Science Olympiad Regionals

Video of Mousetrap Vehicle

Isaac had his regional Science Olympiad competition yesterday.  He competed in 3 events-- Physics lab, which consisted of a test portion and a portion where they built a wind turbine and tried to get the maximum amount of power out of it.  Mousetrap vehicle, where he had to make a car powered by 1 or 2 mousetraps.  The car had to go out between 7 and 8 meters, then return to its starting position.  And Write it/Do it, which is Isaac's best event.  One person sits in a room and writes a detailed description of an object created with some kind of building toy.  They are not allowed to use any pictures or symbols.  After 25 minutes, they hand their description off and the second person uses it to try and build a duplicate of the object.  Isaac is always the builder. 

Click on the link above to see a video of the mousetrap vehicle in action.

Isaac got a bronze medal in the physics lab, a silver in the mousetrap vehicle, and a gold in Write it\Do it.  His team came in second in the region and will go on to the state competition.

Our snow pictures

This is the remnant snowman made today from the remains of the Alamo, the canon, the dog, and several other little snowmen the kids made Thursday and Friday.
This was probably Friday morning. Or maybe Thursday night since it doesn't quite look deep enough to be Friday.

12 inches in Dallas! Can you believe it?
In Plano, we got 8. The kids played all Thursday afternoon and all day Friday. They even went sledding down a little hill we have by our park.
Yesterday, Rachel played for so long that she was crying from the cold, but when I told her she had to stay in for awhile, she cried even harder! A little later, after she had been back outside, I told her it was time to come in, and she started to cry again. She said, "I don't want the snow to go away!"

Then, Thursday evening, Lynette started with the illness that James and Elaine have, only she went straight to breathing distress. I thought I was going to have to go to the ER Thursday in the snow and ice. Fortunately, we were able to get it under control. She felt fine all day Friday, and actually could breathe easier outside, so I let her play. Then Friday night, same thing repeated, only worse and with fever. We were lucky again, though, and didn't end up at the ER. Craig took her to the doctor this morning, where they did a strep test (negative, of course. My kids have NEVER tested positive for strep!), and ended up giving her prednisone for the cough. Rachel is also starting to cough, (which possibly explains the amount of tears we had yesterday!) though at least she doesn't have the asthma to complicate things.

Today, there is still a bit of snow around, but I am glad it is melting! I felt like we were in Ohio again!

Snow!

We haven't had the kind of snow they got in DC, but we did get about 6 inches.  School has been out for two days and they already cancelled for tomorrow.  The picture is a snow dragon that Isaac and Mariana made.

This picture is a little grainy because I scanned it from a small picture.  Isaac is showing off his flying side kick.

Update

The month of January was been very cold the low temperature recorded at the airport was minus 13 degrees although the lowest temperature we have had at our place was minus 2 degrees. The temple was closed and not much else was happening. We just kind of hibernated for the month.

We have been having problems with our printer so I called HP help line and after spending a couple of hours talking to them they sent us another printer and we were to send our old one back to them.

When I tried to connect the new printer it didn't work either. I spent another couple of hours with HP help after which they said the will send another printer. I asked for our money back but they said they can't do that . When we checked the price of new printers locally we could have bought a new printer for less money locally. So much for a learning experience.

Since our old computer is beginning to sound funny we went ahead and purchased a new Toshiba lap top computer. We are still in the process of learning how to use it. The new computer is working great all we need to do is figure out how to use. We now have Web Cam if we can figure how to use it. After a few more discussions with HP they finally refunded our money and we went down and bought a new Canan Printer to go with our new computer.

Ruth now claims the new wireless set up upstairs and I'm religated to the basement with the old computer. The funny thing is that once we got the New printer working the old Hp printer started working again.

We still have several inches of snow on the ground. It really hasn't snowed much here since the last of December but i has stayed cold enough that the snow we had hasn't melted.

I'm enclosing a couple of pictures. The Frost has really made thing beautiful. Some where I have lost my winter pictures. Iwill send some that we took last summer while Sam was with us.

Pictures are: Sam on "the Rock" at Tony Grove Lake. Meeting of the Rails at Promintory Point, Our balloon ride, The Missile display at Thiokol, and a Fresno Scraper. Grandpa Hyrum Grant Stephens talks about using a Fresno Scraper in his history. Prior to WW II Fresno Scrapers were used to dig basements and on most construction projects. Either one or two horses were used to provide the pulling powers.

Love Dad Stephens