Taking in the beauty

Karen spent a few hours up at Sundance Nordic Center again.

Incredible.

Perfect day, glorious surroundings. Just had to put some of her snaps from the day out here.
Yes, this is an actual cabin that people can stay in.
Not right now, I don't think.
I know all you non-Utahns are jealous!

Scientists in training

You might think from our many posts about science, experiments and the like, that our girls really love science.

You'd be wrong.

However, they are all involved in curricula that seem to emphasize science, and this year at Em & Jen's school, they were each required to do an experiment or research of some sort and enter it into the school science fair.

Let's just say, there was not a lot of rejoicing at this prospect.

However, each of them was able to find an experiment they could tolerate, and the research began.

Jenna's involved the ability of our fingers to feel warmth when some fingers are feeling cold. She put two pennies in the freezer, and had the subject hold a third penny in their hand to make it warm. After a few minutes, all three were put in a row on the counter, with the two cold ones on the outside, and the warm one in the middle. The subject put three fingers on the pennies, and she asked if they could feel the warm one or only the cold.If you look in the center of the poster, Jenna drew a diagram to show how each subject touched the pennies.

Most of the subjects could only feel the cold. Evidently, the cold sensation is strong enough that for most people, they are unable to distinguish that the middle one is warm. Kind of an interesting discovery, I thought.

Emily's experiment involved the ability of our brains to ignore what we read and only identify a color that we see. She made a list of color words (red, green, orange, etc) and wrote each word with a colored marker. Most of the colors she wrote with did not match the color of the word itself. (i.e. red, purple). She asked the subject to say the color of the word (not what the word said) as they went through a list of 20 words, and she timed them. Then she gave them another list of words also written in various colors, however these were nonsense words (i.e. nghy, ftrs), and again asked them to say the color of the word. Every time, the subjects were able to complete the nonsense word list more quickly than the list with color names. Substantially faster. Evidently, our brains have a hard time setting aside what we read in favor of a color we see, when the two do not match.

Emily won 2nd place for the 6th grade at her school, so she went on to the district science fair and competed against about 80 5th-6th graders from other schools.

Alas, she did not move on from the district fair.

And she was really glad about that. Because in reality she wasn't all that hip on going to the district fair, so the thought of having to do it all again at the next level was utterly unappealing to her.

Although they won't admit it easily, I think both girls enjoyed their projects.

At least a little.

And they're also glad it won't happen again for at least a year.

Valentine's Weekend in Zion Canyon

Karen and I spent a romantic weekend down in Southern Utah at Zion National Park.Okay, so maybe romantic isn't quite the word. As you can see, we had our three children in tow.Zion is a place of immense, incredible beauty. So this post is going to be picture-rich.

We stayed at the aptly-named Majestic View Lodge. The majestic view from our balcony:And from the parking lot:Zion is a very arid environment, very hot summers and not lots of precipatation. There is a river that runs through the main canyon of the park, and we're standing on it's bank here. Since it is February, there is some snow around. Very strange to see cactus with snow on it.The snow made for some beautiful scenes. It's a stark contrast against the red cliffs towering hundreds of feet straight above us.I have no idea about the expressions on their faces...The snow and ice made hiking a bit slickery sometimes, but breathtaking as well.It also made the snow accumulate on Emily's shoes. She has an open area carved into the sole of her shoes, and the snow would pack in there and build up as she walked, until soon she was hiking in high heels.We hiked over a snow packed trail up to an overlook that gives an incredible view of part of the canyon.Up at the top of this ridge, about in the middle of this picture below, just above the still forming arch, is where we were standing when we took the previous pictures.The girls enjoyed being able to play in the snow a bit.It wasn't too much that we were kept from a hike, but enough that you could enjoy it.I thought I'd turned off my cell, but alas I didn't. Wouldn't you know it, those Verizon commericials are right. They really are everywhere.I'm trying to bask in God's glorious splendor and I get texts and calls from my colleagues back home about arrangements for Sunday. I really should have just left the phone in the car. Aargh.Take a breath. Look around. Ah....that's better.

A quick snap Karen took of herself and Jenna. Had to include it. They're just too adorable!

A fabulous, restful, awe-inspiring, glorious weekend away. Yahoo!