Science

Any ideas as to what Dalin and Braden are doing?

What about now? For parent teacher conferences I told Dalin that if he did very well in school and his teacher said that he did his best then he could choose a book from the book fair. The first book he saw was this one. I tried to persuade him otherwise....I'm not really into this kind of stuff and I was sure it would be over his head. But he has his own mind and he wanted this one...period. He would not be dissuaded. So we took it home and read it over, and over and over and over. It has about a million little flaps and lifts and a huge pop-up volcano. We read each and every flap, some of which I was sure were going to be way too complex for him, but after reading and looking at it so many times he knows a lot about volcanoes. Braden got in on the action and now his favorite thing in the whole world is volcanoes. Since we live next to Mt. Hood every time we drive down T.V. Highway we have to keep our eyes peeled for the volcano. It's a sad day when the clouds cover it up. They absolutely love it. They talk about lava and magma and everything else from ash to craters. Do you know the difference between lava and magma? They do. It's amazing. Braden's favorite thing to watch now is volcanoes erupting on YouTube or National Geographic specials on volcanoes. Yes, my 3 year old will sit through and hour and a half episode of National Geographic. And all because of this book. So the two pictures above....what are they doing? Building up and exploding volcanoes.

So Dan and I decided to take a little drive over to Mt. Hood for a closer look with the boys and let me tell you, they were so excited. Here is a picture of our first glimpse of the volcano. It's hard to see in the picture because the sun was behind it, but it's all I could come up with. At this higher altitude it was a lot colder. We just about froze to death taking this picture. At about 2,000 feet we ran into snow and below you'll see our beautiful Mt. Hood. Apparently there are about 5 ski slopes around the mountain and as we drove past there was a huge sledding hill, where they provide these giant inner tubes and a tow rope to pull you to the top, much like Wolf Mountain, for those of you who know what I'm talking about. There are hiking trails, camping, picnic sites, and more so this summer we'll have to check out some of those options. I know you can take a guided hike to the summit of this beast, but that would be way too much for little boys.