Hot Air Balloon Landing

Weekly Wrap up: Spring is Here

In my life this week…

We had friends over for dinner again on Saturday night. With the early arrival of spring here on the west coast I fired up the BBQ and made burgers. We are going to pay for this early spring with water restrictions this summer. Our snow pack is not deep enough. As always it was a great time. Their eldest daughter is off to France for two weeks on a school trip. I am so jealous. I plan to do a lot of travelling in my retirement years.

First Sign of Spring
First Sign of Spring

I spotted the first sign of spring in our front yard on Friday. Some bulbs that our friends planted have sprouted. It is nice to see a little color in the yard.

Hot Air Balloon Landing
Hot Air Balloon Landing

On Monday I attended a Scout fundraiser dinner. The next oldest daughter of the same family is going to the world scout jamboree this summer in Japan. Again I am jealous. My wife is part of an Irish band and therefore is very busy this time of year. They had a concert that night so only I went. I sat with the family and again had a wonderful time. Their daughter had a question that stumped me and my Google search. Why is there a hole at the bottom of the middle tines of a salad fork? The best I could come up with was that it was a indicator of which fork was which. She has an innate ability to nerd snipe me.

Nerd Sniping
Nerd Sniping (Source XKCD.com) Clicking will take you to the origional

The Wikipedia search led me to the history of forks and that the Catholic Church frowned on them back in 10th century.

Some writers of the Roman Catholic Church expressly disapproved of its use, St. Peter Damian seeing it as “excessive delicacy”:[11] It was said that… “God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks – his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to Him to substitute artificial metallic forks for them when eating.”

I’m Cleaning…

Laundry Room Finished
Laundry Room Finished

I am finally finished in the laundry room. It is a huge difference. At least half of the stuff is now gone. When I started the boxes were piled out to the door of the bathroom. The drying rack was wedged in there making difficult to get to the bathroom. There was stuff stuffed behind the door out of the picture by the mattress. I got another 2 bags of garbage, 1 of recycling and 1 to donate out of there. So the total out of this area is 14 bags or equivalent. There is one more large box that my wife is going to deal with on Saturday that should be another two worth.

In our homeschool this week…

I was asked last week by Sylvia over at Faithful Mom of 9 about how I got Philip and Margaret to do a project in Minecraft. The truth is that I didn’t. I didn’t even suggest it. In fact I was a little nervous that it would be something that I couldn’t present. They seem to be making great progress even though I made it an out of school activity. I think that they had the idea planted by various videos on landmarks being made in Minecraft. Since Margaret gave up her computer for lent and since homework doesn’t count it gives her a loophole that she has taken advantage of.

Looking up into Hot Air Balloon
Looking up into Hot Air Balloon

The highlight of our week for Ian was watching a hot air balloon landing. We were on our way back from somewhere and saw a hot air balloon flying low. We decided to chase it with me trying to predict where they were going to land. I guessed wrong once but still had plenty of time to make it to their landing site. We got there just in time to see them land. It was one of those events that you just watch. It wasn’t until they were down that I took the time to get out my phone and shoot some photos.

Hot Air Balloon Deflating
Hot Air Balloon Deflating

We talked about what made it go up. He correctly guessed hot air. What made it come down, gravity and what made it go sideways, wind.

We are Reading…

Philip has been reading the third book in the Quantum Prophecy series “The Reckoning”

Margaret has been reading mostly Pokemon books this week. Eventually they will move off of those. I just have to be patient.

I am Cooking…

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies. They were good but I will be tweaking the recipe the next time around.

Other…

I believe in teaching my kids all sorts of life skills but this is ridiculous.

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2 thoughts on “Weekly Wrap up: Spring is Here”

  1. I remember chasing hot air balloons as a kid with my dad too. We live close to a balloon port now, so we see them fairly often. Occasionally one needs to make an unscheduled landing. Our last house was not far from here but was in a subdivision with a golf course. We got a few ballon landings because of the flat greens. Amber always loved to run / toddle up to see the landing balloon.

  2. You Have Crocuses already? I’m jealous! We still have too much snow on the ground! We usually have seen robins by now, but not yet this year! That’s starting to worry me! I’ve never chased a balloon but we have a balloon fest nearby every year. It’s really pretty to see them all in the sky then at night they light them up.

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