The Coolest Christmas Gift!

C is definitely blessed. He really doesn't know how blessed he is. I think the coolest Christmas gift was his NEW COMPUTER! Even better, a custom built one and learning the basics of HOW to put together a PC.  I wish I had THAT growing up!

Aunt Matsumi opening up the case and starting by putting in the DVD RW drive

Here C is helping to screw in the CPU. Look at all those cables inside

Thank you Aunt Matsumi!

Christmas 2011

It's HARD to get "C" to smile for the camera with his eyes ON the camera. He won't explain WHY he won't look at the camera when we tell him to. We often get upset at him for not looking at the camera. So, I think it's fair to make a note of it when he actually LOOKS at the camera AND SMILES. (drum rolllll......!) And the "Biggest Smile Award" goes to.... The Molecular Model for Organic Chemistry! It was among the dozens of lovely Christmas Presents that all deserved excellent smiles.

He had fun opening Mommy & Daddy's gift from Uncles Paul & Andrew and their girlfriends.

He got excited about these books!

Then started reading them, and had to be reminded that he has OTHER gifts to open

These are most of the gifts C received for Christmas this year. Thank you everyone for these AWESEOME gifts!  Instead of opening the boxes of Cars 2 or Atlantis Legos like a normal kid would, C goes straight for the books and starts reading. Guess what the subject is...Chemistry.

A few hours later....still hasn't opened the Legos....

Notice his pants are changed and he has not socks on, because he went outside to help Daddy sift rocks out of the soil for the new garden bed. He made a few molecules from the manual that was in the Model Kit, then...

...he asked me to print up a Caffeine molecule, so I found one from the internet and he put this together without any help.

Replicating DNA

I had shown him a YouTube video of Semiconservative DNA replication a few months ago. Just last night, he decided to make a game of it with Daddy and told him, "We'll have a race on which side will win. I'll take one side and you take the other!" haha! He didn't recall what the names were but seemed to understand the basics of the replication process even though he'd watched it only once.

I thought it'd be a good idea to take this opportunity to teach him the proper names of the enzymes and their processes so I printed some things out. He was excited to look at the sheet saying how it's Chemistry too.  Next morning, he decided he wanted to replicated the printed sheet on his pegboard and was hollering out, "Adenine, Thymine, Guanine, Cytocene!" over and over... The broken side is supposed to be the Okazaki Fragments, although he mentioned he wasn't finished putting the backbone on one side before I snapped the photo.

Topping the Tree with the Star

Daddy trying to lift C to place the Star on top of the tree.
Nope, not quite high enough...

Heave!!! A bit higher and just a few inches shy of the tip!

OK! On the shoulder, now we're talkin'!

Success!

It's on! A bit crooked but the Star is on! Yay!

Taking these pics, we noticed how short C's PJs are!
Time for some new ones.

Cub Scouts Christmas Dinner

Won a Raffle Prize!!!

Another raffle prize "What AM I supposed to do with THIS?"

Silly skit that the WeBeLo's did

Wolf Cubs Howl~! ARrrooOOhh!

Cub Scouts Group shot

Silly pic!

Yay Cathy! You go girl! Congrats!

Leadership Photo

Everyone Group shot!

C's First Lunar Eclipe Viewing

Won't be seeing another Lunar Eclipse until 2014 so we decided to allow C to wake up at 5am to watch this one. Unfortunately, just at the crucial time when the penumbra was about to become the umbra it got really foggy. We had a telescope set out and everything too!

We decided to make the most of it and watch it live on "http://events.slooh.com/"

That was pretty neat also, as the host of the site did a live discussion and took phone calls from people around the world.

C sharing about the Immune System

C wanted to share about his interest in the Immune System.

He likes reading about it and he was trying to explain what he's learned.

Park Day with other Homeschoolers

We have a weekly Park Day on Fridays but today was different!
Several huge trees were fallen and the city hadn't come around to clean them up yet.

Big olive tree limb bent the iron picnic bench!

 Uprooted tree has split under the pressure

All the kids decided it'd be great to have a fort so they dragged most of the branches around on of the tree. Here's C helping out

Tree full of kids

Close up on the "fort"

Golden leaves of the fallen tree

"Normal" Conversations...

This evening I was sitting in front of my iMac and under my screen I had 4 Lithium Ion batteries that had been used up. I held one AA battery up and announced, "Hey this battery is much lighter than the regular batteries!" C comes over non-chalantly and says, "Of course it's lighter, it's Lithium. Lithium only has 3 electrons, and 3 protons in it's atomic structure." I agreed with him, "Yeah, Lithium is much lighter than the regular stuff in the other batteries, what was it? Nickel/Cadmium?"

First New Pets!

Obaachan bought C his very own guppies because he was responsible and helped feed her guppies while she was gone for a trip to Japan! The male is a sunshine yellow guppy he decided to name "Lemonade" and the female he named, "Tiny". Congrats C!

Stop-Motion Animation

Here's C's very first stop-motion animation. I helped put it together in Flash.

Columbia Memorial Space Center

C went to the Columbia Memorial Space Center with his Cub Scouts Troop.

The boys watching a pressure gauge going up. Then, they push the button to release the soda-pop rocket.

BLAST! The air inside the soda-pop bottle lets out and up goes the rocket!

Silly picture!

This is a real astronaut suit!

You can step inside it too! C's face is obscured but, he's in there!

Outside, some amateur astronomers were watching the skies, 

Another astronomer focusing on the surface of the moon.

Now, it's all dark, time to go home!