2 nest full of eagles

Like almost everything cool, noteworthy, or memorably made by me, this is another idea that I have swiped from my Superwoman sister. This is an idea she found and made for her oldest son's Eagle Court of Honor (which I missed both in action and emotionally - I was a bad aunt!) and since then, she has had requests to make them for other boys' Courts of Honor. My mom was telling me about them this week and I instantly wanted to make them for the upcoming Court of Honor for my good friend Wendi's son. The kids and I were able to help him in a couple parts of his project, so it was a great way to say thanks for letting us play Scouts with him!

I think they look cute in the plates we had - they are sorta like little nests with lots of baby eagle heads popping up!
They are really cute, and according to Scott and the kids, really yummy, too! As Teagan says, "Who wouldn't love a marshmallow covered in white chocolate and coconut flakes on top of an Oreo?"

I love how each of them has their own look and personality! And I'm sad to report that I thought some were uglier than others and made them sit in the back of the nest so the more attractive eagles could be up front....I'm usually not so judgemental!

January Pack Meeting

Tonight Garrett had his January Pack Meeting for cubs. We missed the November on when we were in Washington, and then they cancelled the December one, so he earned a lot of things this pack meeting to make up for the last three months.

Here he is explaining what he had to do to earn his Weather belt and pin:
This is him grinning like a bear when he got his whittling chip! This kid has been itching since he turned eight to carry a pocket knife with him, and now he thinks he is finally going to get to...hmmm... how should I break that to him nicely?

This is the only shot Tig got of him getting his bear and pinning me :-(

And his at home shot of him with all his awards:

Tig wondered why we got his Bear badge done so quickly since he still has another 7 months until he becomes a Webelo, and I told her that now he can focus time on getting more arrow points or belt loops and pins or badges. He still has the goal of getting all the belt loops and pins they offer before he is done with Cubs, so we will see if he can do it... He has 26 loops so far, but there are 43 or some high number like that! As he says, he's keeping his eye on the prize!

Budding comic strip artists

In science today we were learning about Venus and we learned some really interesting things!

Did you know that Venus is the only planet in our solar system that spins in the opposite direction than the earth? Or that it is always a constant 870 degrees, day and night, making it the hottest planet in the solar system even though it isn't the closest to the sun? Or that every space probe that has tried to land on Venus' surface has been burned up or never made it through the sulfuric atmosphere except one Russian lander that took one snapshot of the surface before it burned up? (Every other image we have of Venus' surface are from radar imaging)

We also learned that one day on Venus is equal to 243 earth days, but a year on Venus only lasts 225 earth days. So one day on Venus is longer than one year on Venus! Venus is a cool planet! I had the kids make up a comic strip having to do with Venus and these are what they came up with:

Teagan drew about the temperature being so hot on Venus: A little man is trying to build a house on Venus, but the wood he is using keeps catching on fire, so he switches to metal. When his house is built, it too catches on fire, so he runs to his space ship to come back to earth, but it catches on fire as well, stranding him on Venus all alone and shelterless.
Garrett drew a strip about the measurement of time: On day one, you would be a baby. Day 20 would find you as an infant. By the first year you would be a kid and by year 20 you would be a grandpa. Then you would be dead. "This is the lifetime of a person on Venus." (we didn't make him do the math to figure the logistics out, so it is a little off!) Owen also drew about the temperature on the surface: We start off with the end and flip to a flashback of earlier in the day where the man is out on a walk and brought his umbrella along to keep the sulfuric volcanic ash from falling on him. the ash ignites his umbrella which burns into a pile of ash. He spies the volcano erupting and runs away screaming and falls off the edge of a cliff into a lake of lava because he wasn't paying attention to where he was going.

So, although they are not accurate, all three kids got the point that life is not sustainable on Venus... so I guess the lesson wasn't a bust!

The Two-year Old Wive's Tale

There is an old wife's tale that has been floating around since some old lady said it eons ago that says that a girl is half her height (+ or - an inch) at 18 months old and a boy is half his full grown height (+ or - one inch) when he is 2 years old.

My sister introduced this tale to me when Tig was a baby and she and went back and looked in our baby books to see how well that theory held up for us, and surprisingly, it was true for both of us! It was such a fun idea that I have checked on it with all my kids when they have reached their 'half height.' And in two days, Emmett will be at his half height, so I thought I'd post all the kids' predictions just for fun!


