We spent the morning selling cups of lemonade for donations to the Alex’s lemonade stand foundation (for pediatric cancer.) Our curriculum supplier (K12) supplied us with a banner, shirts and stickers.

Our goal for the weekend was $50; we made $44 this morning at King Soopers.

At first we didn’t have anybody wanting lemonade, so we sat for about 45 minutes. Then Bethany started getting pro-active. She stood near the entrance and asked people if they’d like to buy some lemonade to raise money for cancer research. Most of the people coming out saw her and headed in the opposite direction, so she changed tactics and went to the other side of the entrance. That worked like a charm, we suddenly had a ton of people giving money and a few who actually wanted lemonade to go with it. Joel had the good idea of putting the stickers on the cups so we didn’t have to hand them a sticker, which was great.

Hannah threw all the trash away and was the sticker girl for awhile, until she started putting stickers everywhere.

All told we stayed there for 1 hour and 45 minutes, not a bad haul.

After our lemonade stand success, we headed over to the library for 2 activities. The first was Grace and her graduation from pre-school story time. The library staff made caps for them and played pomp and circumstance while the grads filed in (that was so cute, see here.)

Then they sat down and listened to some books and sang some songs.

When story time was over Ms. Nancy said that since they were going from K to 1st, they would be leaving preschool story time (not that they can’t come back to it though!) She called out their names and gave them a certificate and then they did a funny bunny craft and had cookies. I never did K graduation with Joel or Bethany, I thought it was lame and I was like, why would you celebrate getting out of K, the easiest grade? But Grace has been through so much in the past 2 years and has struggled with retaining information, that I just had to celebrate. Let’s see, she was in the hospital with RAD for 5 days, she got glasses, she had eye surgery, she was in a major car accident, she broke her arm and had 2 metal pins in it, she had a few bouts with RAD again, though only 1 ER trip for it, she got backed into by a car while riding her scooter, she had a CAT scan of her brain to make sure it was there (just kidding, that was before the RAD/LK syndrome diagnosis so they were ruling out a brain tumor), all of the above not in the order they actually happened.

So, as we watched her ‘graduate’ from story time we were very proud of her!

Joel and Bethany had a science class on rockets after the story time, so Grace and Hannah got to play on the computers. I didn’t stay in the class but they made a model rocket, just to see what one looked like. They went outside and shot off tube rockets and made fizzy discoveries with mentos and coke and pop rocks and vinegar. They had some races and had a few more things to do in their bags. Bethany has 2 patches now and Joel has one. I think he liked the class so he’ll probably be going to ones for the rest of the year.

Also today was James’ 40th birthday. He got to pick his restaurant and we went to The California Café in the mall. The décor was very nice and the food was great. The kids did pretty good, no spilling of drinks or food and Hannah sat through almost the whole meal. James said this was almost how he’d pictured spending his 40th birthday (really? With a lemonade stand and 3 hours at the library?) except he thought he’d have the winning lotto ticket in his hand! After we ate we wandered around the mall and bought the kids some candy. By the time we got home we were still too tired to watch Battlestar, so James opened his presents from the kids: a new wallet, a screwdriver set, a light that plugs into the laptop, a Steve McQueen movie and grilling spices. Stuff he can actually use!

Oh, and our ladybugs are growing and molting, see:

It was our 16th anniversary today, but first…………We had presentation club in the morning. Joel did atoms and Grace and Bethany were unstable sodium and cholrine repectivley.

Bethany did worms and showed one of our worms from our bin.

Grace did clouds and although she could have been a little louder did well otherwise. From there we raced over to the park where the middle schoolers from COVA were having an ice cream social.

They also played water balloon fights and played on the playground.

I should have gone home, but I met another HS’er at Buger king and we let the kids play. I also got to show her how to spin on a drop spindle she got for Christmas, I know how to do something!

Back at home I sent terse e-mails to an AF person in charge of CAP encampment. Where is it at? When do you need my money? Does Joel need dress blues? All he answered was the dress blues question. Now we have been waiting on the free blues since September, now we’re going to have to buy a set and I bet the free ones come in as soon as we purchase the $130 set. How much you wanna bet? I’m angry that they took so long that now the free set is worthless since we’ll already have a set of blues. And I can’t find the patches that we were given in Sep. Argh!

