Sun 1 Aug 2010

Cliff Diving

Posted by Jason under General
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One of the fun things that we got to do in Idaho was to go cliff diving in Aberdeen, at the reservoir. There was plenty of water in the reservoir and so there was no danger of hitting the rocks in the water.

Mason isn’t really scared of anything outdoors and was able to jump right off the cliff. I don’t know exactly how high the cliff is, but I would say about (more…)

 

Thu 22 Jul 2010

The Desert

Posted by Jason under Heidi , Holidays and Vacations , Jason , Mason , Whitney
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One of the highlights of every trip to Idaho is the trip to Craters of the Moon. We have been going there for many years and always have fun looking at the rocks and playing in the caves. This year we made a slight detour to EBR-1, which is where nuclear power was first used to power a lightbulb (which is still on display). It is a lot of fun and the kids had a good time there. They got to play with the manipulators and pretend they were handling radioactive waste. It was a pretty interesting place and fun to go to when there aren’t a lot of other people there.

Finally, we finished our trip by eating at Pickles Place, where you can get deep fried pickles. I made the kids try them but neither were terribly impressed, which I was OK with because then (more…)

 

Sun 18 Jul 2010

Dry ice experiments

Posted by Jason under General
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One of the fun things that we got to do in Idaho is play with dry ice. I had the very legitimate reason of making homemade root beer and therefore got some dry ice. We went in search of spring water at some springs that I used to get water out of in Idaho. It looked like some cows had been nearby so we stuck to getting water out of the aquifer instead. After I added the ingredients together to make a couple gallons of root beer, wouldn’t you know it that I had bought too much dry ice?

What to do? I guess I could have let it melt, but I didn’t want to release all that carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, so I thought I would just put the dry ice in bottles and let it melt inside the bottles, where it would not be released and add to global warming. I was shocked when these bottles exploded, which we videotaped.

I also used the dry ice to try to freeze off a wart…I’ll see how that works. It did hurt and is getting smaller so after a few more days maybe it will be gone.

 

Fri 16 Jul 2010

Camping at City of Rocks

Posted by Jason under Heidi , Holidays and Vacations , Jason , Mason , Whitney
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On our recent trip to Idaho, the first activity after arrival and resting was to go camping at City of Rocks. We had never been there before, but Steve and his family go all the time and they really like it. Both Mason and Whitney like to rock climb–or at least practice rock climbing–and were dying to try the real thing.

We got there and got set up and then went to work having fun. Mason and Seth and Caleb tried to stick smoking sticks down vole holes in the ground to “smoke them out” and very few square inches of skin got burned in the process.

We climbed up to the top of a big pile of rocks, where I was sure that at least one broken (more…)

 

Sun 13 Jun 2010

Whitney’s New Hair Cut

Posted by Jason under Whitney
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Whitney has had long hair for a long time. She has been trying to grow it out to donate it to Locks of Love and finally decided the time had come to cut it off. She spent some time on the Internet to find a style she like, and the had someone come cut it. She actually would have preferred it to be a lot shorter, but we figured she should try this first. She really likes the haircut and is excited by how well it turned out.

 

Mon 31 May 2010

Mason goes to war

Posted by Jason under Mason
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I think that Mason would like to have been born several hundred years ago. He loves to watch the Deadliest Warrior on TV and has spent many hours “killing” cardboard boxes, trees, plywood and anything that isn’t specifically off limits. Although then he wouldn’t be able to listen to Bon Jovi. So after he got done smashing an old cabinet to pieces, he wanted to burn it. We have had bad experiences with bonfires in the past, specifically a gas-fueled fireball that shook our windows, so this fire was small.

Mason had found a piece of steel square tubing and thought the fire would melt it. I didn’t think it would, and when he wondered how they did it in the olden days I told him they used a bellows to pump more air into the furnace and make it hotter. So he came back with an air pump that we used to use to pump up air mattresses, and I found a hollow tent pole to focus the air into the fire. We got the coals white hot and were able to smash the steel tubing pretty good. We don’t have a sword yet but maybe one day we will.

I also added some other pictures of Mason. I went into his bedroom to turn off his music and found that he had figured out a neat method of holding his iPod. Also, I don’t understand how he sleeps with so much junk in his bed.

 

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