Coincidences?

I'm always amazed at interesting coincidences.

The coincidence of the day is the photograph of Paris Hilton today leaving the court house to go back to jail. I'm not a Paris Hilton fan at all - but the fact that the photographer, Nick Ut, that took this picture also took the picture of Kim Phuc, one of the most iconic photos of all time, is interesting. I don't have much sympathy for Paris, but my heart always bends a lot for people going through hard things in life....even more interesting, the photographs were taken 1 day and 35 years apart.

!#*%*$#! Parking Ticket!!

I forgot to write about the one bad part of yesterday at the Science Center.
We had a terrible rainstorm here on Tuesday night (i.e. more rain in one night
than we typically get in the month of June combined!!) There were
lots of washed out roads, flooded overpasses, etc. Quite the exciting
night. Well, the rain continued Wednesday morning. We decided to head
to the Science Center and not be stuck in the house all day.

You have to pay for parking there. So I park, and run over to the
place where you get the ticket...only that machine is out of order.
So I run further down to the next one...and it only takes coins...no
bills. So I run past the non-working machine, past my car, into the
Science Center to get change. I'm soaked by now because one doesn't
run that fast when you're holding the hand of a 5 year old. We get
back out there, run past our car, the non-working machine, and to the
machine that is working...plug in the money and get our ticket. We
run back to the car, quickly put the ticket on the dash board...and
then go back into the Science Center.

By this time we were really wet. My hair goes frizzy when it's wet
out...I'm not feeling too great about my pending hair style when it
all dries out...but luckily I have an elastic...we tie my hair into a
pony tail and we're off.


When we came out lo and behold, there was a $30 parking ticket on my
car. Turned out I had plunked the ticket on my dash UPSIDE-DOWN...so
I got a ticket.

I'm going to try the Paris Hilton thing and see if I can get let off easy. We'll see what happens! Not sure if I have the same persuasive abilities as Paris.

Science Center

Today Peirce and I thought we should spend out rainy day at the Science Center. I think we need to get ourselves an annual pass to this place. There is so much to do that it is impossible to do it all in a day! Peirce loved it. Tonight at dinner he talked non-stop about all the things we did there and I was amazed at how much he learned and the vocabulary he had retained from it. Peirce is really a 'facts' kid. He loves non-fiction books and he loves places like the science center where he can add to the bits of facts he carries around in his brain.

Our first stop was Wow Town. Peirce put on a puppet show. He was especially impressed with organizational system they had inside the puppet theatre for all the puppets. (He's my analytic sequential learner....his sister is the exact opposite! Very visual, verbal and random!)


Then we found a beehive! This was especially timely since we've been reading books about bees lately. This beehive display has a pipe that goes to the outside and the bees leave and gather pollen then come back to this hive. It was quite fascinating! Peirce was really thrilled with the slides they had for the miscroscopes that had Queen Bees, Drones, Worker Bees, Larva, Pupa, Eggs, etc.



There were plenty of machines and pulleys and mechanical things to play with and figure out how they work. I heard a lot of: "Mom! I figured out how this works!" This is Peirce working the conveyor belt in one center.

Then it was off to the water table!! What fun!






We came across this really cool tree-house. The bottom had a ball pit and on the top there was a pulley set up that pulled a bucket up from the bottom. Peirce spent a lot of time there running up and down the stairs. He'd go to the bottom, fill the bucket, and then go up the ladder to draw it up - then put all the balls in a pipe that sent them back down to the bottom - and he'd run down to see them all come out.












We also got to watch a movie in the theatre about sound. I think the things he learned will have a very practical outcome! Peirce discovered that if you whisper you can't feel your vocal chords vibrate...which should finally help define for him, ow he should converse during Sacrament Meeting on Sundays! (This IS a bit of an issue in our lives)...and we MUST take Jill there since she's spent a lot of time studying sound this year in Science.



This was a race track where you could figure out which kinds of cars got the best gas mileage










Learning about what 3 colors you need to make photographs




Peirce the Astronaut. Did you know there is no sound in space?? (After learning that I was thinking perhaps we should move there!)


Mixing (or trying to mix) air, water and oil.

We tried a few different ways to make electricity (wind, solar, etc.)

Then we went over to the Creative Kids Museum. We could have spent all day in each of the 3 exhibits we visited today!






There was a painting and chalk board place where you could paint on the walls! (That says Peirce on that chalkboard...in case you can't tell)





This was a display about the art and the simple beauty found in Alberta landscape...although I seem to have only captured the playground part of it. LOL




Making different images with multiple mirrors



There was an interesting display about 'perspective' Peirce spent a lot of time running through there and 'trying things on' that were weird sizes and shapes.





I hesitated to post all these pictures because there are just so many - but the truth was we did so much more than these pictures even show! It was a great time...and I'm happy to say that Peirce was totally ready for bed tonight at 7:00!! Now that's MY favorite way to cap to a great day! :0)