Missile Site Park

Did you know you can tour a retired missile site just over in Windsor (about 20 minutes from our house)? Yup. Totally can. A mom in our homeschool group organized a tour (thanks!) and we went yesterday. The boys loved it! (big surprise, lol) Here are some (not great) pictures:

From left to right, top to bottom:

• That's the boys horsing around before the tour started. They're actually standing near the door that gets blasted off from the exhaust when a missile launched. You can't see it here, but it was a good sized (and heavy) door that's only removed by the power of the blast...more impressive in person. ;)
• I wanted a picture of the boys and me but no one else was around right then and my arm isn't long enough, lol. 
• This is our group walking across the giant steel door that would slide off to the west when they were ready to launch. The missile would rise up from a horizontal to a vertical position (like dracula coming out of his coffin) and was targeted at Moscow. It could make it there in 25 minutes, going at mach-8. 
• Having walked off the giant steel door and around, here's us heading toward the big ol' door that was used for getting the missile in and out for maintenance. There's a "normal" door for people just to the right of the big door. 
• Once inside, we got to walk in the tunnels to the living quarters (now used for housing archival records for Weld County) and then to the missile area.
• That's the actual room where the missile would have been housed. The mock up on the ceiling is to show roughly how much room it took up. 
• We got to climb up and look down at where the blast would have taken place. Those yellow dealies show roughly where the base of the missile would have been once it was in its vertical position. There's a deep well-like area below that outlook where the power of the blast would have been directed...ending in opening up that giant door from the first picture. 
• My boys messing around with some of the equipment. Notice, Micah found a phone and is animatedly chatting it up. ;)
• The toilets. ;) Yup, just a big cardboard cylinder with a plastic bag liner. Lovely. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be part of the crews that lived here back in the day...

And that, my friends, is just a fraction of the information we learned yesterday. (And, yes, I'm sure the boys could explain it better and actually know the specifications and how the missiles worked and all. Please don't comment if I totally explained something wrong, lol.)

In any case, it was really pretty darn cool. Added to our archery in the morning (during which they played a dartboard game so got in some math, lol) and spelling, writing and geography in the afternoon...not a bad homeschooling day. ;)

Is it wrong...

...that the boys were excited about the Superbowl only because it's one of the rare-ish occasions when we have chips and pop in the house? (Not, mind you, that we don't *want* chips and pop all the time, lol...); or,

...that I was cheering for the Giants only because I love hearing Micah root for Eli Manning? He calls him "Ellie" because that's how he read his name on the tv screen and he can't seem to remember from game to game that it's "Eli" not "Ellie."

Nah, I didn't think so either. ;)

Sledding.

We haven't taken the boys sledding for one reason or another for a couple years. They are very aware of this and have been pestering us. (To be fair, I'm thinking that Asher's broken arm is a good reason for not sledding last year, lol.) Anyhow. This is how we spent the morning: (click on these to make them bigger)

Yes, we like those inflatable sleds. Two were sleds that we've had in the garage for a few years and finally remembered to inflate.

No, we did not color coordinate them to the boys...honest. It just happened that way. ;)

Yes, Micah started out bundled up but ended up begging to sled in just his tee, jeans and boots. (It was beautiful weather and actually very nice.) Obviously, since he refused to zip his coat back up, he ended up rather wet. But he was happy. ;)

Yes, they built themselves a small snow ramp to jump. Fortunately, it didn't get big enough to do any real damage, though there were a number of times folks ended up on the ground without a sled, lol. (Yes, by "folks" I mean to include Nathan, lol.)

Yes, they all decided (having watched the Winter X Games last weekend) that it would be cool to attempt to "snow board" on that flat sled. They didn't make it very far, but it was entertaining to watch. :) 

They were all smiles:

 
Yes, Micah is a ham. Seriously. He and his sweaty little head posed for that shot.

Yes, trying to get good closeup shots of my eleven year old is getting more and more difficult. ;) (Asher will cooperate but simply can't stay still...lol.)

(By the way, this sledding was all done at a small neighborhood grassy area and isn't really a very big hill at all. Fortunately, that's sufficient for the boys...because the larger, more popular, local sledding hills were probably packed. We were mostly alone, which was nice.)

And. Nathan and I were not to be left out:

Yes, going down double on the circular sled didn't work so well. We had to switch to the wedge shaped one. ;)

And. You can't see it here, but that last picture (bottom right) was taken just moments before we tumbled into the drainage ditch that had begun to melt quite nicely. When we'd started the morning, it was just filled with snow and we didn't always make it that far anyhow. By the end, it was free-flowing water and, well, Nathan and I just didn't abandon our sled in time, lol. (We made the boys bail out before the ditch after that!) Considering that Nathan and I weren't wearing snow pants like the boys, it's a good thing that run was near the end of our sledding. :)

So, that's how we spent our morning. Started the weekend off nicely...how's yours going?

Three things.

Lest I fall behind again... ;)

1. I actually managed to start back with our more structured homeschooling this week! Amid the spelling, US geography, US history, world geography, world history, manners, Latin, grammar and other stuff (and I even also baked a bundt cake, lol!)...I'm integrating a new writing curriculum into our homeschooling. (It's called Brave Writer. Thanks, Sue!)

One of the initial exercises focuses on the importance of good communication. One person draws something and then tries to talk another person through it so that he/she draws the same picture. We started out with simple arrangements of basic shapes...a circle, a triangle and a square. Within minutes, this is what Micah was saying to Asher..."draw a big Death Star in the middle...then draw a tie-fighter off at about 2:00...below that, in the lower right of the board, draw an x-wing..." And at Noah's turn to draw, we ended up with iPods with specific apps on the screen. ;) Of course, these more specific drawings turned out to match more closely than the basic shapes. They crack me up.

(Yes, Asher and Micah rarely wear shirts indoors, lol.)

2. Micah proudly earned his orange belt on Thursday! Because he's still in the "peewee" classes (classes are divided by age), he doesn't do the whole promotion night thing like Asher does, so I had to try to snap some pictures at the end of class:

He's pretty darn pleased with himself. True to form, though, he already taught himself the orange belt form and combinations months ago while Asher was still an orange belt. We'll see how long it takes for him to start trying to jump ahead to green belt stuff, lol. 

3. It snowed again. :) We didn't get slammed like the areas south of us (that got more than a foot of snow)...just enough to cover everything and make for some fun snow play:

Feeling so thankful that they're all old enough that I don't have to be outside with them any more. ;) 

And that's what's been going on here since my last post. :) Now I'm off for a rather full weekend...stay warm!