Stachin' It

We were bored and I picked these up for a buck at Old Navy. Highly entertaining stuff, folks...highly entertaining, indeed.

Sugar Rush

Last week, I took the kids to the Jelly belly Factory in Fairfield. We brought Ben with us because, well, he is our "brother from another mother." The second you walk in the door, your liver starts to create more insulin to handle all the sugar you are smelling. It's also an incredibly stimulating place. Every where you turn, you are looking at something brightly colored, large and candy-like. The kids had a blast. They wanted to eat jelly beans at 10:02 in the morning but I held to my guns and said, "You have to wait until the tour is over." That was an entire 12 minutes because during the tour, they give you samples.

Awesome, I know.

Apparently, they don't feel the need to share that with you when they give you the funny hat to wear during the tour. The tour, by the way, consists of a small walk through the factory and four television prompts that give you no detail whatsoever as to how the beans are actually made. I think the actual process is a trade secret because all I saw were conveyers and boxes. They do give you some important historical information....problem is I don't remember anything stated. Oh well.

So, after the tour, the samples, and some very interesting smells, we purchased our over-priced picture and fell prey to the very large gift shop and sample section. I did make the kids eat jelly bean shaped pizza BEFORE the barf, skunk, and baby wipe flavored jelly beans were consumed. After all, I am woman with priorities.

All in all, we were there for three hours and dropped a serious amount of cash on candy, souvenirs, etc. The pictures below were the only ones I managed to take. This is mostly due to the fact that I had to push Scotty in his stroller and consume jelly beans as I did so....a woman of priorities, people...a woman of priorities....

Scotty: 8 Months

"Look, Mom, no hands!!!"

Last Monday, I snapped these pictures of Scotty sitting up all by himself. We were all pretty pumped. It might have been the fact that the week before, he spent most of the week on his belly because we forgot his high chair and we didn't bring any of his "seat" toys to the lake. Here he is by himself....

And here he is with his best partners-in-crime, celebrating the big move:

Summer Science Experiment #2-Shiny Pennies???

For the past several weeks, I've been trying to ween myself from soda-Diet Pepsi in particular. I love the stuff. I've been drinking it since the day I started working as a teacher's aid for a fifth grade classroom at Lankershim Elementary School. Every morning, I'd stop at 7-11 and pick up my 32 ounces of DP. It was delicious and refreshing. I continued that habit for several years, even in my last year of college. Once I moved to SF, however, it began to die out a bit because, well, there are no 7-11 franchises. Plus, people would look at you funny if you had that much soda to begin with.

In addition, DP is just really horrible for you in so many ways. Especially to your bones. And that's really why I want to kick the habit-I'd like to treat my bones really well so that when I'm 90 and I fall, I'll bounce right back up like a 21 year-old. Boo-ya.

So, this experiment served two purposes:

1. To discover if pennies really look spiffier after a soda bath and....
2. To teach Sam and Izzy about the weird crap soda does to stuff and then make them think "Why would I put that crap in my body?"

Genius, right?

I know.

So.....this experiment required some easy supplies:

If you look closely, you'll see the Lead Scientist flashing a peace sign in the background.

Next, we soaked the pennies for 24 hours in each solution of water, soda, and water plus soap. Alas, after some hard-core scrubbing, we had some results....

Sam was super surprised to see that the soda shined up his dirty pennies:

And, like magic, he uttered this phrase right after he noticed that:

"You know what, mami? You really shouldn't drink that stuff. I mean, did you see what that soda did to the pennies?!? That's crazy!"

Alacazam!!!!!! Man, I'm really brilliant sometimes.