Couch to 5k

I have been working on a running program over the winter and am pleasantly surprised at how I am doing. 

The program is just an app I downloaded from itunes for a couple of dollars.  I hop on the treadmill and every so often the program yells at me to either start running or slow down and walk.  I watch a tv show on the ipad or listen to music to make the time pass quickly.  I have finally mastered the buttons on the treadmill and have yet to fall off (knock on wood).  There are three sessions a week and it is set up as an eight week program.

So this was today's program (week 4 session 3):
Warm up walk for 5m
Run 3m
Walk 2m
Run 5m
Walk 2m
Run 5m
Walk 2m
Run 3m
Walk 2m
Cool down walk for 5m

Now, I am a very slow runner at just 7.5km/hr and my walking speed is 5.8km/hr.  But hey!  I am still doing it!  Today I covered just over 3.5km in the 34 minutes of the program.  Plus I walked to and from the gym, so another 1.5km.

I have never run for 5 minutes straight.  I am sure I never even did it as a kid.  Well, unless it was for smarties.  I might have run 5 minutes to get smarties.

In just two more sessions I will have an 8 minute run.  Just thinking about that makes me want to barf.  And by the end of the eight weeks, the program has you running 35 minutes.  I don't know about that!!  But I will keep on going and who knows, perhaps I just might run for 35 minutes.

Some excitment, some humour, and crafting results!

A mixed blog post here!

First the excitement part.  Last night I booked the plane tickets to Los Angeles for my reconstructive skin surgery!  I got a fantastic deal on seats and both Matt and I are flying there return for just under $1300 total for the two of us.  Wow!  And even more amazing?  The money I used to buy the plane tickets had all been donated from amazing friends!  Nearly $1800 has been donated to my surgery fund.  I cannot say thank you enough to everyone who has contributed.
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Some humour that I posted on facebook the other day:
Me: Hunter, do you think it was a good decision to put the balloon into the toilet while Cavan was peeing?
Hunter: Nope, but it was a funny one.

Smart ass kid. I guess he is taking after me. And Matthew. Damn those smart ass genes.
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And the results of the crafting disaster from yesterday!  Very, very fugly.  But the boys think they are awesome and believe there is no way daddy will be able to steal the chocolate now!

 

Crafting Disaster.

I love crafting with my kids, but once in a while my well laid out plans like to laugh in my face.  Today's project was just that.

I laid out the supplies for our daddy chocolate traps.  I am anal on being organized.  So everything was set up just right.  Or at least I thought.  Sheet was put on the floor.  Chocolates were put into balloons and tied to a laundry drying rack.  Glue was thinned with some water.  String was cut to manageable lengths and sitting nicely in a tray.  Boys were down to just their undies.  Perfect!

Uh huh. 

Boys in undies have full access to wankers.  I attempted to get a nice shot of our craft set up:

Wanker grabs by both.

So the plan was for them to grab a piece of string.  Put into the glue.  Remove from glue and get the excess off and then wrap the string around the balloon.  The boys deemed the glue to messy so they wanted me to do the dipping and they would put it on the balloons.  Well that was a full on disaster.  Strings fulled with glue were just flying around.  Hitting me.  Hitting them.  Getting into hair.  Hands went back to wankers.  Screams were heard as they were worried their wankers would be glued closed forever.  Kill me now.  Where is the booze?

Finally, this mama resorted to having them just passing me the dry strings and I did the rest.  Then I threw them in the bath and I went to survey the scene of the disaster.

The sheet I so thoughtfully put out to help contain the mess?  Yeah.  Watered down glue soaks right through.  So I had to scrub the floors.  Then I see glue on the sofa.  More scrubbing.  Glue on the wood stove pad.  More scrubbing.

It is now 4:25pm and the boys are in pj's already.  I am ready for bed.  And the glue balloon disastors are drying.  The plan is to pop the balloons tomorrow and the chocolate eggs inside will be trapped so their daddy won't be able to steal them when he returns at the end of the week.

I am going to sneak a mini chocolate.  Maybe take a swig of the ready-made mojito mix in the fridge.  And the tv is going to watch my children for the rest of the evening.  This mama deserves that at least.  Right?

Never again.

I wish this picture showed off the glue...

Who knows.  Maybe they will work?

Strawberries? What strawberries?

We haven't been to Whitehorse now for two months, so the cupboards and fridge are a little bare.  Our store in town gets a truck once a week, but the produce is snapped up within 24 hours and goodies like berries seem to be gone within an hour of the delivery truck arriving.

A friend was in town this week and I asked her to bring me home a container of strawberries.  You can tell a northern kid.... they will always eat the fruit before any other snack!

This container lasted about 15 minutes.

Spring Break Science Experiments Part 2

Spring Break Science Experiments are still going strong with an experiment every day!  And for those thinking this takes a lot of work and effort- trust me- this is easy stuff!!  Most of these take a couple of minutes to find the supplies and then 3-15minutes from start to finish.  My kids have attention spans of goldfish (unless they are watching Transformers or Ninja Turtles on tv), so we make sure it is kept short.

