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

Cute grandkids

My grandkids are growing so fast and getting so cute I thought I better show some recent pictures. Most of these were taken a couple of weeks ago on a trip to the Bean Museum.

Katie is coming Wednesday night. Jake is going hunting in Arizona and is going to drop her off on the way. Lindsay is staying home to try to finish potty training Tagg. She said he is not going in his diaper at all anymore. Unfortunately he is also not going in the toilet. Apparently he feels the whole house is his territory and needs to be marked.

New info from Creed

Ok so I have taken way too long to read all of your emails and I haven’t even gotten through all of them yet. First I will just start by answering dad’s questions. Yes we get mail by going to the mission home. I have not sent anything yet because I just haven’t had time but I did get some more of your letters last Thursday and I got the package of pictures Katie sent me. We go to the mission home every Thursday and that is when we get our stuff.

I haven’t had a chance to get my shirts or pants made. P-days have been busy lately. On the 20th we had the amazing chance to go see Elder Bednar in our mission home. It was awesome. He pretty much just opened it to let people ask questions and I got to shake his hand at the end. It was awesome.

My comp is from Colorado he is a bit of a country kid. Kind of like me he had a bit of land and some horses and a cow and chickens. We only played soccer on the first P-day. I guess they always just get together at that big field when the newbie’s come in like me. So we haven’t played soccer again yet.

The language isn’t too bad I can actually understand some people when they talk clearly and slowly. There are a lot of people who slur and the old people I can never understand and lots of people just mumble. Me and my comp switch off teaching principles of the lessons and I usually take a long time to say what I want and then after I’m done he usually sums up what I said in 2 or 3 sentences that actually make sense. But at least I am practicing.

Water. We don’t have a filter in our house but what everyone does here is there are little shops on like every corner called commandos that sell clean big 5 gallon jugs of water. That is what we drink. Plus I have my water bottle filter thing and I can fill that with the faucet water. Oh did I mention I take showers with buckets of cold water every morning? Or that we can’t flush toilet paper because it clogs the sewer? Yes it stinks.

San Isidro probably is by the airport because I see and hear airplanes taking of a lot. I think it is east of the capitol.

I did not feel the earthquake but some people we asked said that they did. We have seen a few gringos like me come in to help with relief efforts so we do see some white people every once in a while.

As far as food goes I have been surviving. We all make a whole ton of rice and beans for lunch and usually get some bananas or some sort of pasta with it. The bad news about food is though we can’t really eat fish here because I think they use a chemical to kill the fish that my stomached is not used to so it’s almost a guarantee diarrhea food.

And as far as news goes for me: the most exciting things that have happened or just stuff I remember. When Elder Bednar came that was cool. Today we played dominos for like 3 hours. Dominos is huge here everyone just sits outside those colmados and plays like all day and night. I hated it today though because I just lost and everyone made fun of me in Spanish because I didn’t know how to play. We are allowed to eat with the mission leader and the bishop so we had lunch with the mission leader today. It was just kind of relaxing.

A few interesting things I forgot to tell you guys. Dad you should see how they tighten their barb wire fences around here. We helped I guy build his fence and he just had all the wire wrapped around a stick and just pulled as tight as he could.

Another interesting tool we saw was this guy had a skill saw like yours and he had strapped it to a board and flipped it upside down, set the board on top of a couple stacked up crates and had himself a nice little table saw. He just zip tied the trigger down and unplugged it to turn it off. It is pretty crazy a lot of people are good and making things here out of nothing. Like couches--that what this guy was making. And it was just like dump wood.

And yesterday we had like 15 contacts which was good. Our goal everyday is 10 which we haven’t been hitting. And since we did it yesterday we saw a little miracle. We found one guy who used to live in the Bronx. We taught him and his wife and at the end asked them if they prayed and received an answer that this is the only true church if they would be baptized. The guy said yes so fast it was cool.

Creed

Creed's new area

We heard from Creed on Monday. He is now serving in San Isidro, which is a rural area east of Santo Domingo. We haven't heard from him since the earthquake, but he is about 300 miles away and reports indicate that most people in Santo Domingo did not even feel it. There were, however, several missionaries from Haiti in the DR MTC while Creed was there.

Creed is in an apartment with four missionaries and no maid. They walk or take taxis to cover their area.

We will update with more information next time we hear from him.