Hidely Ho, Neighbors!

This weekend, our Sunday School class was at our church’s Retreat Center.  Usually, we go up on Friday night.  But this year, a Saturday morning meeting at church meant that only K and the kids headed up Friday night. The plan was for me to go after the meeting and get to the Retreat Center a little after noon. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans in mind, producing a forecast that contained a little four-letter word not usually associated with October (at least around here).

We had only flurries in my immediate vicinity, but our Retreat Center is located about an hour and a half west of here, and about 1000 feet higher in altitude.  There were calls for 5-8″ of snow Saturday.  So, as my morning meeting wrapped up, I called K to see how the roads were.  As of noon, there were already a couple of inches on the ground, and it was supposed to continue to snow for most of the day.  So I was looking at a couple of hours on snowy roads, spending the evening at the Retreat Center, then getting up early Sunday, hoping the roads would be OK, in order to be back at church by our 8:30 service.

Did I mention I sent K and the kids to the Retreat Center in my truck, leaving me with K’s rear-wheel drive sedan?

Given all these issues, K and I made the call that I would stay home.  Now, I love spending time at our Retreat Center.  And the Retreat Center in the snow is even better.  Plus, we were going to have a Halloween party for the kids on Saturday night.  So I was bummed.  But not all was lost.

I now had 12 hours of Saturday to wallow in complete bachelor mode.

Let’s make a bachelor mode list, shall we?

1. Plumbing repair project?

Check.

2. Action movie?

Check.

3. Poor nutritional choices?

Check.

4. Watching one football game on TV, one on computer, and one on iPhone?

Check, check, and check.

Of course, this is what I missed at our Retreat Center

I think I would have rather been here.

I can’t believe it’s been 16 years since this photo was taken.

Happy Anniversary, Honey.

OK, another week went by without me electronically scribbling down something that the kids have done, so I’ve got some catching up to do.

Let’s start with this weekend’s science fun.  While working with the kids on their Friday afternoon science lesson (which is a euphemistic way of saying “While the kids and I were watching reruns of Mythbusters while I ranted and raved about all the stupid science mistakes they make on the show”), we saw somebody run across water.  But it wasn’t exactly water.  It was a little creation with the nickname “oobleck” (after a sticky substance in the Dr Seuss book “Bartholomew and the Oobleck).  Oobleck is made by mixing corn starch and water at just the right proportions.  The result is something that acts both like a solid and a liquid.

I could bore you with phrases like “shear rate” and “non-Newtonian fluid,” but let’s just move on.

The kids were fascinated, so I told them we could make some of our own oobleck.  Saturday morning, we pulled out the corn starch and started mixing.

You can just see the excitement on their faces

Add a little food coloring for extra staining capabilities

The end result?

Of course, the kids seemed to lose interest when we started discussing the science of cleaning up.