A success

The good news from our house is that Shawn is home today!  All through the month of February he was gone from Sunday night through late Friday evening.  It shouldn't be so crazy for awhile now.  I am enjoying feeling like I am not all on my own with the raising of my children!! 

Last week I was feeling a little bit overwhelmed.  Abram was sick with a horrible cold, fever and ear infections, which  - well, all of you with children know what that implies.  Anyway, at the same time all of the older kids were turning out project after project for school for end-of-trimester, and a science fair, and I was feeling a little bit STRESSED!  We did it though.  We put in some late nights, when we knew that Abe would be catching a few snatches of sleep, and we did it.

This is me with the attitude that I had about Caden's science fair display in the beginning. (Blah, blah, pout, pout, pout, let's get this done, woe is me.)

This is me when I realized how delighted that Caden was to be spending some alone time with his mom.  I guess it's good that Kami got these pictures so that I could document that!

The difference may be subtle to you, but I know how I was feeling and thinking and I can see it in my body language!  It ended up being a good time spent with Caden.  And how flattering is it when your son wants to spend time with you, and how fun is it when you can have a good time together and laugh at each other's jokes?  The next day he only wanted ME to go to the fair with him.  Yes, I am flattered.

Caden really put a lot of time into this project and really didn't put things off until the last minute.  The problem was that when Shawn takes off, he takes the computer that is hooked up to our printer.  Now, if I were a clever mechanical woman that would be no big deal, BUT since I'm not, getting his things printed off took some thinking.  Luckily the thinking was his dad's part in the project and they ended up emailing Caden's documents to the printing store.

Caden loves science and science fairs and this year he did a project on growing plants.  Last year he and I started a lot of flowers for the yard under his grow light, and they did pretty well, but when it came time to set them out, we noticed that the flowers in the local greenhouses had blooms on them, and ours, which were the same size weren't as far along. We realized that we never fertilized, and maybe that made the difference.  So, for his project he planted some pole beans and watered them with several different solutions:  water, fertilizer, sugar water and salt water.  The other solutions were just to add more interest. :)

I know this picture looks like the water was doing better, but this wasn't an end-result picture.

Surprise, surprise, the fertilized plants did the best.  They were getting their third set of leaves, had bigger leaves and over-all looked better.  Isn't it great when the outcome is just what you expected?  In life or science projects?:) At the end of the fair the top ten projects got an award.  Caden got fifth place!!  That was exciting, since we weren't expecting anything at all with the other 140 plus projects there.  Caden was especially excited about the funnel cake that he got a certificate for, and the second we walked out the door he asked if we could go pick it up right then.  Guess what he ate for dinner?

Caden with his friend Kaden

Caden is now excited to get on to his next project - growing a venus fly trap (their seeds take 3-4 months to germinate!!) and a pitcher plant. They both catch insects.  Hey, I'm all for that!!