Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Still Cold.

7/365
Another day at home. 
The projected high today was 8 .
Still cold.  
So I got a wild hair this morning, and decided to try another one of those science experiments in the freezing cold.  Chris and I went outside to blow bubble.  They were supposed to freeze upon contact with the arctic air.  At first, I went out back, and they just blew away. Eric's theory was that I needed to get out of the sun and the wind.  So Chris and I went out front.  He was my videographer.  


And he wasn't too bad at that.  It's pretty hard to see freezing bubbles in the wind.  



We tried a couple times, and then Chris started to get cold (it was -10 at the time) so he needed to come back in.  He missed his snowpants. ;)   But he decided being inside was Much better than being outside.  
So I came back out on my own, with my camera in hand, to try and capture some still photos.  

Not too bad.  I spilled bubble juice all over my hands.  But I was able to get a couple pictures.  And most importantly, I was able to SEE the transformation from liquid to solid myself.  It was actually really cool.   I could see the crystallization, it was pretty fast really.  Then it would kind of start to crumple up.  


This bubble landed on the porch where I'd shoveled some snow out of the way for Chris and I to stand.
After it hardened a bit, I reached out and poked it.  It felt like a bubble gum bubble.  But when I popped it, it crunched a bit, didn't pop like gum.  


Instead, I poked a whole in it! 


So I tried again.  

In this photo, you can see the bubble is still pretty clear, but the crystallization is starting to creep up around the bottom.  


This one was my favorite, it's really obvious where the feathering of ice occurred.  
 

The pressure started getting to it.  And to me too.  Spilling bubbles all over me and my lenscap, my fingers were frigid, it was time for me to go in.  


This one got popped too. ;)   It reminded me of this rice paper candy treat I tried at the International Festival once, it would dissolve on my tongue as soon as wet.  I wasn't tasting this, but it felt very similar.


So I brought the shell inside to show the boys.  It only took a second for it to start thawing when I got inside, I was able to capture the melt.  Chris got to see it, but it was gone before the others came around.

Since we have been in the house all but 3 days of the last 13, we're kind of reaching our wits end.  So I broke out the Gingerbread House that my mother in law gave us last week.  She intended to give it to us before Christmas, Christmas Eve I think.  But she forgot until we saw her on the 30th, so she gave it to us then.  We broke it out today, and the boys were so excited to decorate it.

Our 'kit' came with the house pre-assembled and some bagged candies.  
There was a bit of red 40 there so I grabbed some chocolate chips and fruit jellies from trader joe's for Sam to use.  He didn't care about decorating with red 40 candies, he was having a great time playing with all the colors.  He's old enough now to know which colors are good and which aren't.  


The boys had a great time decorating separate sides of the roof of the gingerbread house.  

Today was the most they've gotten along in the entirety of this snowstorm.  I'm glad I didn't have to yell.  It probably didn't hurt that I let them sample some of the candies as they worked. ;)


The final product.  Mommy did the front door and wreath, and I loaded up some chocolate chips, for Santa and the chimney.  Sam decorated the roof and the window.  


Christopher decorated this side of the roof.  Together they worked on the back door and window.  Sam provided gum drop support.  :)


And within minutes they were ready to eat.  I think it sat still literally 5 minutes before they dug in.  I told them it needed to dry a bit, but they didn't think so.  What the heck.  They had fun, and I got my pictures.  


Now the roof was a bit harder than I thought.  The kids were perfectly happy to just pick off all the candies they put on there, but i'm like HEY!  It's a Gingerbread house, you can Eat the house!  My grandparents used to mail us a gingerbread house from swiss colony or something like that every year when I was young (they didn't live close and we didn't get to see them every holiday) and my favorite was the Perfect Bite, with a bit of gingerbread plus icing plus candy.  They dissolved in my mouth at different rates, so it was a lot of fun in each bite.  Anyway, the boys couldn't break off the roof, they weren't quite strong enough.  So they had to call for reinforments - Daddy.  Don't worry, Daddy tried some too in order to make sure it was ok.  It was. Then the boys kept snacking.



And here's all that was left.  I kept hearing, "Nibble Nibble like a mouse, who's that nibbling on my house?"  The kids thought I was weird.   

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