didn’t like it he would’ve gotten up; he’s lazy, but not that lazy!)

We had our Tuesday Tea today and it went well. Hannah didn’t spill any tea, although she did put stickers on the floor. Bethany wrote some thank you notes and Grace wrote a letter. Joel wrote a couple of thank you notes and a letter. Not bad. So, if you get a letter in the mail you are the test subjects for our day. If you don’t, maybe you’ll be on the list next week.

I used my new teapot and it sang like a bird when the water was done. We had our tea that we bought at the Celestial seasonings factory in Boulder. There is a co-op coming up to there, maybe we’ll do it again because by then I expect to need more tea. Next week I’ll have some music playing too. I hope we can keep this up; it really helps out with letter writing and staying in touch (not to mention penmanship, grammar, spelling, language, social skills and art.)

Today we went to Arapahoe Community College for the 10th annual Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast. It was also the 40th anniversary of his death.

We ate a really nice breakfast: eggs, sausage, bacon, fruit, pastries, biscuits, gravy and orange juice. To start the program we sang the ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and the torch of peace was passed to the Mayor of Littleton and the President of the college.

There were poems and awards and the Mayor gave a speech about the legacy of Dr. King.

The Mayor called upon those there to do acts of service in their community to remember Dr. King. He said that we can all be great if we serve with our hearts. We listened to an excerpt from a speech by Dr. King and then came the music. I didn’t realize until we got there that Black hands (whom we are seeing in Feb.) was going to be there.

They are so awesome. First they did the warrior drum, part of it is here. Then they did an old slave spiritual where we answered ‘sit down’ when they sang ‘come on servant ‘. Then they had us up and dancing around the room.

Once again the college provided a very nice breakfast and lecture for us. If you live near a college, even a community one, check out what they have to offer. They have lectures, dances, music, and events that are free to the public and that comes in very handy when HS’ing!

Here is a link to a kids activity for MLK day.

Here is another.

Ok, first downer information then the fun stuff we did in the afternoon.

We went to church and learned that the son of our keyboardist took his own life last Friday, he was 14. Then another family in church had relatives visiting from England and their 11 year old son was killed while skiing this past week. Add to this the news that our Drama leader was dismissed when he confessed to adultery and that the lead singer and guitarist are separated due to a crisis in their marriage. Also, in December a mom in our church died after she fell off an ATV while riding it on their street in front of their 2 small children. I think out church is under attack spiritually. There has been so much death in the last month and attacks on marriages. It shows you that no one is exempt from sin and from trial, but it is still hard.

The message our Pastor gave was on fear. He said that sometimes God calms the storm and sometimes He calms the child. When Jesus and His disciples were on the boat and the storm came upon them raging around them, Jesus could have calmed His friends, but He chose to get rid of the trial. When Job lost all he had God could have taken away the storm, but instead He calmed His child. ‘Do not be afraid’ is listed 366 times in the Bible, that’s once a day (and an extra for leap year) that God says ‘don’t be afraid, I’m here.’ So, through our church’s trial’s I look to fear and say ‘God take us through this and calm the storm, or calm and guide us instead.’

After church we went to the flatirons mall and saw Veggie tales. It was, of course, such a good movie. God gives us help when we need it, our Father gives us everything in His time, we can be heroes by doing the right thing, we can be heroes by being somewhere at the right time, sometimes when we ask for help we don’t get who we think we should get. We loved the little jokes and quips. Grace was cracking up at the end when the hungry cheese curls were chomping across the screen. If you want to see it cheap go to AMC on Fri, Sat., or Sun before 12 pm and tickets are $5 each. Then we walked around the mall and bought some books at the bookstore. We also scored an iron camp fire ring for the backyard, it has cutouts of trees and bears on it, at Dicks’s for $5. The kids wanted to go by Target too, but we decided just to head home and watch some TV.