D' Science Experiment

It is getting that time of year again when 5th graders are thinking about their science experiments. Elisabeth is trying a very yummy one on for size this time. She is going to see if different kinds of chocolate grow a better sugar bloom. Have you ever heard of sugar bloom? Neither had we. The answer is that it is the white film that develops on top of chocolate when it cures. The hypothesis is that this white film makes chocolate taste different. She will ask some "willing" participants to be taste testers of this chocolate. They will have to taste the chocolate and then rate it.

Should be an interesting experiment. Any volunteers for taste testers? She is using the best chocolate in the world - Swiss chocolate! Should be fun!

Christmas Vacation

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Make a Smileox scrapbook

This Christmas is one to be remembered. Tony was able to come home and stay with us for almost two weeks. It took us a few days to get used to having him around again but we are now used to having him back and his departure on New Year's Day will leave a big void again.

We open our presents on Christmas Eve and Uncle Ruthie was there with us. What a thrill! The people at our house have matured in their belief in Santa and now merely believe in the "spirit of santa". It was a nice Christmas and everyone received useful and wanted presents. We gave Ruthie a quilt that we had started a number of years ago but finally finished. Martin and his family sent us this huge package of German chocolate! We have been farming out chocolate to all of our relatives that have come by. Martin and family! Thanks so much! The chocolate spreaders are doing a good job of spreading around the calories. There was a mean game of scrabble that was played on Christmas Day as well followed by a Ham, Risotto and Salad Christmas Dinner. Yummy! Our camera had gone on the fritz over the summer and Santa brought us a new camera. So, we will be back in business now. We are excited.

Uncle Ruthie learned how to play Rock Band and Guitar Hero at house. Can you believe she has never played these games and she is a walking "whose who of music" almanac? In order to protect the inexperienced we will not be displaying any videos even if they would make for some great entertainment. We watched the batman movie "The Dark Knight". It was a pretty good movie and mom stayed awake through the whole show. WOW!

Aunt Priscilla and Uncle Dan stopped by at our house for a few hours. They live near Chicago and we were so happy to see them as well. Priscilla changed her hair color and it looks absolutely fab! We couldn't tell if Uncle Dan changed his hair color but he looked good too. Priscilla is a pretty good Rock Band member and we vote to add her as our permanent lead singer.

For New Year's we think Aunt Jan will be bringing everyone up from Yuma and Uncle Ray and Company is coming over from Tempe and who knows who else. We will be "d'place to be".

RIP

These were two of the many pumpkins the kids carved this year. Beautiful work with quite a bit of detail. Unfortunately the carved pumpkins mold fairly quickly and so they can't be kept around for too long.

Elisabeth's Birthday

The light may slowly be going on in my head on how to connect the technologies. This was Elisabeth's 11th Birthday party dinner...way back on October 25th. We allowed her to invite two of her friends to a dinner and a show. She wanted to go to the Olive Garden and then I dropped the trio off at Harkins where they watched a movie. They were all dressed up for the event. It was a lot of fun.

Photo Shoot

We went to Woodruff this weekend because Uncle Ray was taking Senior pictures. It was a great photo shoot and the kids had a very good time. This was a nice weekend because for the first time in a very long time we were able to actually "let our hair down" and enjoy our time there. There was no real hard work involved and it was almost relaxing. Enjoy the pictures of the kids.