What We've Been Up To

A little of this, a little of that.

Grass, ready to be blended with water

The pureed grass and water mixture, ready to be dehydrated

 Justin wanted to experiment with different types of grasses and try to replicate the papyrus the ancient Egyptians used to make from reeds. I didn't get a picture of the final result, but he ended up with a sheet of "papyrus" that he was actually able to write on! I have to admit, my skepticism was undeserved.

We've also been busy tadpole hunting. We weren't quite sure what we were looking for, but it turns out we managed to snag some frog eggs from our local pond. Justin is nurturing these and we have been experiencing frog mania around here. He checked out every book he could find at the library about frogs and has become something of an expert on tadpole development. Last night he dubbed "frog night" and we watched frog documentaries and played made-up-by-him frog themed games. This morning he informed me frog night had morphed into frog week. Oh boy! Lucky us :)

He also decided to try and recreate a "hot spring" (think Yellowstone) on the stove top. He boiled water, keeping track of the rising temperature on a candy thermometer. He added red food coloring to make it look like it was filled with thermofiles (heat-loving microorganisms).

Step 2 was to add a bunch of something (he left this part undefined) to turn it into a mud pot so it could (in his words) go "blurp, blurp." I am a bit sorry to say at this point of the day (it was 8 pm and Day 3 of Dave being out of town on a mission trip) I threw in the towel and pleaded equal parts exhaustion and insanity as I told Justin that part 2 would have to wait for another time. I just couldn't get the picture of adding pounds and pounds of flour to this hot spring mixture to get the result he was picturing and afterwards trying to figure out a way of disposing of it without disposing of the remains of my sanity as well!

In between history experiments, science experiments, and nature hunts, he still keeps busy bird watching and chick-raising (we did have to ground him from the chicks a few days ago because we caught him giving the 3-week old chicks flying lessons, which consisted of him throwing a chick up in the air as high as he could and letting it drop...we are fortunate none of them ended up with broken legs).

I just realized all of this took place in the span of 4 days. Whew. Never a dull moment!!