Boat Birthday Party

Kevin has been wanting to rent a boat for Connor's birthday for a while now, so this year, we did it.

Our friend David has the same birthday as Connor, so we invited his family to join us, too.

We dropped anchor so that we could play in the water for a while.

There was a slide from the upper deck down into the lake.

It was awesome!

It took many tries to figure out how to launch this thing, but it was totally worth it.

The Ginormous Rocket Launch

We ate Williamson Bros. BBQ takeout, and we had some of their pies for dessert.

Their key lime pie is amazing.

Birthday Time!

Happy Boating Birthday!!

Inaugural Launch of the Saturn V

For Connor's 4th Birthday, his Papa Kirk bought him an Estes brand Saturn V model rocket kit that was as big as he was.  We've been building the dang thing for almost two years.  It's not entirely our fault that it took so long - we've talked to experts at one rocketry convention and our local model rocket shop, and it's just a badly designed kit.  In fact, in order to finally finish it, Kevin had to go to the hardware store and buy some wood and redesign an entire element of the rocket and then construct it from scratch.  These were the barriers to our quick completion of the rocket.

That, and well, Connor was only four when he started working on it.  How many four year olds can put together a tricky defective model rocket?

So it was with great fanfare and joy in our family that our, I mean Connor's, Saturn V was finally done!  We were so excited that we decided to go out and launch it the very next morning!

This is our launch pad, with the Big Baby set up on it.

There is a rocket shop in the back of my car!

We started out with our smallest rocket, just to test the wind.  It was really windy that morning and we weren't sure if the rockets were going to blow way off course.



The rocket is so small that you can barely see it as a black dot as it was coming back down in that video, but Connor was able to recover it!

He has a little toy dog in his pocket.  See?

Then we launched the Big Baby.  It went so high and so far that it landed across the park, across the parking lot at the park, and about two feet from someone's back fence.  We got lucky there.  I'm glad it didn't land in someone's yard, or on their roof.

And then we launched the Saturn V!

The first launch went so well that we decided to do it again!

Tellus Science Museum

I hadn't planned to go to the Tellus Science Museum.

There was a a giant T-Rex skeleton pictured on a billboard right next to our hotel advertising the Tellus Science Museum, and we saw it every day that we were in Atlanta.  But Tellus isn't actually in Atlanta, so I had written it off, despite the fact that Connor asked to go.

Then, on the way home, I noticed that I needed to stop and buy gas when we were in northern Georgia.  I also noticed that the next exit not only had gas stations, but a roadside stand that sold pecans.  Now I love me some praline pecans from Georgia, and I hadn't had any since my parents had brought me some after their vacation in early December.  It had been weeks since my last praline pecan fix, so I decided I needed some more.

It was only after we got off the exit that I discovered that we had stumbled upon the Tellus Science Museum.  It was right there.  Right next to the gas station.  So we had to go.

Amethyst Geode, one of the largest in the world, found in Brazil
Size:  7 feet x 5 feet
Weight:  4400 lbs

(Connor ended up picking up a geode in the gift shop for us to take home and break open ourselves.)

Fluorscent minerals

Quartz

We really liked the way that the historical cars were displayed on top of giant mirrors so that you could see the engine and drive systems underneath.  Some of them were so simple that Connor was able to clearly see how the engine worked to turn the wheels.




I always forget just how big the Saturn V was.


Dinosaur Fossil Dig



We had a great time at Tellus, and I'm glad that we stopped to visit on our way home.  We were able to explore, eat lunch, buy some toys in the gift shop, and burn off some energy for before the rest of our drive home.  We had so much fun that I actually forgot to stop and buy the dang pecans before getting back on the freeway.  Don't worry, I didn't forget to buy gas, though.

The End.

crash landing!

This is what it looks like after you are done playing tackle football with your brother inside your rocket while traveling through space towards Mars:

Lex is All Things Outer Space

Tonight is the Leonid Meteor Shower.  The boys wanted to go out tonight and have a picnic and lay on a blanket and watch.

Sidebar:  Connor kept mispronouncing blanket as "blank-let."  I really enjoyed that, because my Grandma said "blank-let" her entire life.  I don't think she could ever pronounce it correctly.

But then Connor fell asleep early.  Lex, however, was not to be deterred.

Here is Lex, all ready to go outside tonight.  He has the picnic blanket, and a picnic basket full of snacks that he picked out all by himself.  He chose raisins, Hostess chocolate donettes and apple chips.  Also, note that he is playing with his hair.  That's what he does when he is tired.  Tired or not, he wasn't about to give in, so outside we went.

It turns out that tonight is going to be a great night to view the meteor shower, because there aren't any clouds in the sky.  But, since there aren't any clouds to hold in the heat, it was about 35 degrees when we were out there.  We didn't last too long.  Just long enough for Lex to lay down for a few minutes, use some binoculars and eat a donette.  Which equates to about 10 minutes.

When we came back inside, Lex wanted to work on his space ship. 

You see, Connor and Lex have been building a space ship out of some cardboard boxes all week long.  It started off with just one box, and then another one was added, and then another one, and then another one.  They even started working on two boxes at Nana's house with the intention to bring those home and add them, too, but I forgot them when we were leaving.

That little box on the front is the oxygen filtration system.  There is another little box on the back that is the gyroscope. 

Space Captain Lex!

How many photos of airplanes are too many?

So this one time (last week), I took the boys to see America's Hangar.  You know, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.  No?  Well, okay, you may know it better by its other name:  The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.  Not the one in downtown Washington, D.C.  The one in Chantilly, Virginia, about 35 minutes away from D.C.

Okay, now that we have cleared that up, let's look at waaaay too many photos of airplanes.  I don't know why I took so many photos of airplanes.  And missiles.  And spacecraft.  And my kids.  But here are a few:

Like this one.  Do you know what this is?  This is Connor with the Enola Gay, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945.

But that isn't what drew us to the Udvar-Hazy Center in the first place.  No, we went with an aim to see two particular things: the Blackbird and the Discovery.

Here is the Blackbird.  You can see Connor and Kevin near the rear wing on the right side.  Also, you can see the space shuttle in the background.

1.  The SR-71 Blackbird:

Both Connor and Lex picked model SR-71 Blackbirds from the gift shop as their souvenir for this trip.  Their sound effects are amazing.

 2.  The Space Shuttle Discovery:

I was also really impressed with the F-14 Tomcat and the Concorde.  There are so many airplanes and missiles and airplane engines and helicopters and gliders and things to look at there that every time we walked past something, we spotted something new.  And the boys were running around for hours, so we walked past everything many, many times. It never got boring. 

Full disclosure:  I took a full 390 photos in a single day trip to see the Blackbird and the Discovery.  Oh, and we ate at the McDonald's restaurant next to the gift shop THREE different times during our visit.  (For lunch, snack and dinner.  Really.)  And, after a full day of running around this huge place, Lex fell asleep on the cab ride back to the hotel, and slept like a baby, while the rest of us watched the Olympics on TV. (Sidebar, I think I am having Olympics-withdrawal this week.  So is Connor.)