Back to the 16…….Since it was our anniversary I picked out a restaurant to go to. Lat year I lucked out and the place I picked out of Westword was really quaint and romantic. So I tried my hand again and picked a place that had live jazz of Fridays. I picked it because James really likes jazz; I looked the place up on the internet and the pic they had of it wasn’t great. It looked like a really small vietnamese restaurant. But I didn’t tell James that. When we drove past James was like ‘Where have you taken us?’ It was a small place in a strip mall with a tattoo parlor and bird world. I thought my luck had run out, but we walked in and the music was great! We got a really little table for two and ordered while the band played. They had a singer come up and sing a few songs with them and then they took a break. The lighting was pink bulbs and the food was international. I had chicken curry and James had prime rib. When the band started up again they asked a lady from the audience to get up and sing, she was good. Then they asked an older gentleman and he was great! The band members rocked (or jazzed) on their drums, cello, piano and sax. It was a really nice place to go, I scored a good spot again! After dinner we went to a coffee shop and had some coffee and tea and then went home to our brood. You know we’re getting old when we have a choice between Battlestar and bed……….and we choose bed!

We got new rings for our anniversary, so now we both have rings, yeah!
16 years down, 34 to go!

We took Maisy to the park with us yesterday. She got extra hugs and was very good, no jumping, no barking and only a little whining when another dog came around.

Maisy hasn’t been around that many kids so I kind of threw her into the situation. I didn’t realize a school would be having their field day while we had park day, so Maisy was around probably 100 kids. She was so good we took her to the dog park afterwards so she could run around. Hannah thought it was too hot for pants at the park so she took them off.

Last year she stripped down to her diaper one day, this year I must insist that she keep a shirt on, she is 3 after all!

Here are the ladybugs today.

They look like little alligators with that tail. You can see where the lady bug part of them is though. I guess they will continue to eat for a few days before getting into a cocoon.

I took Grace and Hannah to the library this morning for their roads and bridges class. They give the kids safety vests and we took off to see the street sweeper, grader, tractor and plow. Here are the brushes for the street sweeper.

I guess I thought they were something besides metal, but it makes sense that they are metal, anything else would wear out too quickly. All of the dirt gets sucked up into the container at the top and then gets dumped.

The tractor was a John Deere.

The grader was cool looking.

Joel has a matchbox grader from when he was 4 and we used to watch the construction vehicles by our house. He used to take his toy grader and dump truck and play while watching them tear up the road. The plow had lots of cool levers and button inside, even a joystick.

That was really neat that they gave the kids vests and let them climb up and touch everything. Don’t worry; they will put everything back in the right place before they drive it again!

Our ladybugs came in the mail yesterday. They are in the larvae stage. They should go into a cocoon in 5 days and then emerge as ladybugs in another 5 or so.

James saw the container and said, ‘You didn’t spend my hard earned money on …….bugs?’ (He hates bugs.) I said no, the bug land was free and I had $3 for shipping, so he is not the proud owner of bugs!

Today Joel had his co-op on making duct tape wallets. There were 5 kids doing it and once they got the hang of it, it went smoothly. As far as Joel as teacher I think he should have gotten up from the table and wandered around to see if he could help anybody, but his instructions were pretty easy to follow. After class some girls started on purses. Once you have the basic technique down you can make anything out of duct tape.

You start with one piece about 15-18” long and lay it sticky side up. Then you put another piece on top of that one (about ½ of it sticking to the previous piece) sticky side up. Continue until you have enough width for the wallet (his template is for one big piece 8 “ X 6 1/8” and two smaller pieces 6” X 3” that will be the card slots.) Then you add more pieces sticky side down until you have covered the whole square. Then you tape the edges and cut out the squares from the template. You tape in the card slots on 3 sides and add any finishing tape to the wallet, done! If you make a bigger square of tape you can fold it in half and tape 3 edges and have a purse.

Here is Hannah with her scrap wallet.

