Balloon Car

Cassie's class had a project to create a balloon powered car. Since this one comes under Jason's expertise, I turned this project over to him.
Here she is with the final project.

Here's the final design. They went through a few design revisions. Jason started with an empty 2 liter bottle. He ended up cutting out as much of the plastic as he could to lighten the car. For wheels, he first used Cd's with the holes covered with card stock. The Cd's were really heavy. Since the air power had to be "exhausted" from a straw or empty pen barrel, he had to put two pen barrels on the balloon in order to get enough thrust to move those heavy wheels. It worked, but the card stock on the wheels wasn't strong enough to keep the wheels straight, and the car had a tendency to turn to the right. While trying to come up with a stronger material to put on the wheels, he came up with the idea of using margarine lids. After the change, the car was really light. He also put a straw across the axles (shish kabob sticks) to keep the wheels turning together, rather than independently. Since the wheels were so light, he was able to go back down to one pen barrel, and the car really moved. It still drifted to one side or the other, but not as bad, and it definitely made the two meters that were required.

This turned out to be one of those projects that parents do 99% of the project. For her part, Cassie sat patiently and fetched when asked, as much as she could. She also had to learn how to blow up a balloon, so it wasn't a complete waste. She did get to see first hand how a project goes through different design phases to completion. I think she got a basic idea of what an engineer does, and she learned about thrust, inertia, and friction.

At school, they raced their cars, and Cassie's was in the top three. When they went to do the final race a few days later, the cars were all a little hammered, so we're not sure who the final winner was. We think it was Cassie.


Here she is demonstrating how it works.

"I Want Beach"

Carston loves going to the beach. Who doesn't right. Well, my girls don't. (So they say, but then they never want to leave.) Every time Carston sees the ocean (which is quite often when you live on an island as small as Okinawa) he says "Beach, beach. I want beach." Well, the weather hasn't been great for a long time. And when we do suddenly get a nice day, we have plans. But on the 24th of February, temperatures were in the 70's, we had a break in the storms, and I had no plans. We packed up a lunch, a blanket and towel, and the sand toys and headed down to Torii Beach. The clouds came in on us after a few hours, but it didn't rain. Carston and I waded just a bit out into the water for a little while. It was really cold at first, but our feet got used to it

Carston playing in the sand.

I'm not sure why he's closing his eyes.

While I was packing up, Carston found a big hole in the sand. He told me to get in it. I told him I wasn't going in, so he asked if he could. He played in the hole for a little while, and then when he got sand in his eyes, we were able to leave. It was a nice, relaxing morning, and it felt so good to feel the sun's warmth for a few hours.

Trying a New Japanese Treat

Carston and I had to go to the produce market the other day. Outside there are some vendors that sale prepared food. All of it smells very yummy, but the one selling these pastries (I guess you'd call them pastries) smells the best. They had two kinds. Carston wanted the fish.

Basically, it's like pancake batter poured into a fish shape mold and filled. The circle ones were filled with a white cream. The fish ones were filled with a beni-imo filling. It was really good.

Needless to say, Carston wasn't hungry for lunch when we met Daddy at the bowling alley, even though he only ate half of it. Next time we go, I think we might have to try the circle ones. Maybe I'll even take the girls next time.

100 Kindergarten Days

The 23rd of February marked 100 days of school for this year. At Jessica's school, they have a huge celebration for the Kindergarten for 100 days. One of the things they do is wear shirts with 100 things on them. Of course, Mom forgot and put this project to the side over the weekend. So, she spent the evening of the 22nd, until 11:00 PM, sewing items onto Jessica's shirt. This picture was at the end of the day, and a few things had fallen off, but her shirt included 1 one hundred, 3 jingle bells, 11 ribbon bows, 14 ribbon flowers, 21 iron-on patches, and 50 buttons. At school, they had a couple of jumping houses, face painting, tons of games, and tons of treats. She had a wonderful day.

Gloves for your toes

Check out Jason's new running shoes. They are called Five Fingered Shoes, and they are very popular among American runners around here. There is no padding in the shoe. Just a Vibram sole, to protect your foot, and a breathable cloth top. The theory is that man was made to run barefoot and wearing shoes changes they way the foot strikes. So, these shoes are supposed to help you run more on the balls of your feet, which is supposed to help reduce the impact on the joints and back while you run. Jason has been running with them for a few weeks. He says he can feel cracks and textures in the road. Although it doesn't hurt, at first, it was his natural instinct to flinch from the texture change. Lately, the tips of his toes have been a little tender, and he's wondering if it's the shoes. We're still in testing mode. I'm going to let him be the test subject in our family.

Valentines Day 2011

Since having children, our Valentine's Day traditions have changed a bit. The restaurants are packed, the baby sitters are busy, and, often, it's a school night. It's just not a good time to go out. Back home, our tradition was to get take-out Chinese and some Sparkling Cider, take off the protective cover on our table, get out the candles and the glass flutes, and have a romantic dinner- just the five of us. No take-out Chinese here, so Jason and I prepared it ourselves. We made ham-fried rice, Mongolian beef, and lemon chicken. It was very yummy.

We laid out the kids' gifts at the table. They each got some kind of craft and a little monkey. I left Jason's present out in the morning before he went to work- a bowling ball, bag, and shoes. He's been bowling with the guys at work on Thursdays. (I was making up for all the expensive presents he bought me at Christmas.) That evening, he gave me some nice Under Armour running shirts. (I won't buy them on my own, because Under Armour is too expensive.) We thought we would save the money on cards for each other, and just make cards. I know Jason hates it when I ask him to do things like this. I just made a Valentine idea that I got online- a chocolate stuffed card. Jason wrote me a beautiful poem about our life together. He's such a good guy to participate and make such an effort.

The other exciting thing about Valentine's Day is that we were unable to buy Valentines at the store for the kids' classes. They run out of that stuff early here. So, I believe we've started a new tradition of making our Valentines; which ends up being a lot of work for Mommy. I spent the whole day on Saturday making Valentines, and recruiting the kids' help when I got to a point that they could do something. I forgot to take pictures. They turned out really cute. Cassie made a rocket out of mentos and Jessica made heart flowers out of suckers. (Jessica's was definitely the easier of the two.) As usual, I stole the idea off of familyfun.go.com, so you can see the ideas there, if you are really interested.

Honor Roll- 2nd Quarter

Cassie has worked very hard at school this year. There is just so much homework, and her teacher is a stickler, so getting good grades is not a give-me. But, we were very happy to find out that Cassie made the honor roll for second quarter. Here she is at the awards assembly:

Her final grades were:

Language Arts: A-

Math: A-

Science: A

Social Studies: C

Health Education: A

We had missed an assignment in Social Studies that was worth 100 points, and she just never could recover from that. Good thing she got A's in everything else. We are so proud of her and all her work.