10!

Happy birthday to this beautiful girl!

10!

Presents

I’ve had all the feels over the past few days. She is so amazing and independent and sweet and wild and moody and snuggly. I feel blessed every day that I have her in my life.

<3

And these two together. Pure love.

I love everything about these two! I hope they always love each other too!

Sadly Eve will be spending her birthday home on the couch. Her fever is down this morning, but still there a bit and she went to bed last night with 100.7 so I don’t think she should be in school. I think her birthday brownies should though! (they are in the freezer until next week instead!) I stayed home with her yesterday and Alan will be with her today. I imagine lots of snuggles on the couch, TV, and maybe even lunch at Panera if she’s up for it. :)

Studying up on being cool. :)

Eve and Arlo

Eve is home with a fever today. She spent the day on the couch reading, drawing, and snoozing. She’s sick, but not too sick to make ties for the dog. :)

Handsome pup in a bow tie.

Bow tie or neck tie? Hmm….

Silly girl in cat ears.

A lemon of a cat?

We got this sweet new kitty last month.  She is little and crazy and so cuddly.  We knew that she had some problems, but whatever, she’s cuddly.  I took her to the vet last week and the vet confirmed our suspicion that she is a little cross-eyed, apparently common in Siamese cats.  She also had a polyp in her hear when she was young (removed before we got her), which explained her drunken sort of movements.  I told the vet that Alan and I joked that she was a drunken kitty and the vet said, “yeah, her world probably does feel a little shaky to her.”  She also has allergies, to what we don’t know, and bad teeth.  Mostly this was not a surprise because most of it was written on the form when we got her.  The cross-eyed thing was new to me and the fact that the polyp affected her vestibular system (balance).  I’m telling Alan all of this later that night and he replies with, “So, we got a lemon of a cat?”  I cracked up!  Now every time I look at her I think she’s a little lemon.  I just told Lex the story tonight too, explaining what “lemon” meant.  We gushed over our sweet little lemon cat.  :)

Enrichment

I run an enrichment group at school where twice a week I work with a small group of kids who can afford to miss some class time.  The sessions run for 3-6 weeks, depending on the topic, and teachers chose which students to send.  For my upcoming enrichment group Eve’s teacher chose Eve to go.  I was talking to Eve about it the other day and said I was thinking about doing either electricity or book reviews.  She wasn’t thrilled with those options.  :)  She is pretty set on doing a research project about the topic of your choice and presenting it in the way of your choice (prezi, glogster, poster, Google presentation, etc.)

Tonight while I was laying with her I told her I just didn’t feel prepared for an enrichment group about research.  She said, “That’s ok mom, we can do it together this weekend! We’ll start with a rubric.”  The conversation went from there.  When I left her we agreed to work together this weekend on it.  When I went to check on her just now I found this:

Eve’s rubric

I love that girl!  We’ve got education in our blood!

A First Robotics demonstration

This weekend we went to check out a demonstration by the local First Robotics Competition (FRC) team, The Grasshoppers. FRC is the next level up from FLL, which we’ve been doing for the past few years. FRC typically starts in 9th grade, but the coaches told me that they have taken a few middle school kids over the years and would be willing to consider my boy next year. It looked pretty awesome!

This is their demo robot. The competition one is sealed up in plastic, ready for the next meet. The kids got a great close up of the workings in this thing and the high school kids and coaches did a fantastic job explaining it all.

This robot can climb a rope!!! They said it’s not finished yet and they still need to put guides on the robot to help it climb more straight, but it’s still pretty impressive!

We also got a tour of the workshop area and a demo of a bunch of machines they use to make the parts for the robots.

Lex got to adjust the something on the big grinder machine. It’s late and I forget the right words. :)

Dark goggles on! Time for the plasma cutter!

The plasma cutter can cut holes and entire pieces out of sheet metal.  It makes a dangerously bright light though, so everyone had to wear dark goggles.

The guy is holding the piece of aluminum he cut on the plasma cutter. It needs to be cleaned up, bent (another neat machine they showed us), painted, then attached to the robot.

It was a pretty cool demonstration over all.  The team has their next match in a few weeks and we might check it out.  I think it would be pretty impressive!

When the team starts up again in the fall Lex will have a chance to join them for a few meetings to see if he feels up for it and if they think he’s old enough.  If not, we can try again in 8th or 9th grade.  No rush.