Here is a wallet one of the girls made.

You can get really creative with all the colors they have now.

In the car on the way home Hannah asked “Where Daddy?” I said at work and she asked why, I said because and she said, “Oh, he need make money?” Yep, that’s right; I must say it too often.

Other than that we did nothing today, it’s another cold, gloomy day. Yesterday the 55 degree and cloudy sky was appropriate for Memorial Day, today it was just lethargic.

Remember those who have fallen.

Following the end of the Civil War, many communities set aside a day to mark the end of the war or as a memorial to those who had died. Some of the places creating an early memorial day include Charleston, South Carolina; Boalsburg, Pennsylvania; Richmond, Virginia; Carbondale, Illinois; Columbus, Mississippi; many communities in Vermont; and some two dozen other cities and towns. These observances eventually coalesced around Decoration Day, honoring the Union dead, and the several Confederate Memorial Days.

According to Professor David Blight of the Yale University History Department, the first memorial day was observed in 1865 by liberated slaves at the historic race track in Charleston. The site was a former Confederate prison camp as well as a mass grave for Union soldiers who had died while captive. The freed slaves reinterred the dead Union soldiers from the mass grave to individual graves, fenced in the graveyard & built an entry arch declaring it a Union graveyard; a very daring thing to do in the South shortly after North’s victory. On May 30 1868 the freed slaves returned to the graveyard with flowers they’d picked from the countryside & decorated the individual gravesites, thereby creating the 1st Decoration Day. A parade with thousands of freed blacks and Union soldiers was followed by patriotic singing and a picnic.

The official birthplace of Memorial Day is Boalsburg, Pennsylvania. The village was credited with being the birthplace because it observed the day on May 5, 1866, and each year thereafter, and because it is likely that the friendship of General John Murray, a distinguished citizen of Waterloo, and General John A. Logan, who led the call for the day to be observed each year and helped spread the event nationwide, was a key factor in its growth.

General Logan had been impressed by the way the South honored their dead with a special day and decided the Union needed a similar day. Reportedly, Logan said that it was most fitting; that the ancients, especially the Greeks, had honored their dead, particularly their heroes, by chaplets of laurel and flowers, and that he intended to issue an order designating a day for decorating the grave of every soldier in the land, and if he could he would have made it a holiday.

Logan had been the principal speaker in a citywide memorial observation on April 29, 1866, at a cemetery in Carbondale, Illinois, an event that likely gave him the idea to make it a national holiday. On May 5, 1868, in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans’ organization, Logan issued a proclamation that “Decoration Day” be observed nationwide. It was observed for the first time on May 30 of the same year; the date was chosen because it was not the anniversary of a battle. The tombs of fallen Union soldiers were decorated in remembrance of this day.

The alternative name of “Memorial Day” was first used in 1882, but did not become more common until after World War II, and was not declared the official name by Federal law until 1967.

-source wikipedia

I had a neat class from the library yesterday. I went to a yarn shop called Fancy Tiger (a name of a kind of sheep’s wool) and learned how to make my own yarn. Well, how to spin it anyway. First you get a bat of roving. I thought a bat was something you used to hit a ball, and I thought rove meant wander around. But, a bat is a huge pile of wool that has been carded and cleaned.

Roving is the same thing only a little smaller.

First you take the roving and draft it (again I thought to draft meant to pre-write!) Drafting is kind of hard starting out. You have to put your hands 4-6 inches apart and pull the wool to make it thinner. If you just spin it from the roving the thread would be huge! So you pre-draft by pulling it in half and then you draft by working with smaller parts of it. Finally you’re ready to put in on the spindle.

Now, I’ve seen Sleeping Beauty so I know what a spindle is, thank you Brothers Grimm! You attach the wool to a loop of scrap yarn and you spin, draft, spin, draft, and then when it gets long enough you wrap it around the spindle. This spindle is a top spindle, to make it a down one I could move the cup hook to the other side and the yarn would pile up on top of the circle base instead of underneath it.

One way is not better or worse than the other, it’s just personal preference (or in this case it’s what I got at the class!)

