The Mummification of El Chicken

To wrap up our study of Ancient Egypt, we're mummifying a chicken in the ancient ways of the Egyptian priests. We started on Feb. 11 with your standard, garden variety grocery store chicken. It weighed 175g. Fleshy, healthy-looking, plump, all those good things. Even Sequoia thinks it's yummy.


We washed, dried well, and put in a bag, completely covered with sodium bicarbonate (your grocery-store version of Arm and Hammer laundry detergent). It's essentially the same thing as what the Egyptians used, natron. The sodium bicarbonate draws all the moisture from the chicken over the course of several weeks. It has to be changed every 10 days or so, and the chicken weighed.


After the first 10 days we just changed the bag yesterday and found a chicken well on its way to being mummified. Much smaller, much dryer, a dark brown color, and only weighing 78 grams, about 1/2 its starting weight. Way smellier too; after a quick look, the kids didn't stick around for the bag-changing.

We have 1-2 more weeks to go. After it's completely dried out, we'll cover with oil and spices, wrap in gauze (linen) and bury. Meanwhile, we're moving on to Ancient India, China, and Greece.

Ski-Fahren zum Cube

We stayed at this crazy place last weekend for skiing. In Lermoos, Austria, it's called The Cube and is quite literally, a cube. Looks like an ice cube on the outside, four colored square sides on the inside. Square rooms, square decor, etc, etc, you get the idea. We felt like we had stepped into the German future.



But with half-pension included (breakfast and dinner), and ski passes, and a ski-in, ski-out location, we could not complain. Not to mention a climbing wall and kids arcade at the bottom for hours of non-skiing fun. Ric has more pictures locked on his cell phone... hoping to unlock them soon!

Odyssey of the Mind

This is a world-wide program Evelyn and Alex participated in starting in November. It's an after school event with about 7 children in K-2. They had to create an original performance with only minimal guidance from their teacher/leader. All costumes, props, story plot, and script had to be completely kid-designed. They met twice each week between Nov and Feb to complete the project. The assignment was to perform a surprise party for something and someone not normally celebrated.

Their group decided to throw a party for a bowling ball who had just had its first strike.


I could say they loved it and were marvelous performers, taking to the stage like butterflies, just blossoming in this unique and creative venue...

but I won't. They didn't much care for it, and as you can see... were even bored during their very own performance. Hm. And the bowling ball-party idea was even Alex's!

Here they are again, looking marvelous. Don't they just look EXACTLY like bowling balls?

Can't say this is something they'll be doing again next year. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

Pinewood Derby

Both Ethan and Alex are in Scouts this year... a whole ball of wax if you ask me.... there's no end to all the requirements these kids have. Anyway, that's for another post. Early Feb. was the culmination of one of the Scout's funnest events: The Pinewood Derby.

Each cubscout is given a wooden block - literally, a wooden block- and four wheels. He has to fashion it into a car, attach the wheels, careful of all the height, length and weight restrictions, and prepare it for racing several weeks later.

Ethan and Alex each drew out their car design, Ric took them each to the woodshop on post and they carved their cars, painted them, shellacked (?) them, and weighted them down to come as close to, but not over, the allowed weight.



The very serious Cubmaster weighed in all the cars the night before the race and held them all for safe (and fair) keeping until the race the next morning. Three cars race at a time, once on each track; complicated software tracks all the time trials until a Pack winner is declared.

Here, Alex's car (green with yellow stripe) waits to race.



And here is the face of the little boy who won all four of his races - fastest in his Den.


Unfortunately, once he won the Den race, he had to compete with the other fastest cars for the winner of the whole cub scout Pack. His car held its own, coming in first in one race and second in another, but not fast enough to place. Still, he sure felt like a BIG winner.

Ethan and his friend, Ben watch the race at the end of the track.

Here, Ethan's car is the black blur in the lead. I'm glad I got this picture; it was the one time his car came in first. Unfortunately, Ethan's car was well-built, but did not place.

Ric and the boys pose with their cars.

We were so proud that they each designed, carved, painted, and assembled their cars with minimal help from adults. They were great cars and they had so much fun at the event.

Cuddle Up and Read Day

When I accidentally got an email from Ethan's old teacher that this particular friday (about a month ago) they were having a "Read all day" day, I decided to do the same. The kids were allowed to stay in their jammies, bring all their books downstairs to the classroom, along with their pillows and we read and read and read. Ethan actually raced downstairs after breakfast, he couldn't wait to spend all morning with books. And Alex, who never reads until bedtime (the only time of day he can settle down), also read for at least three hours this day.

Turned out to be a relatively successful school day, despite blowing off school completely!