Sometimes it’s really hard to teach 4 kids of varying levels and degrees of education. Like this morning. Bethany was doing grammar, Grace was supposed to be reading, Hannah was feeding the dog math blocks and Joel was doing math. Now bear in mind that I’m torn 4 ways while trying to teach this stuff and man! Anyway, Joel had this problem.

From sepchdmuseum

Now my answer book only shows the answer, it doesn’t show how to get the answer (you have to work for that one.) It also doesn’t show what the actual problem is in Joel’s book, so I wrote the top part on the white board for Joel to work out, but I left out the part that is circled - the answer. I thought they wanted him to find the answer to the problem, no (read directions next time) they wanted him to find out what ‘n’ was. So after working out the problem, I was like, ‘How did they come up with that answer when they had only this to start out with, lemme see your book.’ Ahh….the light. They had the whole equation with the answer written out, solve for ‘n’. Okay, that’s better, now I know what the heck you did to come up with n = -3. Tomorrow I must look at his math book first to see how much of the equation they give. Then he was having trouble with infinitive phrases, I can relate. Why give us a clue that they can have the word ‘to’ in them and then choose 4 sentences to pick from that all have ‘to’ in them? Argh! I don’t like grammar. We made it through school in record time because we were on our way to see a movie with a friend.

Kung-fu panda was cute. It was funny (although I could have done without the ‘hit in the genitals’ joke) and had a good message. There is no secret ingredient. Like Bob the tomato likes to say, ‘God made you special and he loves you very much.’ Yep, it’s just you. You can’t have a special power (although it would be cool to be invisible) to make you a better person. You can’t get better at something by day dreaming about it. But, you can achieve a dream by working hard at it, listening to advice from elders and having a vision and a goal. It doesn’t matter if people think you’re weird or goofy or fat or a nincompoop, what matters is - what you think. Do you believe in yourself? Don’t let others get you down, look towards your goal and run after it. And that’s what I learned from King-fu panda!

We headed over to the Children’s museum after the movie to see the new construction exhibit. We got there a little early (it was free day and they don’t open until 4pm) so we played on the swings and then the trolley rolled up. I thought they closed after Labor day, but they are still running a small schedule. So we hopped on board and rode the trolley next to the Platte river. We went past Invesco field and when we stopped we turned the seat in front of us over and got to sit facing the other direction. It was nice and cool and although the trip was short (we didn’t go down to REI) it was a neat diversion. That put us back at the museum right when they opened. First stop - the construction site (which ends this month.) They really need to keep this thing. Well, not all of it. The pretend painting, electric side and pipes can go, but the giant legos, wheelbarrows and conveyor belt needs to stay. The kids had fun building houses out of the blocks; Hannah had fun knocking them down. She got a kick out of putting the blocks on the conveyor belt and then watching them fall out the other end.

From sepchdmuseum

She did not like the wheelbarrow, she got it loaded up and then said, ‘How you do this thing?!’ It was flopping left and right, finally she abandoned it in favor of helping Joel build a house.

From sepchdmuseum

Bethany and Joel studied the conveyor belt and ran upstairs to see what they could make in the tool area. They found toilet paper rolls, but no paper or anything thin enough to make a belt out of. Later at home they concocted a small conveyor belt out of paper, a rolling pin and the roll that the paper was on. I have a feeling I’m going to need to buy a lot more paper or something that they can use as a belt. We went thorough the grocery area, the worm and animal den and sat watching the birds outside.

From sepchdmuseum

Then it was time to head over to WOTR.

Wings over the Rockies was having a volunteer night and lecture. First we got to eat pizza and listen to the lecture (they like to feed us before they work us!) Our speaker was Bob Semro who has done an extensive study of the Russian space program for Wings. He had a slide show with pictures of the first and second generation shuttles that Russia sent up, including the Voskhod which had a inflatable airlock for EVA maneuvers (here it is in the museum.)