Kristina: 18 months 30"
final estimated height of 4'11"-5'1"
true height is 5'1"

Teagan: 18 months 32"
final estimated height of 5'3" to 5'5"
height right now at almost 12 is 5'4"

Garrett: 24 months 32"
final estimated height of 5'3" to 5'5"
height right now at 9 years old is 4'7"

Owen: 24 months 34"
final estimated height of 5'7" to 5'9"
height right now at 6 is 3'9"

Emmett: 24 months 32"
final estimated height of 5'3" to 5'5"

So Owen is destined to be that tallest of them all, and the three others are supposedly all going to be about the same height, but all of them will be taller than I am! It will be fun to see if they hold true! We'll be a family of shorties!

Ahhh, to breathe again! Now if the heat could get turned off...

Our talks are over, everyone survived, and Emmy has been under 103 for almost 6 hours now! Deep breaths all around!

He does now have a runny nose that won't stop and a yucky cough, but he hasn't been melting his brain cells for a good bit of time, so I'm calling it a good day! Tig stayed home with him while Daddy and I gave our talks and then I switched places with her so she could go to classes (because she has phenomenal teachers who she just adores and only has another two months with before she turns 12 and leaves their class and doesn't want to miss one moment with them).

Emmy slept a lot today, which didn't help with his fever too much, but probably helped fight whatever germ he's infested with now. I still don't know if the fever was cycle related or this bug that hit him yesterday... maybe it was both, started out as a fever cycle and while his immune system was shaky this bug took hold... who knows. He's under 103 right now and I am thrilled.

Now, we are getting ready to go to bed again and his fever likes to spike at night, so we'll see what tonight brings. I gave him some Tylenol last night when he got up to 105 and was completely miserable, and I'll keep it on hand again tonight, but my fingers are crossed that we don't have to use it.

Award night, again.

A few months ago the kids mass entered the Reflections contest at our local school and they each entered an item in four different categories; only one other girl in the whole school entered more than they did by entering 5.

They surprised themselves by each taking first place in at least half of their entries, and Tig got first in three. Their first place entries went on to the district level in December, and this week we went to the district level award ceremony and found out that they each took first in that level for their stop motion videos! Teagan also got an honorable mention for her photography. They were thrilled at the thought of winning, but when they were called up on stage to answer some questions about their videos, that's when they were rethinking their coolness levels.

One video from each age group was chosen to go on to state and the PTA president was impressed that three of the four video winners were from the same family and wanted to hear from the amazing Van Traap video trio. The kids knew everything they needed to in order to answer her questions, but once they were on stage, blinking in the spot light, imagining the 200+ people in the audience, sweat started dripping down all three of their lovely foreheads and the stress was almost too much! Garrett played with the cuff of his pants during his question, his right foot dangling in the air as he held his too long jeans by the cuff. Owen turned his head into Teagan's stomach as he answered, and Tig had the 'deer in the headlight' look as she pushed 6 words out in hopes that they made a complete sentence. As soon as they were done Owen ran back and crawled in my lap instead of returning to his assigned winners seat up front. My poor kids don't have that 'calm ability to talk to anyone' that I always hoped they would have. They seem to have inherited my displeasure for being in the spotlight. I can't blame them.
Now their videos move up to the state level and I can only guess what will happen if they win that level. We may have to skip that award night, they aren't going to want to show up if there is a chance they have to get up on stage again!

Where we are and where we wish we were

Right now I am sitting in my freezing house that is all of 64 degrees, holding a little heating pad to my chest. That would be all well and good if my heating pad wasn't my little guy. He is on Day 4 of a fever... I've been looking for a runny nose, and ear infection, strep throat, a blaring infection of some sort... something that would be causing a fever in the hopes that this isn't part of his fever cycles. He hasn't had a fever since his surgery in November, so I assumed the surgery had worked and knocked him out of his cycles. Maybe not.


So here we sit together, him burning up while watching his letters movie, and me freezing while putting off writing a talk for sacrament this Sunday, and we are daydreaming about being at a place like this...

Yeah, life could get a little better in a place like this! This is a fever-free and talk-writing-free zone.