Lately

This blog usually just talks about my biking and rarely about what else I have going on so I thought I should write a little something about the kids.

This is Cooper's 5th, and last, year of Mite hockey. He is no Mario Lemieux, by far. For 3 years he gave little effort and was just happy to skate around and be with his friends. Well, something happened last year. All of his friends made the top "D" team and he was on the "C" team, and rightfully so. This started to motivate him to try harder. I kept telling him that it's only one hour of practice. He doesn't need to talk to anyone and to just focus on hockey. There was a period where he was unhappy about going to hockey because he was trying hard, but failing. But of course we kept going and he finally saw that all the hard work was beginning to develop into some skill. 

This year at tryouts I told him that if he doesn't skate hard, he once again will not make the top team. He listened and skated hard and was over joyed to when he found out that he had made the "D" team.

It was proof to him that hard work would pay off. He still has a ways to go, but with practicing 3-4 times a week now he has plenty of time to work on things. We are about to begin outdoor practices which is a great time. I don't know what it is about it, but the kids seem to skate harder and have more fun when we practice outdoors.  

Last weekend Diana was out of town and Cooper had one of his friends sleep over. I didn't want them just sitting around playing Pokemon like they usually do so I planned a full day for them. After we picked his friend up we went to a taco feed fundraiser for hockey and ate 12 tacos between the 4 of us (I ate 6...) The place was packed and it took over a hour to get tacos, but it is what it is and the kids really behaved themselves so that made it a little easier. After that we headed to the Science Museum to catch the latest Omnitheater movie, Tornado Alley. I have begun to loathe the Omnitheater because the movies are old and when they basically show the same shows that you can now watch at home in HD is loses some of its luster. The only movie that I really enjoyed this year was Shackelton's. The rest are just overly funded scientist taking you on a bullshit tour. Tornado Alley was no different. The claim was that they were trying to figure out what signals in the weather can predict a tornado in this area. They already have it down to 35-40 minutes in advance. I understand that people are out and about and that a farmer driving a tractor in a field may require that amount of time or possibly longer. What I don't get is the need to drive around a tank that can get as close to the tornado as possible. I am sure that it is a huge adrenaline rush, but I fail to see where useful data comes from by doing this. They have pods that they place in the roads that can detect speeds, direction changes etc.

The kids enjoyed it as usual and then we headed into the museum. I let Cooper and his friend run around and me and Aurora went to learn something. We messed around with the floating ball and the wave machine, then we found a new station involving pneumatics. The point was to build link from the low end of a pegboard, and using pneumatics and gravity get a ball to go about 4 feet to the middle of the pegboard. Me and Aurora worked at it for about 10 minutes before we thought we had a good track. It took Rora a few try's using all the pneumatics but eventfully she figured out which ones to push slow, and which ones to push fast and our track was a success.



T-Rora



I was getting tired so we headed home where I made dinner and then attempted to start a fire in the fire pit, but couldn't keep it lit with the lack of kindling and some strong winds. I felt like an idiot. I suppose I could have resorted to gas to get things going, but didn't want to mess around with it since there was still embers at the bottom. Oh well, the kids still had a pretty good day.