From sepchdmuseum

First he talked about the Vostok to give us background on the Voskhod. The Vostok shuttle went up in 1960. A later model put the 1st cosmonaut in orbit in 1961. Then, of course, the space race was on. The Russians certainly weren’t sharing any information with us and started on another model that was supposedly new (but turns out it was a kind of Vostok and Soyuz hybrid.) They started to change the shuttle to make it able to seat 2 or 3 cosmonauts, but they gave up attitude control for that (that will come in later.) They made their atmosphere out of oxygen and nitrogen; because they thought plain oxygen was too flammable (we learned that in the Apollo mission.) This tended to give their guys the bends when they re-entered too quickly. They had TV cameras mounted inside and out to record the EVA and mission.

The Russians launched the Voskhod with two cosmonauts inside: Alexey Leonov and Pavel Belyayev.

Leonov went on his space walk about 90 minutes into orbit. He went through the inflatable air lock and came out in space. He wasn’t out long before problems arose. First his suit was at such a high pressure that he couldn’t bend. He couldn’t get back inside the airlock and his air was running low (it took awhile to go through the airlock and get out.) So, he let out some pressure, but it still wasn’t enough to bend his legs (he was supposed to enter feet first in the lock.) He had to go in head first and then turn around in the air lock. Now, if you see this thing at the museum it’s about 8 feet long and about 3 feet wide, but he managed to turn around. Then when he got back inside the shuttle there was a cabin leak from the hatch not closing securely. Then the cabin started to pump in more oxygen to compensate for the loss of pressure, which they thought might lead to a fire. They split off from some equipment which sent them into a spin that was 3 rotations every few minutes. Then (drama continues) they lost the use of their attitude control (they are counting on a level entry so the retro rockets can fire and not make them have a crash landing – with rolling, they are after all in a giant ball.) So Leonov had to unstrap, lean over his co-pilot and guide the craft manually while looking through a small glass port-hole. They were off course by 1,200 miles and it took them 2 days to be rescued. They landed in a dense forest in Russia and the helicopter that came to rescue them actually had to buzz them to scare away the wolves.

So, that is the story of one close call and the spacecraft that used an inflatable airlock (one time) to go outside in space. We thought it was neat. Now it was time to clean up and get started on filling up boxes that were going out to schools (how ironic, boxes full of stuff for schools that were partially filled up by homeschoolers!)

From sepchdmuseum

We peeled stickers, stacked cones, filled boxes with trash bags, ropes, balls, airplanes and books.

From sepchdmuseum

Hannah was ready at her station to throw in rope and a water bottle. Grace and Bethany helped put stickers on orange cones and load up the boxes. Joel had to sort through 55 bags and put them in order. The coordinator had a really good system going: grab a box and tote it around the room picking up stuff that matches that number box. We got about 30 boxes done and then stopped. We’re going to be busy here at Wings coming up soon, they have Glory days at Lowry this weekend and next week we’re helping at the educators night, and there was something else too….I’ll remember it later I’m sure.

If you’re in Denver this weekend, go to Lowry Glory days festival. Wing’s is free and you can also tour the Eisenhower chapel, play games, see the money bus, eat and walk around Lowry (a former AFB.) See a schedule here, have fun!

We had loads of people at park day, good weather always a plus. The kids were having a pretend gun battle/light saber fight/capture the flag games. None of my kids got hurt, always a good thing! I made sure I had the full bottle of medicine for Grace today so we didn’t have a repeat of Monday. We ate and played and talked. It’s so nice to get together with other HS’ers and play (and talk.) There’s nothing worse than going to a park and being the only one there, or noticing that all the kids are 3 and realizing that you are the only HS’er there (not that 3’s can’t be HS’ed, but usually when there are no big kids at the park, it’s because they are at school.) We relayed our information about the DNC and how it was going downtown, we’re headed back today. There was some concern about a 55 galloon drum of poop that the cops found (but they found it, so I ‘m guessing it’s not a concern now!) Finally we had to go so we could deliver our snacks downtown.

Wow, 10 pounds of fruit, a galloon of water and 24 PB crackers weigh a lot. I had Joel carry 5 lbs of bananas, I had the apples, water and crackers. We got to Civic center park and it was all chain link fenced off. We went over to the green zone (green zone = safe place. No violence, no cops.)

