Science Night
Thursday the elementary school hosted its annual Science Night. This is something that the kids look forward to every year. All of the science fair projects are lined up in the hall. [You can ask Bleu about humidity in the air vs. underground!] The library is set up with lots of hands on stations where the kids can learn about different concepts, make things or do puzzles. It is a good time all around, but the highlight of the evening is what happens in the back of the school.

Kids line up in the cafeteria and craft rockets out of paper. Outside, they line up to get their rockets blasted with an air compressor and run to catch them. Seriously, an hour and a half just isn’t long enough! Click here to see a video of Echo with his rocket.

Track
Last night, Mayfield hosted the track meet here in town at the Field of Dreams. Mia ran three races: 3200m, 800m and 1600m. We watched the first on together and then went home. I came back to the track for the other two. She was having a bad day yesterday and her times were off by 10-20 seconds. After the last race she dropped down and stayed down for a long, long time. I couldn’t help crying but didn’t rush onto the field this time. She doesn’t want the attention. Even though I know she’ll be all right eventually, it hurts to watch her crying twenty feet away and not be able to go to her. She came in 3rd in the 3200m, 8th in the 800m and 4th in the 1600m.

She is worried about not being able to compete at state if she has a bad day. She doesn’t want to come in last or disappointing her coach/team. What can I say? There isn’t a whole lot we can do to control it so I hope she can relax and just enjoy the experience without putting too much pressure on herself. Click here to see a video of Mia in the 1600m.

Good, Bad and Ugly
Mica has had a hard semester. She hates math and hasn’t been doing well in her honor’s math class. She trys to avoid studying when she needs to do more of it. Lately it feels like every time we talk to her it is something negative. I hate that. Yesterday we got a letter in the mail from the principal letting us know that Mica will be getting an award next week at the underclassmen awards assembly. It was a wonderful surprise. I have no idea what it is for and neither does she. Suspense!

She called her mom to invite her and Julie agreed to go. She told the girls she would come by the house so they waited in the yard all night. She never showed up and when they called she didn’t answer the phone. It’s just a little thing but all these little things add up and I worry about their ability to trust. You can only be disappointed so many times before you begin to get jaded. It’s hard because I love them so much. I really wish she would be more involved because they need her.

This has been an emotional week.  Grandpa’s service was very nice. The funeral home did a wonderful job. There were large photographs everywhere and tons of flowers. All the family was there. He would have loved it.  I gave the eulogy and after I talked, ten of us [the grandkids] got up and each shared a memory of him. There was some laughter and quite a few tears.

My cousin Daniel talked about the first time he took his new baby Bryce to meet Grandpa. “Rice? RICE!” Grandpa said. “Why’d you go and name him RICE? I hate rice!” LOL… Silly Grandpa.

I’m going to miss him.

THANK YOU to Helly and Alan for the flowers. I was driving home and Mike called to let me know that I got something in the mail. It meant so much to me because the last few days had been so, so hard. Now I have a little something beautiful to cheer me up.

Farmington on flickr: set | slideshow

My grandpa passed away today. Now who will tell us to eat our Wheaties? I’m taking the kids to his funeral and Mike will stay here to go to Ronald’s funeral. Two deaths in a week. Two too many.

Kimmyk writes:

“I just wanted to ask you, do you use or have you ever used a Holga camera? If so, any words of wisdom as I just got my first one. To say that I am excited is an understatement.”

I have three Holgas. One is just your normal Holga, one has a Polaroid back and one is modified to take 35mm film. I love the images I see others take, but I haven’t had much luck myself. I’m just not a medium format kind of girl. Developing and scanning is more expensive than 35mm and it isn’t as convenient. Plus, the film is more expensive. I find that I don’t use them as much as I would like. Since each camera is slightly different, I would suggest taking a roll of film and experimenting. Jot down some notes as you take the pictures and try taking the same picture on the different settings so you can get a feel for what you can expect. But that is the advice I would give for any film camera…

I love the results I’ve gotten with 35mm film. [Finally: Sprockets!!] I don’t have a film scanner, so I have to take the film to get developed and get an index print. From there, I choose which photos I want scanned. They charge $.75 a picture plus the cost of the cd so I can only afford to get a couple photos from each roll. Someday, I’ll get a scanner and you’ll be seeing a lot more images!

I know there are some readers out there that use this camera. Do you have any helpful hits or advice on getting the most out of the Holga? 

Holga on flickr: set | slideshow
Holga with Polaroid Back on flickr: set | slideshow
Sprockets on flickr: set | slideshow