Scientific Experiments

Although Mary Ellen has lived for years with strange stuff growing in her fridge and sink, I had been immune.

However, Samuel started the enthusiasm for scientific knowledge when he placed a tiny container of honey from restaurant meal in the freezer side of the downstairs fridge in the "art room" where the kids hang out. Feeling proud of his success, he shared the results with his cousins.

Inspired by this, the kids discovered that if you take the long narrow plastic sticks of frozen sweet water with multitude of flavors that Katherine had stored in the freezer for the kids--and if you empty them in Gma Sue's washed plastic yogurt cups and then microwave them in the Cedars' microwave that is in our downstairs right now, you will have a yummy yummy slushie. And you can carry on this experiment a long long time as you mix various flavors together. Katherine had one and agreed they were quite delicious and better than any town-bought slushie. However, since we are all nervous about the safety of plastic containers in a microwave, I stopped the experience unless they wanted to go upstairs and get non-plastic containers to use.

This switched the kids to making popcorn in the popcorn popper before they went to bed-- and doctoring it up good with the 48 ounce bottle of canola oil on the popcorn table there in the "art room." Seeing the mess the next morning, Gpa suggested I might need to put a smaller bottle of oil down there. (Since this room is not carpeted, I call it the "art room" to avoid calling it the "make-a-mess room.")

However, before I had considered how to clean up from that, the next morning's experiment was to try and use the oil to make "artificial vomit." I suspect it must have been highly successful. Aunt Katherine pulled out her best school teacher wisdom and after shaming them a bit about the mess, told the kids they needed to pay Gpa $2 for using up so much of his popcorn oil!

Well, they all dug deep and collected coins and presented them to Gpa. Gpa took them with grace and accepted apologies and has proudly shown his riches around. If you want to know why many of the coins are corroded, that is because Trent had tried at some point in time to see what happens when you put coins in acid--I assume vinegar. If you want to know without having to do the experiment yourself, take it from me the acid can really make the coins look groaty.

Since Mary Ellen took the kids back home after a sleep-in morning to rest up from all the traveling, then lunch on leftovers from Sunday dinner, and finally looking at her sister's books of remodeling plans, things are apt to be a little less exciting around here with just one grandchild in the house.

However, we won't get too bored, for Gerald and I started yet another softball season yesterday afternoon when we drove up to Sesser to see Geri Ann's first middle school game there. Afterwards, we started to go to the Sesser Opry House Cafe for supper and wondered why so many cars were parked there. We walked into a full house and a loud country music concert going on. Fearing we couldn't hear each other talk and that the crowd might prevent quick service and not seeing any place to sit, we got back into the car and turned on soft classical music and drove around some of the lovely park and camping area there by Rend Lake enjoying our region's beautiful scenery during the twilight. Then later as we traveled down Route 57, we pulled off at Seasons restaurant and found a quiet place where we had a very good sandwich. We continued listening to beautiful music all the way home, and it was a nice ending for our day.