The street medics had set up an area that was outside the fence to have medical care and food. I asked them about the fence and where everyone was, they said they are just around. So, we headed to the mall to give out the food. We stopped by the bus stop and gave out some fruit. Then on to the mall where we found people sitting in the middle of the bus route (there’s a median in the middle for shops to set up and chairs to hang out on.) One guy was right next to a vendor selling magnets for your car (mostly Obama ones.) He gave the girls a free magnet with a frog on it and we gave him crackers. Next we found a guy playing the guitar we traded him a banana for a song (I think we got the better deal.) He was really good, he played “Stand by me” and it drowned out the yells of the protestors on the other side of the mall.

We headed towards the block fountain behind the Fischer tower and met up with another group to hand out food to. They were part of the Tent state people on their way to the Pepsi center for the big protest. Since Civic center was closed off they went somewhere else; I was thinking the park by Union station, but they were headed the wrong way for that. They thanked us for the water and food and then marched down the street (to the sound of their own drum, literally.)

One good thing about the DNC being here is that Denver stepped up and fixed some things. Like the fountains.

Now, my kids wished they hadn’t fixed this one in particular because they like to climb all over it, but it was nice sitting there listening to the water.

They also fixed the Greek theater fountain, the Smoky hill trail fountain and I’m sure others. Not only did they fix them, they cleaned them (and they needed it.)

I’m sure there will be a lot of trash to pick up after the convention, but businesses made out (especially those democrat t-shirt shops.) Even the Army surplus store was getting in on the Democratic mania.

Yes, we went down to MSNBC again, there were a lot more people there.

And I noticed more people with kids, looks like they took my advice and decided to come down and have a look. We rode the shuttle back to the Capitol and gave the rest of our apples to the street medics. The ice cream man saw the kids passing by again and asked if he could give them a snow cone. He said they worked so hard and deserved a treat, of course I said they could have it.

His friend said, ‘hey weren’t you here the other day with sandwiches?’ Seems he was a recipient then and they were passing the blessing back to us. So, we sat on the grass and watched some people hula-hoop, listened to another group play their djembe drums and watched as the volunteers handed out free food. At one point the hula people took their hoops over to the police and looked like they were asking them if they wanted to hula.

The police across the street were cracking up, the one’s being asked didn’t look too amused. Oh, and we found out the park was closed off for the Taste of Colorado going on this weekend, who thought that was a good idea?

Well, that’s it for us. We won’t be down tomorrow when NObama gives his speech. It was really neat to see the people downtown, get to help out and meet some really nice people. We’re just a little sad that Stephen Colbert never came into town like he said he would, but we’ll get over it.

Our WOTR work party went well. They fed us pizza and we listened to Lt.Col. George Peck talk about his adventures as a public affairs officer with the B-1 program. He met the president and showed him the plane, he took up the Brigadier Gen. in the plane, and he was at the Paris air show in ’87 showing how great the bomber was. He said that his job before the bomber program was to ‘show up in front of the smoking hole.’ If a run went as planned he did nothing, if they missed he had to stand in front of the hole and tell the public what happened. He had lots of great stories about the plane. This plane is number 3 of the bunch.

The Lt. was also the last public affairs officer at Lowry and was on the board of the Wing’s museum. After the talk we waited for the fire department to come with the hoses. One thing you need for washing a plane is water. The girls spent time sweeping the hangar beforehand.

Finally the trucks arrived and hooked us up.

A couple of guys got on top of the plane to spray it down (and the other planes in the area.)

The kid’s job was to sweep the water outside.

So, they actually cleaned the floor too. It didn’t take long for my kids to realize that if they stood under the planes’ wings they would get soaking wet.

This was just a happy by-product of sweeping. At times I think they stood directly in the line of fire from the hose. After a lot of sweeping and mopping and brushing they were ready to go.

The planes still had to be dried off, but none of the kids seemed interested in that part!

I told the volunteer lady that all they need to do to clean the place is provide pizza and a water hose; my kids will do all the rest!