The Joys of Boys

I don't know if I've mentioned this much but... I love being a mom to my boys! Even before I had kids I wished for sons. I just thought my temperament was probably more suited to having boys. Having a daughter totally terrified me. Now my girls are teaching me how right and wrong I was about that. But this is a post about my boys and why I love to be their mom!

Especially at this time of year when all things lovely and wonderful for little boys happen: Science Fairs, Math Decathlon Training, and Blue & Gold Banquets!!! This is truly heaven on earth for me.

First, the Boys' Science Fair Experiments were pretty cool this year. They both won the Bronze (3rd place) Award for their respective Grade Levels (3rd & 4th)

Darin had lofty goals for his experiment this each. Originally he planned on making a radar and testing how missiles lock onto aircraft's with the radar he made. Of course since Darin is so independent, I didn't fully appreciate his plans or the fact that he had his lab partner looking up radar guns on eBay. All of this I learned after he called up his friend to make plans to work on their science experiment. I, at least knew he had to get his science fair project done soon, who his partner was, and it had something to do with airplanes. Unfortunately the other mom was informed of the whole thing by Darin, over the phone, while he was merrily making his plans to start it in an hour!

To say the least, I had to get that worked out with the other mom. And then find out exactly what his designs were. Of course, I got busy with the girls, and didn't really start taking a harder look at it until...
Darin called out from the office: "Hey mom, Can you get me an oscillator?"
Me: "What???"
Darin: "Uhh, so we have a microwave, and I have _______ (he said some sort of metal I think aluminum), and wires, and now all this guy says I need is an oscillator. So can you pick one up tomorrow before Joey comes over?"
Me: "Did you just say oscillator? What are you thinking? What do you need a microwave for? What are you looking at on the Internet? What in the world are you planning for your science experiment?" (It would be an understatement to say my voice raised a decibel level with each question)

Anyway, so after he told me his full intentions, I helped him find a more appropriate science experiment. Darin is all things military right now, so I started googling missiles and rockets. And we spent way too much time watching movies on YouTube.

Darin's experiment was to test out 3 different ways to make a matchstick rocket and which one would fly the farthest.

This one is made by cutting off the tips of two matchheads and wrapping aluminum foil around them and leaving a nozzle out the end. Place on a paperclip launcher and use a flame to light the matchheads.

This one is made by putting two matches end to end (so they meet in the middle) and rolling tightly in aluminum foil. The trick is you have to use the strike anywhere matches. We didn't find this out until it failed to launch after 50 tries, so Darin had to repeat all of his launches making new rockets. To ignite it you hold up a flame to where the match heads meet. Here is a great YouTube video, I think a former roommate of mine would dig this guy's accent!



This one is by far the funnest to make and re-use. I made the mistake of trying it out and launching it in the middle of our foyer. My boys were quite excited about that! Ken- not so much, he just shook his head at me like what are you thinking teaching the boys to shoot flaming matches around the house. In the end though he was doing it in the house too. Really all the matches burn out before they even hit the ground. And yes, I know no one will feel sympathy for me if my kids' burn down the house!
Anyway, take a springy pen apart. Use the spring, and wrap aluminum foil around one end (that's just so you won't lose your spring. Shove the spring in the bottom and two matches on top of that. Strike the matches on the side of the box and away it goes.

Here are two very happy boys. They went through approximately 400 matches!



Nathan's Science Experiment
Nathan didn't have alot of kids who wanted to participate in the Science Fair this year and it is optional for the 3rd grade so he wasn't nearly as excited as Darin was. However he really wanted to do one and make it cool. So I set him up with one to test out invisible inks.

More specifically, a week before at Cub Scouts all the boys voted for the Blue and Gold Theme to be Mythical/Fantasy. Since we are going on our 4th year of Ken planning the B&G, I have had huge plans. I volunteered at our Committee Meeting to handle coordinating the food, which I have taken to mean planning the whole thing. Seriously, this is totally my time, and you better just let me run with it. Both of my boys are in Cub Scouts this year, and I've worked hard for 3 previous years when my kids weren't even part of it to make it special for everyone else's boys except didn't get much credit or to totally go all out because I was quietly helping Ken with it. But this year, I am doing it with all of the boys' friends moms, who happen to be my friends. It's totally going to be awesome!!! But I'll post about that later.

Anyway, my point is that because of the theme they chose I wanted to have the details of the invite to be invisible and to be read with a flame from a candle. You know mysterious and fantasy-like as if they are going on a journey. And one of my friends, Kathleen wrote up the most amazing poem. Here's the poem she came up with in a day and a half:

In a time long ago, in a land far away
Was a feast the knights called Blue and Gold;
A magical evening where boys became men
And the tales of their triumphs were told.

The night of the banquet had to be kept
A secret from all other’s eyes;
For if dragons or wizards knew whence it was
They would turn the auction cakes into pies!

So journey to the banquet to honor Knight Cubs
The secret is invisible below;
A flame from a candle will reveal to you
All else that you need to know!

So Nathan tested out 5 different inks for his Science Experiment. He would write with a Q-tip and then I would write with a Calligraphy Pen. We had to re-do it several times because as he was revealing the message the paper would catch on fire. I tried to help him out, but of course mine completely went up in flames.


The inks he tried were:
Lemon Juice
Milk
Vinegar
Sprite
An ink made from Thermal Paper

We just had a ton of fun messing with the thermal paper and the candle. Thermal paper is actually receipt paper that uses heat to write upon it. Basically like receipts you would get from a gas station. He soaked the paper in water and then would mash and squeeze it to get the chemical off of the paper.

Nathan says that Vinegar works the best. In his experiments it totally did. But when we made the thermal ink stronger by repeating the process over and over of soaking and mashing it worked better for the invites.

Now for the other kind of JOY that only a mother with sons would understand...
What happens when you take This:

And This:

And Them??? (Don't let the church clothes fool you:-)
That would be This... You should see what the other guy looks like. (this is a re-creation, when you see the following pictures you'll understand why it's not the original)

Here's the other guys...

Darin and Nathan apparantly thought it would be a good idea to test out how fast Darin's remote control car would go by putting it on my treadmill. They got it going up to 8.0 mph And then the rest of the details I got from the boys were fuzzy but included something about Darin leaning and falling onto Nathan who was straddling the treadmill at the moment. Then they were trying to get up and calling for Help. I heard them, but I wasn't looking for them in my room since I thought they wouldn't be in there since Rose was asleep on my bed. By the time I discovered them, they had just barely gotten up and pulled the emergency cord on the treadmill.

And here are the best pictures I could take of their battle scars. So their Dad can see what happened to them when I left them unsupervised for 7 minutes after we got home from dropping him off at the airport.




Nathan by far got it the worst. He has about 30 burn spots all up and down his Left side of his body. Even on his fingertips and the tops of his toes. It's awful. A few of them were so bad that it took 45 minutes for them to bleed, they were just an angry white.

Thankfully our Papa came to the rescue again! After I got them somewhat cleaned up and held them. Which turned more into them holding me as I started to cry all over them. I was just so thankful they weren't hurt worse and that Ginger was no where near them, and I was very upset that they got so hurt when Ken is gone and they will probably be feeling the pain for the whole week their Dad is out of town. Anyway, I pulled myself somewhat together and called my father and he came over right away and gave the boys a blessing. He patched them up pretty good too, and by the time he left they were all smiles.