Between the breaks

We released more butterflies between the breaks.

Isabella and I had fun releasing each of them... about 5 or 6 this winter / early spring (that did not emerge last summer like they "should" have). 

(Of note - I took the net with the chrysalises into school as one of our competition projects was a butterfly vivarium.  They did not hatch during class, but the students still got to see the chrysalises, then another day see a couple of butterflies.) 

Here are some sketches & drawings from one of my talented students for her vivarium

There were more hikes between the breaks.  

my fav thing @ Chattahoochee Nature Center:  the log with all of the turtles on it!

Bark and 

cool textures

I took a solo hike at the nature center... 

then joined Isabella and Todd for another one at Kennesaw Mountain with the dog one beautiful day in early March....

LOVE these photos of her running with the dog.  They never get old! 

She still loves to roll down the big hill and get dizzy!

We had lows 

M had another nosebleed that wouldn't stop) / had to go to the ER to get a spray and we now have a follow-up with an ENT for possible cauterization.  (He needs to get his tonsils out too - so maybe we'll get a 2-for-1 ??!)

We've had multiple rain events and flooding in the back yard.

We finally had to cut down the peach tree.  Here are the last blooms... on the curb.  :(

Isabella got a recorder -- all 5th graders get them.  eek! (Mercer went and found his old one... and they have been torturing us with them!  She's trying to learn / play songs.  He's just playing high-pitched randomness.)

And then We had highs.

She played her cello in the school talent show! The song she played was Hallelujah. She did well overall. She messed up a little on the 2nd stanza and stopped but her sweet little community of classmates and parents all cheered her on.   

She was also genuinely excited for all of the talents of her classmates too.

She had a dance at school.  She didn't want me to take her picture / wouldn't pose....

but I got one with her reading on the car-ride.

She did keep talking about NOT having a boyfriend and not wanting to have one... not wanting to see anyone do the slow dance  :)

Thankfully, I found several on the school's PTA site to download with her and some friends).

Looks like she had a good time!  

(listening to her talk about the dance afterwards, it sounds like the highlight was the cotton candy machine where they spun it right in front of you!)

We celebrated our anniversary (we remembered this time!) and we checked out a restaurant on the square that was fantastic... we had Spanish tapas and sangria.  

Many of the dishes are like the ones we had on our honeymoon!  It was fantastic!

And we had a "date night" with Isabella - taking her out to the market on the square for dinner, then taking her to a show at the high school.  

The theater department put on a play about the Adams Family which was really good!

There was, of course, baseball.  

Mercer hasn't gotten a lot of play time, but when he does, he's doing pretty well (there was 1 wild inning, that he recovered from) but overall, he's held his own.  

One particular game was pretty meaningful for him because he was matched up against an old teammate who plays for a nearby school.

And - warning... photo overload! 

There's a mom on the team who's a photographer. Todd got a bunch of photos from her at this particular game

These are especially fun photos: when Mercer was running across the plate to score a run @ this game, his team was celebrating.

Overall, the JV team is doing pretty well this year.  There is going to be some sort of a tournament after spring break, but not sure when Marietta will play.  The varsity team is doing well too - they're ranked as one of the top teams in the state this year.  Definitely a better year for him and the team(s)!

One other thing that was special earlier this month, the little league that M "grew up" in... they had a tribute to the teammate that died during covid from a bicycle accident. County owns the park.

They officially dedicated a baseball field to Blake.  The little league organization did this in a previous year, but since it's not technically their park - the county that owns the park learned about what happened / came out to make it official at "opening day" of the season this year.

They asked Blake's coaches (Todd was one of them) to come out.  Mercer went with Todd, of course, but so did the other coaches' sons and a couple of other former teammates.  It was a nice tribute.

I found a photo from just before covid shut everything down:  the boys pictured here received a little league "lifer" award for playing at East Marietta their entire little league careers.  (They all played 8 years since 4 year old T-ball up 'til the age of 12 -- the "big" year for little leaguers -- this is the televised game is for the little league world series - except for covid year of course.)  

In the 12 year old photo above from early March 2020, Mercer is the tall kid #1 (who stopped growing!).  Blake is #12.  A total of 5 of these boys in this picture (#11, #1, #19, #23 and #6) were there during opening day this year to support their fallen brother #12. 

And... some other happenings between the breaks....

Isabella got new glasses (again).

I've visited 2 architecture colleges over the past few weeks. One was with a conference for architecture teachers in Georgia. The originally planned tour "fell through" so I coordinated an impromptu tour over at the KSU architecture building.  I've been several times and have gotten to know some of the professors / the dean. But - some others have not been there. 

Graciously, they hosted us!  It was a good (standard) tour of the wood shop / tech spaces / studio / etc... but I took an "extended" tour with one of the teachers who found some of her past high school architecture students.  I tagged along so I could see other parts of the campus and the other architecture building that I've not been to before, so that was good!  (I loved the energy of studio this trip -- I only took photos without students, but overall, it was hoppin!)

The other was a formal field trip over to Auburn for our architecture and engineering students.  We took a bus over early in the morning and split between the two buildings. My group went to the architecture building and through the studios. 

 

We met back up with the engineering students, had lunch, walked to Toomer's corner (there's a famous drug store on the corner and there is a plaza where there are trees that get rolled with toilet paper after auburn wins a big game.  They gave us bottles of Toomer's lemonade and then stopped for a photo-op in front of historic Samford Hall.

So... Mercer went with us (the dude in brown on the left side of the sign).  He knew some of the kids there / met others.  He said he didn't understand the stuff on the architecture tour - that he didn't care about any of it. :(  I think he was just happy to go on a field trip and go see big a college campus. 

Auburn has a really nice campus!  (this photo is from upstairs in the library looking out to the stadium).  

We had another activity focused on industrial design as the whole group then boarded the bus and headed back to Marietta.

There was ONE un-planned stop:  to Buckees gas station (which is much more than just gas!)  Mercer picked up a little something for himself...  

(a few other kids on the trip got some pjs too)

He really loves them and has worn them a lot since we've been back!

We'll leave this here!

M - and a bunch of other kids fell asleep on the bus ride back. (The engineering teacher sent me this photo)

Something in the news from this week that should be documented here:  

A cargo ship hit a bridge overnight earlier this week in Baltimore.  It had just left port at 12:50 ("midnight fifty" according to a BBC video I showed in class - since we had done a bridge project earlier this year I thought it was fitting to talk about it)..... about 30 minutes after it departed, it apparently lost power / it came back on / went off again.

This power affected the propulsion and the steering and it veered off-course hitting the support for the bridge.  It was in the middle of the night, so not many cars were on the bridge + the pilot sent a distress call and they were able to stop additional drivers from going onto the bridge.  But there were construction workers fixing potholes in the middle of the night that were on the bridge that fell into the water.  There are still many who are missing and whose bodies were not recovered. 

If this had happened during rush-hour the tragedy would have been at a higher toll.  (30,000 cars traverse the bridge every day.) We do take this route when going up to New Jersey.  Obviously it will be years and years before this bridge is operational again.  It is amazing at how vulnerable the bridges really are! 

Meanwhile the wars in the Ukraine continues.  The war between Gaza and Israeli - the UN is calling for a cease-fire during their holy month of Ramadan.  

On this eve of Easter, it calls me back to this "Be Still and Know that I am God" (Psalms 46:10)

Be still. This is a call for those involved in the war to stop fighting, to be still. The word still is a translation of the Hebrew word rapa, meaning “to slacken, let down, or cease."