Muddy Mess

The kids had some friends over on Sunday.  They discovered the creek and pond in the back field...they captured several frogs and had a blast...this is what childhood is all about!  

Science Fair

Emma and Olivia participated in the Science Fair this year.  They had to turn in their projects this morning.  This is actually required in 3rd grade.

Emma did Greenhouse in a Bottle.  She studied the benefits of growing plants in a greenhouse compared to outdoors.  She learned a lot about controlling the environment so the plants will grow.  Unfortunately we did not give her plant enough sunlight in the beginning so it did not grow, but she did an amazing job of analysing it and explaining what went wrong.  

Olivia did her project on Surface Tension.  She wanted to know what the difference in surface tension was between water, milk and oil.  She discovered that oil had the greatest surface tension.  She used pepper, salt and basil to show this.  She found out that surface tension is the attraction of molecules in liquid.  She used dish soap on her finger to break up the molecules and found the pepper and basil spread to the edge of the plates fast in water and milk compared to oil proving that oil has more surface tension.  She learned that salt is not hydrophobic...it didn't move.  She learned a lot and did really well.  

They actually had to present their projects to their class!  What a great thing for both of them!  I'm so proud of them.

Boys Basketball

Marcus just ended his basketball season.  He played with same team as last year.  These are such great kids...lots of fun to watch.  

Back row:  Couch Lou, Porter, Zach, Tommy, Nash

Middle:  Jacob, Dylin, Owen

Front:  Marcus, Ryan

The End of Spring Break

Wednesday was a later start...this kid's exhausted! We decided to dig for butter clams and oysters for a change.  This seemed a little much for the kids so we just sent Marc and Michael out.  Ryder's family and the Cunningham boys headed home so didn't join us this day. 

Michele and I kept the kids entertained in the rocks. The dads dug for quite a while. These rocks make cool picture backdrops. The dads got 5 butter clams total...it's harder than it looks!  So we took a few family photos with the rocks.

We decided to head back and do some clam digging after all...we finished right at noon; the rules are you can't dig on any beaches past noon.  We went right back to our campsite for processing.

Olivia and Lexie decided to do some bike riding. Marcus too.

We did one last crab stop...we ended up with only 1 crab the entire time we were there.  We ate one last dinner at the condo that night...we actually had some clams!  They were delicious!

Then we woke up Thursday morning and hit the road.  Right before we hit Spokane we saw these beautiful fluffy clouds.  We all found pictures in the clouds along the way.  It was such a great vacation!  We love spring break!

Day 3

We started out Tuesday with another clam dig.  Everyone got their limits again then we changed into dry clothes and drove down a ways to explore. 

We were looking for butter clams but didn't really know where to go. We headed back to get some work done.  Every day after clam digging we cleaned and processed our clams for that day.  The kids even pitched in! We had quite the process.  Most of the adults took off shells, cut and cleaned. Then in the camper they went for a final rinse, vacuum seal and into the freezer or cooler.  Stephanie and I had that job.

We headed to the condo for a pasta meal Tuesday night. Little Zac kept telling the girls how cute they were. We headed down to the beach to check out the sunset.  A game of football began. Such a beautiful sunset. Emma said "that was amazing!"

Then more football and The kids thought it would be fun to jump from the dunes. And done for the night!