Hunter is big on yelling out, "This myth is busted/plausible/confirmed!" when we try each experiment.  Can you tell we have been watching a lot of mythbusters? 

And they are both coming up with some creative variations on some experiments and they get us to repeat according to their instructions.  Heaps o'fun!  This science geek mama (and dad) couldn't be happier!

So what have we done since our last post?

We tested what happens to balloons when they are held over flame!  Boom!

However, when you fill the balloon with water, it won't explode when held over a flame.

Did you know raisins can dance?

Dance raisin, dance!

Gravity has been defied!  And my floors were cleaned in this process....

We learned about density!

We tried to make Mountain Dew glow in the dark- This myth is totally busted!

And we turned old movies into hovercrafts.

 These experiments have turned into the highlight of my day (well other than 7:30pm when they go to bed).  We have six more days of spring break so that means six more experiments I will share with everyone next week!

Craft Junkie

Thank you pinterest for inspiring my crafting ideas for this week!  I saw a picture on how to make fabric flowers (I know!  A craft without leather or fur?  What am I doing!) and have been making them non-stop and affixing them to everything in sight.

Fabric flower on a special hair elastic.

Flowers on hair bands.

Flowers on baby headbands.

More flowers on hair elastics.

My name is Kara and I am a craft junkie. 

Experiments for Boys

Spring break is here and Hunter is off school for the next two weeks.  It has been around -24C in the mornings, but warming up to a beautiful -5C by the afternoons.  Normally, we would be outside most of the day but Cavan has strep throat and I am still battling a sinus infection, so we have been stuck in the house quite a bit.  To make sure we all don't go crazy, I have been finding some creative things for us to do!

The boys and I have been keeping busy with some pretty fun experiments and activities that I thought I would share.  I would like to try something different each day over spring break and that should prove pretty easy with inspiration like this book my dear friend Lana sent to us:

The perfect book for my house:  The Book of Totally Irresponsible Science

 Everything so far that we have done has been simple and has taken very little prep or clean up.  The activities have been short since the boys have pretty short attention spans.  I also make sure the the boys are the ones doing most of the work.  Of course it means a bit more of a mess to clean up in the end, but it is worth it.  I get the boys to make predictions as to what will happen or talk about how we could change something if we tried the experiment again.  We have all been watching past seasons of "MythBusters" throughout the winter, so they are big into wanting to do things that blow up or involve fire.  It should prove to be an interesting couple of weeks of experiments!

A sheet of baking soda and syringes filled with food-coloured vinegar.  Squirt and watch the fizz!

hmmm... I wonder if food colouring will stain my curtains...

Making goo out of dishsoap and cornstarch.

This was a bit of a fail, but the boys enjoyed squishing it all around!

Cavan and I made fire starters!  He loaded up egg cartons with dryer lint.  These are the easiest firestarters to make and use.  Just break off one egg holder at a time, stick under kindling, and light with a match.

Mama got to stir the melting parafin wax on the stove.

I would pass Cavan a small ladle of hot melted wax and he would pour it over the lint-lined egg cartons.  Remember to put wax paper down on your counter top before doing this activity!  Or else you will be scrapping wax off for hours.

Re-planting Cacti!

Messy, fun, and a good way to start talking about spring!

Fort building is always a good activity when a kid is sick!

Pillows, toys, fruit, goldfish crackers and a treat of getting to use the ipad!  Perfect fort.

A candle experiment!  We burned one candle in water and one without.  They check back repeatedly to see what the difference would be between the two.  When I asked them to predict what would happen they said the candle in water would be put out by the water, but the other candle would light our house on fire! 

It is hard to see here, but the water had formed a convex meniscus (I think it would be called that in this instance?) up to that lip of wax.  It looked so neat!  All of the candle was under water except for the very centre.

Comparison photo of the two candles.

Tonight we made bath paints with their shampoo, food colouring, corn starch and water.

The bath paint seemed a bit watery, but it was still a big hit.  No one was stained, but the water was a nasty brown by the end.  Plus they were both so soapy, I had to throw them into the shower for a rinse off.

I will do another update next week with all of the other activities and experiments we try!

Hey Mom! Watch this!

I have, for the most part, given up telling the boys "no" when I hear them yell, "Hey Mom!  Watch this!"

I have adventurous boys. 

I have dare-devil boys.

I have boys hell-bent on giving me gray hairs.

Now, I just opt to get the camera and think about where the phone is, just in-case I need to speed dial the health centre.

Today's adventure was leaping from some lattice work into some snow below.  It was about an 8' drop.

Now, it did end in tears.  We had some other little boys over and one boy knocked his chin off of Cavan's head.  He was fine in the end.  And another little boy had the misfortune of being pushed, head first, over the edge.... by Cavan.  Thank goodness for all the snow to soften the impact, but landing face first in the snow is not pleasant.  Neither was the bare bum spank and hour Cavan spent in his room as punishment for the push.

The gray hair should be arriving any day now.