Five Kids

So my list of future projects grows every day thanks to the likes of Make and Instructables.

Here’s a couple that caught my eye recently:

• Homopolar Motor
• Ping Pong Pistol

So it’s 9 degrees outside and I’m standing in my driveway with my camera on it’s mini-tripod perched atop my Cherokee.

It all started this afternoon while I was messing around with my Dremel XPR 400. I saw a television show where an artist had used a Dremel to carve a face in a wooden character so I decided to give it a shot. What came out was a tiki of sorts (the third from the right.)

The kids liked the idea so much that they went off and designed their own. I’m going to buy some dark stain and see how they come out. We may keep making tikis until the scrap bucket runs out.

After dinner tonight I gathered my four daughters for an owl hunting adventure. Previously we had heard a couple of owl’s distinctive “hoo-ooot hoo-oot hoo-oooooot” in the woods behind our house. Armed with a camera and an owl book, we slowly walked through the woods listening for the owl’s call. Believe me, getting four girls walk quietly through the woods is no easy task. We passed through a clearing and under the high-tension tower, passed a green muck-filled pond, and through a clearing when we heard a screech from above. Two hawks (or were they falcons?) took flight and glided over the tree line. I managed to snap a picture of one of them.

After a brief stop for water in a clearing further on, we followed the hawks back towards the high-tension tower and heard an owl in a copse of trees off to the North. As we circled back around to get closer to the owl, a blue four-wheeler blasted up the trail unfortunately scaring away anything within earshot. So much for whispering and walking quietly. We were disappointed but not defeated. We backtracked and sat in a clearing while each of us took turns making owl calls. No luck, but we did see a few bats fluttering around overhead. Perhaps next time we’ll be successfully — four wheelers willing.

While staying over in Chattanooga, we took a trip down to the Tennessee Aquarium. Last year we went to the Charleston Aquarium in North Carolina — very cool but the Tennessee Aquarium is the largest we had ever seen. There were two main buildings, one with river and lake exhibits (and probably every major river and lake in the world). The second building was the ocean exhibit. Both buildings were 4 or 5 stories tall with tanks that spanned multiple floors. The coolest was the “underwater cave” exhibit in the ocean building — in the ceiling were “skylights” that opened to the tanks above.

Outside, the surrounding park and landscape encouraged the kids to explore sidewalks that appeared to be buckled by water with plenty of streams and fountains to cool off in. All and all it was worth the trip into downtown Chattanooga — parking was a bit of a pain, but once you’re there everything is within walking distance including the Children’s Discover Museum and the 3D IMAX. If you do decide to take a trip into Chattanooga, make it a couple of full days — the aquarium alone will take you all day just to get through one building.