Catching Up February 2025 part 2 (more like 3 because my Valentine post fit in with the catching up)

February 17 was President's Day. Jet helped me with the flag picture that day.

It was also National Cabbage Day. I made egg rolls one of the days around that holiday.

 

February 18 was Pluto Day. I watched one of the many episodes of Psych where Gus said, "You heard about Pluto?" The subtitles had it wrong, though.

 

February 19 was Chocolate Mint Day. I had another Peppermint Patty.

February 20 was National Muffin Day. For dinner we had... muffins again. We made all eggless muffins again. Cornbread muffins, blueberry muffins, and raisin bran muffins.

 

February 21 was the Anniversary of The Legend of Zelda. The kids requested Deku Scrub Cheeseball, which I made. Because Nichole is the one who usually sculpts the cheeseballs nowadays, some of the boys were surprised to learn that I was the one who made the original Deku Scrub Cheeseball way back in 2017. Jet helped put the bay leaves on top.

Jet and I haven't had a chance to do as much baking together as we used to. When we do get the chance it's so nice. I've missed it.

He helped me grind wheat one day, which was nice. My big helper. 

Jet also enjoyed making tracks in the snow (when we had snow. We've finally made it to Spring but I'm still blogging about Winter).

Speaking of snow, a few of us made the trek to the Snow Goose Festival in Delta this year. It was so foggy at first that we couldn't even look for the geese in the fields and when we got to the reservoir, we couldn't see anything there, either.

We entertained ourselves while we waited for the fog to lift.

Finally the fog lifted and just like last year, we found out that the geese had landed on the other side of the reservoir. Except that this year they were so far out, we couldn't get a good look or good pictures.

We did get to see a few fly in from time to time but we've had more exciting years. Oh well.

 

The day after the Snow Goose Festival was National Banana Bread Day, February 23, so we had some banana bread Pop Tarts.

It was also National Rationalization Day so Jeremy made something he'd been wanting to make for a long time- bangers and mash. 

That night was a multi-stake fireside with Camille N. Johnson, the Relief Society General President in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A couple friends and I walked to the building where it was being held. I did not get a good picture. There's a better picture of us when we had banana splits back in January.

Bad picture aside, the fireside was really good. I appreciated the things Sister Johnson shared with us. One of the things she shared was that every morning she has her own personal devotional with President Nelson, prophet and president of the Church. She will put on a talk that he has given in the past and will listen to that while she's getting ready. After that, so many sisters in our stake, including me, took that same challenge and started listening to President Nelson every day. It was talked about when we gathered together for the Worldwide Relief Society Devotional and Testimony Meeting a few weeks later. I went with my ministering sisters.

 

February 24 was Tortilla Chip Day so we had tortillas and dip of course.

 

Jeremy's birthday was in February. Jet wanted to put the candles on the cake so he decided how many of each color and placed them. What a sweetie.

We Don't Talk About Pluto

We don't talk about Pluto, no no. We don't talk about Pluto.

It was 2006 (It was 2006)

And there were nine planets in the sky.

IAU walks in with a mischievous grin (dwarf planet).

You telling this story or am I? 

IAU said a planet's big (and spherical).

A planet doesn't share it's orbit (but Pluto does).

Pluto's now a dwarf planet (not one of the eight).

We don't talk about Pluto, no no. We don't talk about Pluto.

Very very rough start to a parody of "We Don't Talk About Bruno" for Pluto Day, February 18. We had some fun figuring out different parts to the song. I love what Lucky figured out for a certain part of the song (you can figure out which part). "If you land on Pluto you would freeze. Ss ss ss."

This morning after working on this a bit with Jr. Jr. and Lucky, we then got into other discussions such as what would happen if you tried to step on Mars as compared to trying to step on a gas giant such as Jupiter. Then we got into talking about Alan Shepard hitting golf balls on the moon. The golf balls didn't fly into space because while the gravity on the moon is less than on Earth, it is strong enough to pull the golf balls down to the surface again, just not as quickly as on Earth.

At dinner everyone got into the song creating. I just love this family. We also made sure to eat together for the holiday, No One Eats Alone Day.

A couple other holidays today: National Battery Day. Jeremy had to take the car battery out in order to change a headlight. National Caregiver's Day. I of course was taking care of Jet all day.

Pluto Day 2021

This Pluto Day, February 18, was cold. I made the boys stand out in the cold when it was time to take Jr. to school in order to make them celebrate the holiday. "Happy Pluto Day." Pluto is cold.

Actually, I made them stand out in the cold long enough to tell them to get in on the other side of the van. That particular sliding door does not like the cold so it's better to get in and out on the other side. At least that is the case in the morning. By afternoon and time to pick up Nichole, it doesn't have as much trouble opening and closing.

They warmed up on the drive.

Pluto Day 2018

February 18 was Pluto Day.  We decided to have cold food because Pluto is a cold planet.

Pasta salad

Raw broccoli

Cantaloupe- it's small, round, and very good

Jeremy used a melon baller to create round cantaloupe planets.

Look!  It has craters.

Water with ice cubes

Yay, Pluto!

Today's Gulls

So, today was Pluto Day. We forgot to celebrate.

 But here is a picture of a gull. So there is that.

