Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific

From Long Beach Aq...

Last Saturday we went to the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific with Nana and had a really wonderful time. Jackson was a handful as always, but he really loved the fishies. The pictures speak for themselves:

From Long Beach Aq...

From Long Beach Aq...

From Long Beach Aq...

After a great time there, we came back home and had a nice mexican dinner and cake and icecream for Nana's birthday. Can you even believe she's 49 this year?

Sunday Joey spent working on his Chinese Invention: Gunpowder report and Jenn went wedding dress shopping with Michelle.

This weekend I'm leading a scout trip up to Sequioa Crest. It should be cold, and there isn't very much snow. I just hope it's not a trip filled with nothing but freezing mud. =/ We have all of our winter gear ready, and I'm (pretty) sure the trip will go smoothly.

Busy Weekend

Another full weekend!

On Saturday morning I cooked the World Famous Cordes Family German Potato Salad for Greg and Michele's engagement party. The party was great with many of their friends and family in attendance. Joey was a sport, and Jack held up well.

The party was at Greg's parents house, and in the back yard they have a small pond surrounded by small rocks. Jack LOVES throwing the rocks into the pond and knows he isn't supposed to. So, as an alternative I got him throwing ice from the tubs of drinks in. He would run over to the tub, grab one or two pieces of ice, then run over to the pond on throw them in. He did this for probably two hours straight. Helena started doing the same thing, except she would throw in the ice, and pick up a rock and toss it in as well. I guess the ice wasn't enough for her.

After that party, we went over to Nana's house for Casey's 21st birthday party. We didn't stay too long as we were all dead tired, and wanted to get Jack home and to bed. Happy birthday Case!

Sunday morning we went back to Nana's for a nice breakfast. It was Scout Sunday so Jenn and Joey went to the service at our local Methodist church. Jack and I hung out with Auntie Megan, Cubby, Nana and Casey. Jackson largely amused himself (and the rest of us) and we played a bit on the Nintendo. Nana, Casey and I played bowling a bit, and nana beat us handily. I've been playing video games for more than 20 years, and somehow she's beating us consistently. It's just not fair. =p

We spent a lazy afternoon at home with naps and some laundry. Joey and I watch most of "The Game" and then Jessica came over to watch Jackson while we went out to dinner at Famous Dave's. It was delicious.

We had originally intended to go bowling afterwards, but opted for Wii bowling instead. The four of us played a few rounds. Jenn won the first round, and I won the rest. So, I felt redeemed.

The Last Question

I just read a short story by Asimov that was really fantastic. It's called The Last Question and spans the bredth of all human history, with a great ending. Really neat!

My Oracle Model Rocket Launch!

My rocket launch video from last weekend.

Vandenburg AFB

From Boy Scouts Va...

Joey and I went with the scouts to Vandenburg AFB this weekend and had a really great time.

We arrived at our camp site at about 9pm and got our tents up just before the rain started. It rained most of the night. I stayed dry, but unfortunately Joe was stuck with the puddle side of his tent and got wet.

We woke up early, ate a quick breakfast, and started launching rockets in the adjacent softball field. Our scoutmaster Bill had built a slick multi launch contraption that would allow us to set up 6 rockets at once, and then let the boys launch them sequentially. The boys would go up to this big black box, turn a key and wait for the ready light to come on, then press a big hand held thumb button to launch the rocket. They loved it.

The day started off will little wind and no rain, but by the time we stopped with was quite windy, and the rain had started coming down hard. I was tormented with weather I should launch my fancy camera rocket for fear of losing it. I finally gave in a launched it (scroll up a bit for the video). It was windy, and since the smaller rockets were getting blown around a lot during ascent, I had my launcher angled. But my larger, heavier rocket wasn't affected by wind nearly as much, and so I had over compensated. It flew a long way at a relatively low angle. Then, when the parachute deployed, the band that connected the nose cone and parachute to the rocket body snapped and the body fell to earth. Some of the boys found it in the middle of a small wooded thicket. I found the nose cone and parachute up in a tree.

Joey got two launches with his rocket. I gave away the three extra I had brought to 2 webelos who had none, and one scout who forgot his. My smallest one I launched with the largest motor that would fit. It flew horribly (due to it's design, and not my construction). It was last seen flying horizontally towards a wooded area. I didn't bother chasing it.

After lunch, we went on a 5 hour driving tour of the air force base, and saw a couple of the historical locations (WWII training area, place where 7 destroyers ran aground), and a bunch of the Space Launch Center (SLC's). Most interesting was SLC-6 (pictured above) that was built to accommodate Space Shuttle launches, though none ever too place.

We were scheduled to go bowling on base after the tour, but it ran long and we missed our opportunity. So, we had a nice dinner and camp fire and went to bed just before it started raining... again. It poured for a good portion of the night.

We all stayed mostly dry and woke up early and drove home.

We were joined on this trip by my friend Brent and just older kid Robby. It was really great to have them with us.

Slow Week

Nothing much happened this weekend. We worked around the house (yardwork, worked on garage a bit, got the roomba schedular working, etc).

On monday morning Jackson was visited by the pink-eye fairy, which apparently had sprinkled his little backpack with pink-eye seeds last week, and was just visiting to make sure they bloomed. And they did. Poor kid was a trooper, and behaved very well at the doctor's office. Though getting the eyedrops into his eyes was a different story.

So I stayed home from work on Monday to take care of him, and then Tuesday I had my own doctors appointment. I only had it very mildly, but was given drops just in case.

Great fun.

This weekend should be a blast, though! We're going with the Boy Scouts to Vandenburg AFB for camping, a base tour, and model rocket launching. I bought a big fancy rocket with a video camera in the nose that records the launch and retrieval. I'm pretty excited about sending that one up, and I'll post videos is the thing works. I've also built 4 other smaller rockets for any of the boys who don't have one, or who have problems. I guess our scoutmaster has built a big launch platform thingy that'll launch up to 6 rockets at once. It should all be very cool! And cold. It's supposed to be down to 38 degrees at night.

In previous years we've had nothing but the greatest level of cooperation with military bases. They've always been very happy to give us tours and let us use their services, but this year we had great difficultly getting them to commit to any kind of tour. They said they're stretched very thin by the war in Iraq, but it could just be they don't want to work on the weekend. Who knows...

Winter AND Snow?!?

One of Joey's teachers came over on Wednesday night, and he lives just down the street from us. His wife was at home on Tuesday, and said that it had snows in our neighborhood for about 10 minutes!

Crazy weather lately!