Friday, January 29, 2016

Feed My Starving Children

Kieran's faith formation class (and all the ages above him) went to Feed My Starving Children a few days ago to pack food that would be sent around the world.  It's a pretty cool place with a great mission, volunteers pack food that gets sent to many countries and put in the hands of people who need it.  I had done this a few times back when I taught in Fridley, this was Kieran's first time...it's actually a lot of fun.

You start with about 20 minutes of a background - that night they told the story (with pictures) of a nine year old boy in Africa who initially weighed 19 pounds.  After seven months of eating the food delivered by FMSC, he weighed 73 pounds...that story really got Kieran thinking....

The first requirement...you need to wear hairnets...which Kieran wasn't quite fond of at the beginning...


After the introduction, you get packing food for about an hour.  Vitamins, veggies, soy and rice are packed in a bag that is easily cooked at the destination.  Everyone has their own job.  Kieran's was to add the vitamins and veggies...


To Kieran's right Dar, a close friend of my mother's who also works at our local bank in Norwood.  She's always been great with the kids when we see her so Kieran wasn't concerned a bit about working by some strange adult.  The other two at our station where Dar's daughter and granddaughter.

My role was pretty simple...seal the bags after the other four packed them (and someone else boxed the completed bags up).  I wasn't too stressed...


The goal is to prevent as many spills as possible...we weren't too good at that (I even spilled one that was handed to me because I wasn't paying attention)...


After an hour of packing food, you get back together in the meeting area and get to sample the food being sent overseas.  They also tell you how many boxes of food were packed in that one hour.  In our case, it was 87 boxes which totals 18,792 meals.  Or put another way, in one hour, our everyone in our group boxed enough food to completely feed 51 kids for a year...not bad.


If you ever get the chance to volunteer at FMSC, do it...it's cool.  Or don't wait for a large group to volunteer...do it yourself or as a family, you'll have fun doing something good....

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Science Museum

January 2nd, we went to the Science Museum again, which is always fun.  We're members at the museum again.  Our first membership was courtesy of Missy & Pete and this new membership is courtesy of Papa.  It's pretty cool, considering we'll go to the museum 4-5 times throughout the year and the kids always have fun....especially Luke (who loves the dinosaurs and fossils).

We did a lot things that we've always done, but some new things as well.  I don't remember any of the kids looking at and manipulating the T-Rex jaw, but they had fun that day...


Learned about an ocean that used to occupy our part of Minnesota...it was a long time ago...


But basically he just want to see the fossils...these are found in rocks deposited in that earlier ocean...


Several of us got our blood pressure and heart beat checked...Sarah's was by far the lowest...


We spent more time at the human body section that we have before....here the kids are looking through goggles that represent the vision of a baby at different time periods...basically, babies can't see well...


We looked through microscopes at things like bacteria, leeches, ticks, worms, fungi and other things that can be found living on or in a human body...


There were some pretty cool holograms of body parts (like brain, heart, etc.) that looked 3-D and rotated and cut-away as you moved...here the boys are trying to touch the hologram of the brain...


Here's the hologram of the heart...a picture doesn't do it justice...


Yes...we saw dinosaurs...like the Triceratops...


But we also played with the tornado again...


And played a game that demonstrates why antibiotics only work on bacteria and not viruses...


And we saw the Stegosaurus...


And the Glyptodont...a big armored mammal that lived during the Pleistocene (the most recent ice ages)...


We finished the day at the IMAX watching a movie on Humpback Whales...which everyone enjoyed...


It was a good day...

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Luke & the Refrigerator

Maybe it was because we had been to the Science Museum earlier (pictures later), where you are to learn and discover new things.  Or maybe it was just Luke being Luke...but after dinner last night Luke set out to answer the question that many have wondered...what happens to the light in the refrigerator when you shut the door?

The rest of us were still eating when we saw Lukie doing this....light off...


Light on...


Light off...

Eventually, he figured out how the light switch is turned on and off...solving the problem...