Pluto Day 2016

February 18 was Pluto Day.  At the end of the day, this is the comment I made.  "Ah, man.  We didn't do anything to celebrate Pluto Day."  This was Jr.'s response.  "Yes, we did.  We went out and got really cold."
Pluto is a very cold planet.  Jr. could tell you a lot about Pluto.  In fact, let's let him:

Fact #1. Pluto is really far from the sun. Fact #2. It is really cold there. Fact #3. Pluto day is on Feb. 18 every year. Fact #4. It was named by an 11 year old girl. (or teenager :) ;) I don't really know ) Fact #5. Pluto has a heart shaped crater on it. Fact #6. It has at least 5 moons. Fact #7. It's first moon is called Charon. Fact #8. Pluto's other (known) moons are #2 Nix, #3 Hydra, #4 P4, and #5 P5. Fact #9. My mom is insane. Fact #10. Really she is!

We did go out in the cold that day.  Here are pictures of us in the cold (not as cold as Pluto, though).

The Pluto Day That Almost Wasn't

Sometimes I get these great ideas and I plan them out and they go really well.  Park Week for example, the end of July/beginning of August 2011.
Sometimes I get these great ideas and I plan them out and they don't go as well.  Pluto Day, for example, February 18, 2015.

We had this idea to do a sort of model of the solar system.  I found a website to make a scale sort of model.  You plug in the size you want the sun to be (1 inches, 2 inches) and it shows you how big the planets would be (including Pluto) and the distance they would be from the sun.  Does that make any sense, what I said?
So we went to a park, Jeremy paced out how far it was across the park and we used that for our scale.  Then we figured out what size we could make the sun to fit Pluto across the field and figured everything out. 
Of course you can only do so much of a model because it doesn't show the orbits around the sun, etc.  But we mainly wanted to show the distance to Pluto (and the other planets) if the sun was a certain size.
So we put dots approximately the right size (you can't get Pluto that tiny with a pencil or pen) based on the size of our sun and we cut around the planets and taped them to some balls so we could see them from a distance.
So we did all this planning early on and then after school on Pluto Day we had after school snack and headed to the park (not as early as I would have liked).
And the park was full of soccer players.  Uh oh.  Our activity wouldn't work there.  So we went to another park.  The appeal of the original park we had plotted out was that it was flat.  There are other big parks but most of them are hilly.  Oh well.  So we arrived at the next park and there weren't as many people (and I remembered a sign saying "No organized sports" so I knew there wouldn't be a bunch of people doing soccer practice).  And the first thing the kids asked was, "Can we play on the playground?"  I had told them before we left that the reason we were going to the park was for a Pluto Day activity, not to play on the playground, but they still asked.  No, we're going to set up our activity and do it.  We're not here for the playground.
So as we were setting things up, I thought of something and asked Jeremy, "Did you bring the paper that had the distances and paces written down?"  Oops, he didn't.  Oh well, I could use my notebook that had the distances written down.  Except I forgot to bring my notebook.  Sigh.  Yes, kids you can go play on the playground. 

Luckily Jeremy's phone had internet access so we were able to go to that website and we did know the size of our sun to plug in for it to calculate distances.  So we got some paper and a pencil from the van and recalculated out distances from planet to planet, because we were just going in a line from sun to planet to planet to planet, and so on to Pluto.  So we gathered the kids back up, I stayed at the sun with Lucky (who I expected to fall asleep in the van on the way but he didn't) and Jeremy started showing the other kids the distance to Mercury then to Venus, and so on.  The first few planets were only about 5-7 paces each, then from Mars to Jupiter it jumped to 53 paces and by the time they were going to Uranus, they were going about 130 paces.  And once they reached Uranus, they ran out of park.  Oops again.  Apparently this park wasn't as long as the other park.  Jeremy said they needed almost the same distance again to reach Neptune and Pluto.  Sigh.
Oh well.  Things don't always work out the way we plan, but Jeremy said it was fun to see the kids' reaction when the planets started really getting farther apart.
And wow, this is a really long blog post, so I guess I'll end by showing you some pictures that Nichole took as Jeremy was taking them on a journey of the solar system for Pluto Day.

 

And look, the ball we used for Saturn already had rings.  Ha Ha.

Poor Abused Little Pluto

February 18th is Pluto Day. The day we celebrate the poor little planet that so many have tried to downgrade to nonplanet status. Pluto you may be more ice than rock and you may be smaller than the Earth's moon, but your heart is big and you will always be a full fledged planet in our book! (To point out the unfairness, Ganymede is bigger than Mercury but Mercury gets to keep its status as a planet.) (Ganymede would be one of Jupiter's Moons.) (For that matter Jupiter is much more gas than rock.) (In fact there is a debate if Jupiter has any solid mass at all.)


...


Anyway...

We celebrated Pluto Day by putting stickers on a Solar System sheet Jeremy brought home from the library last month (we actually saved them for today).

 

And then we introduced the kids to our new telescope by pointing it at the wall and letting them see their planets.

They were excited, they were thrilled, they took a quick peek and went back to reading.

Pluto, we are sorry, it looks like the excitement of Pluto Day just did not translate well for them.

But we will always love you this much!

Note the rocket and planet pajamas Jr. Jr. is wearing.

P.S.  Thanks for writing this blog post for me, Jeremy, so I could take a nap.  Here's a little bit more I'll add-
As we were preparing for Pluto Day, we got into a discussion about Pluto and what the kids learned about it at school.
Nichole:  Pluto used to be a planet but then it was called a dwarf planet for no reason, just because it was small.
Jr. started thinking up fairy tales involving Pluto.
Jr.:  Cinderella and the 17 dwarf planets.