Big Day Today

Sam with his Cub Scout Arrow of Light award!!!

Ben getting his Wolf badge and graduating to a Bear

5th grade kick ball game against the teachers and staff!  Base kick for Sam!

May is zoooooming by

Ben's 2nd grade ran a profitable lemonade stand on Friday.  The students raised money from "investors", they then went to Aldi to purchase supplies, and sold lemonade before school, during lunch, and after school.  It was .75 cup.  Can't wait to find out what their gross and net profit was!  This whole project was right up Ben's alley. 

Speaking of May "zooming" by, we got our first look at the renovated jungle building at the zoo.  They put new sky lights in the building and made some other modifications. 

Fun Little Get Away

The boys were off school for a couple of days, so we ventured up to Topeka and Kansas City for the weekend.  We enjoyed ourselves at the zoo, took a train ride around the park and rode the carousel. 

Dad went to the Royals game with some buddies.

Lego Robotics-Team Mobots

After weeks and weeks of practice Sam's team was finally able to put all the tweaking and testing to work.  Their robot followed the line perfectly! 

Devin (left), Sam, Kendall

McLean Elementary STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) Fair Entries

 Both boys chose topics close to their hearts. Ben wrote an entire Background article that began with the start of Ben ink (the company he founded) and how he had so many crayons to peel, he needed to find a faster method to remove the paper.  He used 14 different objects to peel the paper and we timed the results. He predicted that an item with a blade would be the most effective, and 2 of the top 5 fastest times were bladed items.

Sam chose to study the properties of acceleration based on his love of Hot wheels. Doug and Sam worked together to find out how long it took 3 different models of cars to go from 0-70 and found the rate of acceleration. Doug helped Sam build a wood model that pulled back and would launch a hot wheels car to demonstrate the acceleration

Ben won 1st place among his 2nd grade classmates. So proud of both boys.

A winter blast

After two weekends of raking leaves we needed a break.  It snowed about 3-4 inches.  The snow was awesome for a snow man.

Brotherly love with snow balls.

Sledding fun on Saturday.

Hard at work!!

Last weekend, we bagged leaves at our house.  Today, it was nice again and no wind, so we decided to tackle our neighbor's yard while they are away for a while.  15 bags/825 gallons in one hour.  We'll hit the other side of their fence next week.  Grateful for their new fence as it helped pile the leaves.

It snowed just a hair the other day and Ben wanted to do his snow duty!

Ben bought a snow brick maker at Target the night before it snowed