the Schrader 5

This week has been jammed packed as usual. Monday was soccer practice and Math Night at school. I was very disappointed with Orlando Science Center's math night materials. We did a science night with them last year that was really neat. The math was totally lame. Without a doubt, the teachers could have put together much better math games. I signed up to volunteer and since it was pouring rain, and I wanted to boys to go to bed on time, I had them stay home with Chris. Well, they didn't miss a thing! Wednesday was another round of soccer practice. My new portable hammock arrived Thursday. I love it! I can set it up in the yard and read while the boys and dogs play, and then fold it up and put it in a bag to have all the space back. While I was out testing my new hammock on Thursday night the boys were playing football. Noah was not amused at Abby's attempts at a sack and got quite upset when she took the ball from him while he was playing quarterback. He finally had enough and said, "Abby Labby Fiona Yoyo Schrader, you need to stop!" I nearly cried after he said it. You see, Will gave Abby the middle name Fiona. Now, since Fiona is an ogre, it does sort of fit her. Then Ethan gave her the nickname Abby Labby since she is a lab. Chris and I both call her Abby Yoyo after Abiyoyo in the children's book. Apparently Noah wasn't too sure which one to use and went with all three!

May 2nd is Space Day for those of you that are not aware. Lockheed Martin sponsors a program called Signatures in Space. Mike works for Lockheed and gave me the information to sign up. Since I love to take on more than I can handle, I signed our school up. All the kids in the school sign a poster sent by Lockheed. Once it is signed we send it back and Lockheed scans all of the posters on a disc. The 500 schools that are selected each year all get put on a disc and the disc goes up on a shuttle. Our disc will go to the Hubble in October or whenever that mission finally goes up. (Don't worry Greg, we sneaked your name on the poster.) They then send the poster back with a picture and signature of the crew that took it up so that it can be displayed. So, it was my job to organize the signing of the poster. Since we live so close the the Kennedy Space Center we had two guest speakers come to talk to the kids. Mr. Collins gave an awesome presentation to the 4th and 5th graders on the booster recovery. He has been recovering things at sea for NASA for the last 27 years. That same team is trained to rescue astronauts if necessary and various other jobs.
Then, Mr. Womack from NASA came during the 3rd grade presentation and brought lots of cool stuff to show the kids. He brought REAL space suits. That helmet I'm holding is crazy heavy! The suit that Mr. Womack is holding weighs 35 pounds. These are the suits that they wear during launch.
Mike and I put a presentation together for the other grades. Their favorite part was learning about the space toilet! All in all, it was worth the extra effort of planning the day. The kids all loved it and were very interested in space. They asked great questions and seemed to learn a lot from the day!

The boys had their 5th soccer games of the season today. Will had an awesome penalty kick goal to score the only goal of the game. He came off the field after and said to me, "Do you know why that looked easy? Because it was easy for me!" Once again, kids say the darnedest things! After the game everyone went to see Iron Man. Everyone knows that the only movies that I watch fall into the drama or romantic comedy categories, so I volunteered to stay home with the puppies. I had to go to the grocery store and had to jail the poor puppies. Since I only have one crate they had to be crated together. Luckily Abby's crate is quite roomy and they could both stretch out. We still have a divider in there so she doesn't even have full use of the crate yet. Not the most beautiful designer touch to the home, but at least she will have plenty of room in there!