Science Fun

Jonas and I had some fun with science experiments at home yesterday since I wasn't feeling too well.  First, we made carbon dioxide gas and watched it bubble.

Then we did another experiment with acids and bases.  First, we colored the water purple with red cabbage powder.

Then we added some citric acid to one cup to change the water to red, and some baking powder to the other cup to change the water to blue.  Jonas thought this part was pretty cool!

Last, we dumped some of each color into another cup, and it neutralized and changed back to purple!  Jonas did a great job with reading the directions and wrote about the experiment in his journal.

The Last Christmas Post

Since we did not have all of the kids together for the majority of Christmas Day, we celebrated again at each of the grandparents' houses this past weekend.

Saturday we went to the mall in the morning to get the cousin Christmas picture taken.  Somehow we had the wrong time and got there 40 minutes early...so we walked around the mall finding as many escalators as we could to go up and down.  That worked surprisingly well to keep the kids all amused, and we were able to successfully get a nice Christmas picture, which you will have to wait until January 9th to see.  

After that we headed to Grandma and Papa's for lunch and presents.  

Grandma always gets the kids each a Christmas ornament:

(an alien for Jonas)

(Perry the Platypus for Bransen)

(A horse for Brynn)

And the kids all got lots of other presents from their aunts and uncles, and Grandma and Papa.  It is a rule at Grandma's to open one present at a time so that everyone can see everything, but even with that rule, things get a little crazy, and I still missed a bunch!  Here's some of the cool things they got:

We had fun watching our family open presents we had picked out, too.

After opening presents for HOURS, we relaxed and had some game and movie time.

On Sunday, we went over to Grandma Deb and Grandpa Dan's for another delicious Christmas meal and to open gifts there.  The highlight for the kids was their glow pets!

And the highlight for Duane and I was our super cool new portable picnic table!

The kids spent some time relaxing and playing a fun Disney game with Grandma Deb after the present opening.  

And with that - we are finally done with Christmas posts!  Merry Christmas!

Collins Day

Jonas and I exchanged presents with Duane, Brynn, and Bransen today.  The kids bought each other presents from their schools' secret Santa workshops.  It was really sweet to see them all open gifts from each other that they picked out themselves.  The kids were all excited to try out their new toys.  

Duane likes to wrap gifts in newspaper and duct tape - this one took Jonas a while!

Totally worth it!  He is practicing tricks to be able to do put on a show for the family.

After we finished playing inside, we headed outside to try the kids' new snow tubes from Aunt Deanne.  Duane pulled them with the 4-wheeler and they had a blast.  So much fun!

Jonas wasn't quite over his tummy ache though, and he didn't last too long outside.  After a little while on the tubes, he came inside and ended up like this:

We ended the day with some box robots - always a good time!

The Day After Christmas

Because we arrived home so late on Christmas, we opened most of our presents this morning.  Grandpa, Papa, and Duane all came over to watch.  We had a wonderful, relaxing day playing together and trying out his gifts.  We played with his helicopter, played Skylanders on the Wii, watched the Croods, and even had time to do a couple science experiments.  Despite Jonas' bellyache today, we did make it out to the movies to see Frozen with Grandma Deb, Grandpa Dan, Duane, Brynn and Bransen.  Jonas really liked Olaf the snowman.

Our science experiment:  We made colored crystals!