At first my yarn was pretty thick because I didn’t know how thin to make the wool, but after a few spins it was getting thinner and thinner. Our teacher said that people like hand spun yarn because it has texture; it is thick and thin and you can put all kinds of stuff into it to make it unique. She showed us some yarn from alpaca wool (I amazed her with my knowledge of alpacas, maybe I know too much about them), sheep’s wool, and even…a Persian cat. Yep, almost anything can be fiber that is spun into yarn.

When I got home I finished off my length of wool and made it into a skein by wrapping it around Hannah’s rocking chair.

You can also use a niddy-noddy (I swear I’m not making that up), but this was free. After I tied it off I washed it in the sink (you have to set the yarn or it will unravel the first time you use it) and hung it to dry (it has to dry for about 2 days.)

When done I will have 1 skein of yarn. I was so excited I got to work on some dyed roving I bought from them.

I have green and purple, which should make a neat hat.

I also bought some shiny filaments that you spin into the yarn to make it sparkly!

I love my library.

Evil cat was lying in wait for wonder dog as she came out of the room.

If you wonder who wears the pants in the dog/cat part of our family look here.

See, she is evil, her eyes are glowing.

We started Friday off here.

I have a friend who said that I don’t have to count this on my ER counter because it wasn’t an accident! (Ya’ know like, we haven’t been to the ER in ‘X’ days; we haven’t been since December 07.) Grace started coughing Thursday night and I gave her 2 breathing treatments before bed. Then she woke up at 1:30am and needed another, then another at 7am. I called the doc and she said since Grace was coughing and wheezy and 4 treatments hadn’t worked I should take her to the ER. At the ER her pulse/ox was 85 not too bad, but they’d like to see it in the 90’s. They gave her some steroids and another breathing treatment and listened to her. They didn’t hear any crackling so they said we could go home. Her only request to them was that people who come in more than once need to be able to get different colored gowns; she’s tired of blue. She’ll be fine in a few days after the meds start working and she gets an extra breathing treatment at home everyday.

Back home we rested and then went downtown to the Capitol. Grace was good to go after 5 breathing treatments, so we headed to the Capitol for our dome tour. We have already taken the tour, but today was James day off so he got to go. Denver is one of only 3 state Capitol domes you can go into. We started at Mr. Brown’s attic and found out that it’s called that because Henry Brown (think Brown Palace Hotel) donated the land for the Capitol. There was still the model made out of canned food and some trivia questions about Colorado.

After looking at old pictures and blueprints we headed up the last 66 steps to the dome.

You get to pass through the metal work and even see the stained glass windows from the back as you ascend. Once at the top you have a 360 degree view of the city.

The balcony is still closed because it needs work, but the good news is they aren’t going to close the whole dome to restore that part.

They didn’t get enough money in the budget to do that, so they will just leave the dome open and fix one section at a time. This means that it will take longer though. We walked all the way around to enjoy the views.

Here is the Immaculate Conception cathedral, finished in 1908 (the same year as the capitol.)

Both of the spires have been struck by lighting and Pope John Paul II visited this church. One of these days I’m going to get down there to take some pics of their stained glass windows.

We went down and walked around the building. We peeked in the Senate chamber where construction workers were already hard at work cleaning and fixing things before next session.

The same was true in the House chamber. Next time they are in session we’re going to tell our Rep. that we’re coming and he can introduce us on the floor. (Anyone can do that, just tell you Rep. 1-2 weeks ahead of time on which day you’re coming and they’ll do that for you, just make sure they’re in session!)

We looked at some of the interesting details carved into the building and then went to the mall.

We rode around on the shuttle bus down the mall just looking at stores. The kids had ice cream at Mcd’s and we scored free Denver daisy seeds at the visitor center. We also found the Rockies shop (hidden away in a building above the post office.) Then we headed back home.

It was just the right amount of time spent downtown, not too long as to wear out Grace (or James) and not too short so that we missed something.

With Cova. Hannah does the sponge race and so do Joel and Bethany.

Grace does the obstacle course.

Grace does the 3 legged race and water balloon toss.

Hannah gets wet.

Proof that siblings can cooperate.

Watermelon is good.