Adventures at the Planetarium

Here are pictures from our field trip to the planetarium a few months ago. The kids really enjoyed learning about space this semester. In April, we went to the home of one of Brian's coworkers in Springville, who is an amateur astronomer. She had a couple of really nice telescopes that she set up in her backyard for us and we were able to view Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and a double star in the Big Dipper. It was so cool! This month we are going back to look at Saturn. Afterwards she served us hot chocolate and s'mores, and let the kids look at all of her space books. Thank you Heather! We had a lot of fun.

Summer Fun!

We made our summer "bucket list" on Sunday morning. We wrote each item on a white butterfly and when we do one, we color it in. Hopefully by the end of the Summer, our wall will be covered in color!

Eclipse Party

We had an "instant" eclipse party the other night during the solar eclipse. The kids and I fashioned a solar viewer out of binoculars (thanks Ruth) and a tripod and all of the neighbors gradually came by to see it. We even had cookies! Shout outs for pre-made cookie dough! It was really cool to watch this amazing celestial event. Wow! The universe is amazing. Heavenly Father is amazing. The neatest part were the cresent-shaped shadows that filtered through our trees.

Our New Home

Thanks to our good friends, who very sadly had to move away, we were able to rent their home and stay in our same neighborhood! We are loving having our own home again. It's strange to think how grateful I am now for the little things I used to take for granted--like the quiet, the not having to worry about my kids making messes and eating other people's food feelings, and I'm even grateful for having my very own weeds to pull! I am also very grateful for being able to stay near (3 doors down) to Michelle and Kalani. Michelle and I have grown somewhat inseparable and it is very nice to have her so close so we can still do our crazy projects, have do-nothing days, and make impulsive trips to Ikea or the Lobby. We have been very busy painting and organizing and making this house into a home. Here are some picts so far!

I am officially an old lady!

Well, I can pull out my white hairs as much as I want, but I am officially old now! I just was diagnosed with phase 2 osteoarthritis in my thoracic area of my spine. After 12 years of pain, hooray! for a chiropractor that finally took an x-ray and figured out what was really going on! I feel very blessed to be able to fix this problem before it becomes permanent. I have had two adjustments already and can already feel a big difference. Although, it will take approximately 4-6 months to get the joints working like they should, and then conditioning to strengthen the muscles correctly. So, I'm looking at about a year of therapy and then continued maintenance for the rest of my life. I am really excited to feel what it's like to have a normal back again!

This is what's going on in my back:

Valentine's Day!

We had a fun Valentine's Day party on Monday.

We made treats...

we made valentines for our friends...


and we made heart pizzas for lunch!

Here is Michelle's famous "pink feast". We dined on heart-shaped meat loaf, pink mashed potatoes, pink rolls, cherry punch, and heart-shaped jello jigglers.

For Valentine's Day, Brian made me a dvd of some of our best times as a family. It was really sweet. His biggest challenge was getting me out of the house long enough so he could finish it. He also texted me a sweet message every hour while he was at work.

I snuck into his office while he was in a meeting and hid hearts all over and left him some treats. Then, I gave him my real gift...20 pre-planned, mostly pre-paid dates for this year. (I was more excited for this than him, though, since I only let him open the first date). I know what's coming up, and I can't wait! If you want to do this, I got amazing date ideas for this from here and here!

Our Exploits in Space

Click here to watch Megans video project "Space Guy":

Here are our latest science photos. We began our astronomy unit in January and we are well on our way to learning more about our amazing universe!

If the sun were only 1 inch in diameter, this is how far away the planets would be away from each other. Summer is standing by "the sun" and Megan is standing by "Pluto", 108 feet away. But, since the Sun is really 1,392,000 km in diameter, Pluto is really 7,375,927,931 km from the Sun!

This is a model that shows that the planets orbit the sun at different speeds. In the time it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun (twelve months), you can see how far the rest of the planets have gotten in their orbits. In fact, it takes Pluto 248 Earth years to orbit the Sun!
This is a timeline we made of some major events in space exploration. Summer came up with the great idea to make it 3-D!