Elitches!!

Physics night at Elitches was last night, and we were fearful of a rain-out! Being that there were no refunds or exchanges for rain, we all showed up with our warm sweatshirts and smiles. Ok, most of us had warm sweatshirts, some had coats, and a couple had neither. You would think, as students, they would listen to the advice of their teacher to bring warm clothes! :)

Sam, Teresa, and Carmen had never been on a roller coaster so we made our task to ride all of them first thing. Somehow the consensus to ride 'Mind Eraser' lead us to the craziest ride in the park. I wouldn't have wanted to have my first experience with roller coasters be on that one, but hey, to each his own. They were scared to death watching it zoom above their heads with people flipping and spinning and screaming, but in the end, they all boarded the coaster. The twins sat together and Sam had Max as his guide. Being that Max is smaller (under 5 ft) and only 9 years old gave a sliver of confidence to the others that they wouldn't fall out of the car. Knowing the physics didn't seem to curb their fears at all!

We rode every roller coaster at the park (that was open, which I think only the half-pipe was closed - and TOWER OF DOOM!!! which was so disappointing even though it wasn't a roller coaster) and it seemed that everyone is now a roller coaster lover. After concluding with sidewinder and a 100 step climb, the kids decided to start on their circular motion rides. In my old age, I have acquired motion sickness with spinny-rides, so I sat those out...in the rain.

After the second spinning ride, I noticed that a couple people's smiles had disappeared from their faces, and started looking a little pale. I told Jose Juan in particular that he looked pale. He responded with 'I feel pale' and then was going to use the restroom. The group was excited for the teacups, so Jose Juan forgot his bathroom stop and proceeded to the 3 spinning ride in a row. I went to look for Carmen and Teresa, who ended up being at the teacups and I didn't realize that, while everyone but Fernando and I loaded into two cups.

Fernando started playing the guessing game to win some prizes (they guessed his weight wrong - win a prize!) and mid-game, everyone came running over to the stand laughing and blabbering on about how Jose Juan threw-up on the teacups! Apparently he was yelling for them to STOP!! the ride, but they didn't in time and he successfully closed down the teacups to allow the cleanup crew to get their money's worth. I'm so glad I wasn't there to witness this event, but everyone was fine and yak-free!

The rest of the night just got colder and rainier, so we of course rode a few more rides, got a caricature of the twins and Fernando, did a little shopping in the gift shop (as though we don't live here in Denver) and had a fantastic time! Sam even forgot that he wanted to skip this night to watch 'Fringe' until the night was coming to an end!! How wonderful!! YAY Physics!

Rockets

The seniors finished their last year of school so early, with finals at the end of April in my class!! So, with their few days left before check-out, graduation, and the rest of their lives, I decided the best thing for us to do was to build model rockets and shoot them off outside! We picked the windiest day of all (with gusts in the 60mph range) to launch them because of scheduling conflicts and had a super time! The kids enjoyed building the rockets and preferred cement glue to regular elmer's because they were too impatient to hold the pieces on their rockets for the elmer's to dry!

Sam and Ileana had successful flights, but ended up losing their rockets to the roof or the railroad tracks. David, Vince, and Jose Juan gave us a show of spiraling rockets and fire consumed rockets! It was a lovely end of the semester/year activity that the kids will remember, hopefully!!