Science, Plays and other such things

Friday was a busy and fun day for all.  Kenzie had Renaissance Day at school.  The 5th graders were responsible for planning Renaissance activities for all of the grades.  Kenzie was in the Renaissance Dance group and so she taught the same dance to 10 different groups of students. 

Thank goodness for Aunt Debbie that made Kenzie and Kayla BEAUTIFUL Renaissance Dresses last year for Halloween!!

While Kenzie was dancing the day away, in Kayla's first grade class they were doing science experiments.  They are studying the states of matter and how those states of matter can change.  So Joe and I came in and we made Old fashioned homemade ice cream with the students.  We also did the Mentos in Soda experiment and tried to figure out if more mentos would lead to larger fountains of soda.  It turned out that you get maximum height with 8 mentos and more than 8 mentos gives you about the same height.  Kayla was my trusty lab assistant and helped me prep each bottle of soda and released the Mentos into each bottle!  She will make a great scientist one day!

Thank goodness for Joe's big muscles as we only had 25 minutes to turn the liquid milk-sugar mixture into frozen ice cream!

At the end of the day the 5th graders performed a modified production of William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Nights Dream".  Kenzie played the mischievious fairy PUCK in the play.  She did a wonderful job and was so comfortable on stage!

Our Nations Capital

Had the pleasure of spending 4 days in Washington DC with the girls while Sarah was at a conference.  Miles and miles of walking continuously led to another treasure.  Each day's Metro ride into the Mall revealed something new to see. 

Day 1:  Washington Monument, WWII Memorial, Reflection Pool (aka. Big Hole in Ground undergoing renovation), Lincoln Memorial, Holocaust Museum, Natural History Museum.

Day 2:  My niece and her family from Maryland came and spent the day with us.  We toured the Monuments, Air and Space, Natural History Again, and the White House.

Day 3:  Sarah played hookie from her meeting and we all went out to the Air and Space Hanger in Virginia.  So many cool planes:  SR71 Blackbird (the one that "transformed" into Jet Fire in this exact building in the Transformers movie), the Enola Gay, the Space Shuttle Enterprise (and not the one from Star Trek), the Concord, fighter planes from WWI, WWII, and everything more recent, acrobatic planes from the last 100 years of flight, and so much more.  This place really is a treasure trove of aeronatical history.  It is off the normal tourist map but a MUST SEE if you like airplanes!

Day 4:  Only had a half day to explore so we wrapped up the trip with Engraving and Printing Museum (now I know what $1 million looks like), Jefferson Memorial, American History Museum (Kermite the Frog was actually more gray than green....maybe he just faded with age).  Did you know that the Ruby Red Slippers from Wizard of Oz were supposed to be Silver in the original script?