Tuesday, January 20, 2015

MLK

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Our plan was to go skiing on MLK day, but apparently so was everyone else's which meant there were no openings in any of the ski schools in the tri-state area.

Skiing with Owen on a crowded ski slope makes me nervous; skiing with Nora on a crowded slope terrifies me. We decided to instead go with Plan B: checking out Daddy's new digs, visiting the American History Museum and dinner at Mom Mom's.

Surprisingly, the kids' favorite part of our agenda was visiting the Clinton Building where Allen's office moved over the summer and which Nora likened to a mansion! There was a lot of fun re-enacting the murals, checking out all the marble and chandeliers and then timing how long it took to climb the spiral staircase (until a devoted EPA employee asked us to keep it down lest she be stuck at work for even longer).

So we headed over to the American History Museum.

It was actually a pretty appropriate way to commemorate Dr. King as we were able to show the kids the Woolworth's lunch counter, Hale Woodruff's murals portraying significant events in the journey of African Americans from slavery to freedom, and civil war artifacts from "The Price of Freedom: American's at War," though if we're being totally honest, Nora preferred the Ruby Slippers and Owen was pretty focused on some gun.

Afterwards, we headed up to Mom Mom's for dinner and a second re-enactment of Nora's favorite mural at Allen's office -- this time in costume (or at least authentic hair-styling)!

(To see all the pics from MLK day, click here.)

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Pinewood Derby 2015



The Pinewood Derby is probably the highlight of the year for the Cub Scouts.  Last year, in his first Pinewood Derby, Owen made it to the semifinals.  This year we started construction over Thanksgiving with some help from cousin Kent and his bandsaw, and with a few new tricks up his sleeve, Owen built a car that was faster than his old one.  He finished second in each of his first three heats (his friend Lucas finished first each time with his fast & cool looking 'Toothless' car).  Owen advanced to the quarterfinals, but the competition was stiffer than last year, and he just missed out on making the semifinals.  Not too bad considering there were over 70 cars entered this year.

We had some extra fun this year building a dad car out of our extra Pinewood Derby kit, and a sister car out of the leftover wood from Owen's car.  Nora painted hers a teal color to match Elsa's dress from Frozen, and I built my car with a GoPro mount.  The GoPro car was a big hit at the Dad's race, they entered it into every heat for 'historical documentation reasons' ;-)  It was designed to be slow, so it would have cars in front of it to film, but it actually beat the super cool 3D printed flame car, and legitimately made it to the finals, where it had a great view filming the other cars from the back of the pack.

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Saturday, January 03, 2015

Liberty GoPro



So on the last day of school before the winter holiday, Nora announced to her class that she was going to Ski Camp over break.  This wasn't entirely true, at least not yet.  We have a big trip to Whistler planned for February, and we we're thinking that we needed to hit one of the local slopes before then for a warm up day, but until Nora's announcement, we thought that would be later in January.  Well, we wouldn't want to make a liar out of Nora, so I decided drive up to Liberty Mountain the day after New Year's with the kids and Aunt Katherine & Uncle L (Mommy sadly had to work.)  True to her word, Nora spent the afternoon in Ski Camp, while Owen skied with the grown-ups, and I played around with my new GoPro (Thanks Mom!)