Spring Garden

 These red tulips were a gift from Emily to PopPop.  The pink ones are from Jane's lunch group after Grandma died.

Anthony's crabapple.

This plant is named 'Jane' Magnolia.

Balloon Rocket Experiment

The girls did their next science experiment, on action-reaction.  We had helped Anthony and Michael with the same experiment, when we were down there.  The strings are each fed through a straw,and the balloon is taped to the straw.  This allows the balloon to move easily along the string.  When one lets go of the balloon, the escaping air pushes the balloons rapidly along the string.

In the race shown here you can see, in this action shot, that Maggie's balloon is ahead - they are both coming toward the camera.  In every race, both balloons went the full length of the string.

Blast Ball

Ingrid and Maggie have signed up for a version of baseball called "Blast Ball".  It seems that the batter hits the ball (a softball) off of a tee, as in T Ball.  However, whoever catches it, instead of throwing the ball, he or she holds up the ball and says "blast".  Presumably, this is because, throwing the ball would just lead to a series of overthrows.

Yesterday's session was a practice, and it was very basic.  They could bat the ball off the tee, run to the one base, and go after a hit ball (usually on the ground).  Here are ingrid (in maroon) and Maggie (in green) running to base after 'batting'.

Maggie at bat (ball not yet placed on tee).

Ingrid catching a ball. Note kids looking in random directions.

Mitts are optional, and they will get their uniforms later.

Trip South

We took a 2 1/2 week vacation, leaving snowy Virginia, to visit Matt, Margaret, Anthony, and Michael in the Florida panhandle (the Emerald Coast).  Margaret has summed up our visit pretty well with pictures in her blog.

I also took the opportunity to spend a day in Tampa with brother Bob and his family, but I forgot to take any pictures there.

At the end of our visit, we flew back to DC, where we had dinner at Lee and Jim's.  Topper, Joe, and Sean were there, and Cecilia and Maggie and Ingrid, as well.  After dinner, we caravanned with Cecilia back to Staunton.  Of course, there was no snow, and we were just commenting on that as we turned into our street.  As we pulled up to our driveway, we suddenly realized that the ground was white with snow or ice, and the driveway was getting white.  What a shock!  It seemed to be confined to our property.  By the next morning, the driveway was clear, but there was still a dusting on the yard...

We're not in Florida anymore.