Crystal Update

Well, the crystals didn't grow so well. I've been trying to figure out why that is. One site said that if you live in a humid climate, they may not grow well. Another site said they are hard to grow anyway. I found one recipe for a 'quick growing crystal' where you had to take a candy thermometer and heat the water to a certain temp for 30 min.

This is how most of our crystals turned out.

This is the one that where we tried the quick growing recipe. The crystals were more like clumped up sugar granules than crystals, but Cody enjoyed eating it anyway.

Happy 1st Birthday Noah!

Noah turned 1 today! I'm amazed that we've had him a whole year already. He's no longer a baby! He's really so sweet and a great kid. I can't tell you how thankful I am that God has given me such wonderful children. I love you Noah. :)

Well, we plan to have Noah's party on Saturday when Grandma Doran and Aunt Robin will be here. So today we just sang "Happy Birthday" to him and I made some banana bread muffins and iced them. They were very good!
The first taste:
Hmm, I think I'll take a handfull:
All done! (Not really, most of it landed on the floor or on his lap. I think he just got done and decided that a plate would make a fun toy!)
He didn't make as big of a mess on himself as I thought he would. Maybe the icing just wasn't messy enough. We'll try for a bigger mess on Saturday!

Growing Crystals

It started with a trip to the library. Cody checked out a book about a little girl who grows sugar crystals for a science fair project. When we finished the book Cody says "I wish I could grow crystals!" Well, how fun is it that we CAN do that? (And we can call it school!)

So here is how this evening started out. Cody is here with all of our supplies.
Pouring the water.
Pouring some sugar.

Dad put the strings and sticks together.
Cody does some more stirring.
At this point, we couldn't take any more pictures for a while because the water was really too hot for Cody to pour, and it took both me and Thomas to color the water and pour it into the cups without spilling. I had originally intended to just have 4 glasses of water, but I forgot that adding so much sugar would make the water go further, so we added a couple more and tried some different color combinations.

Here is Cody with the finished glasses. It's supposed to take a week for these things to grow, so we'll let you know how they turn out!

Various picts from our Maryland trip

These are some pictures that I never got around to posting from our trip to Maryland.


Here is my little reader:

We took a quick trip to the DC zoo. It's always best to let your kids pet and feed the pretend animals.

We ate at Cheesecake Factory (yum!) with Thomas' mom and dad.
Cody got ahold of the camera and took this picture. I think he did a good job:

A trip to Maryland

We're in Maryland this week. We drove up from Florida with my mom. Noah thinks he's big enough to help drive. Do we have another car fanatic on our hands?

So, when I was a little girl, my family would drive by South of the Border when we were on vacation. If you've never driven up I95, there are TONS of exciting signs that advertise this place. It looked like it would be SO much fun for kids! It's kinda like a fair with rides and lots of tourist trap shops. But would my parents stop and let me see it? Nope! So I guess I mentioned this one day recently, and my mom decided that on this trip, we would stop and visit. Well, we arrived when all the rides were closed and it really is pretty dinky, but we had fun taking pictures. And now, at 30, I can say I've been to South of the Border. (Though I'm sure it would have been more exciting 20 years ago, when I first wanted to go.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_of_the_Border_(attraction)

Wow, Cody's growing up! Some of you will remember that we took Cody to Disney World in Sept of last year. He was afraid of almost all of the rides, statues and he even freaked out in the "It's a Small World" ride. Well, yesterday we all went to the Natural History Museum in DC. I wasn't sure he would make it in the front door with all of the statues. But he did great! He even let me take some pictures of him being so brave in front of the dinosaur bones. He's really at a great age to take places like this. He wanted us to read all of the signs about each exhibit and he had so many questions! I love watching him learn!

He also enjoyed the rock section. You'll notice that he carried around his museum map the whole time!

My brother Colin, Cody and me in front of the Washington Monument.

A Perfect Morning

What a great day! Matt Nichols, a friend of ours that attends our life group and church, was baptized on Saturday. He chose to be baptized in the river at dawn. Boy, was it early! I'm not a morning person, so I have to admit I wasn't thrilled about the time. But it was wonderful! The sunrise was beautiful and and we now have a new brother in Christ! Well, I had to blog this event because Thomas baptized him! This is the first time that Thomas has gotten to do a baptism and I'm so proud of him! It was funny because the river was quite muddy till they got way out into the water. It was fun to watch them wade in the mud up to their knees! Thomas says he tried hard not to think about what was in that mud! Here are some picts.
Here, the guys are trying to climb out of the water, but they were walking through mud up to their knees. They both looked like they would fall back in.
Muddy legs:
Just a beautiful view of God's sunrise.

Curls

Noah has adorable curls in his hair when it gets wet. Of course, they don't stay there when it's all dry. Here are a couple of pictures of him right after his bath tonight.