Snowing in Concord.....



 Well almost.  The Bay Area is pretty funny weather wise in February.  It was just two weeks ago we were talking about  being in the 70's with one day making it 80.  This week we are talking about low elevation snow.


I mean really low.  And the benefit of living in our new house is that we can look out the back of our house and see the snow on the nearby hill, not to mention the snow on Mt. Diablo.  The snow level Friday night got down to about 1,500 feet.  We are now a little over 500 feet now, so it had been pretty cold with snow/rain mix.

We decided yesterday, after service, to take the kids up the mountain to play in the white stuff.  By that time, it was now snowing at the 2000 foot level.  They had closed the road before the Juniper Campground cut-off, so it meant a little bit of a hike.

I couldn't believe how many people made the trek up the mountain.  And how many took their little ones up there without gloves.  They had the sleds though.

The kids had a great time throwing snowballs.  Emma made a nice little snowman.  Beth and I played a little snowball baseball.    It was pretty fun.  It was a wet snow, which meant we got cold and wet pretty quick. 

After a while, we hiked back to the car.  Of course, there wasn't much snow under the trees.  So the kids switched into Salamander hunting mode.  They found a few then hit the jackpot:  another Woodland scorpion!!!

Western Woodland Scorpion on Mt. Diablo

This one was pretty feisty, especially for it being so cold.  We got some great pictures of it though.

After that we headed home. 

Science Fair in the house.....

The weekend before last, we worked on Emma and Sophie's science fair projects.  It pretty much consumed that weekend, however the kids had fun. 

Sophie's project was to better understand the process of excavating dinosaur bones.  To help, we got her two different dinosaur excavasion kits and she and Beth went to work.  This meant wearing goggles while she slowly chipped away at sandstone.  The process ended putting the bones together into a dino-skeleton model.  The first kit took 2.5 hours and the second took 40 minutes.  Once this was done, it was time to get the display ready, which looked fabulous.

Emma's project was to determine if the width of a wing affects lift.  This was up to she and I.  We made 8 different paper airplanes with various wing types and three balsa wood planes.  These were each flown 10 different times and were ranked for the one that flew the furtherest to the one that flew the shortest.  We graphed the results then came to the conclusion that the width of a wing is not the sole dertimining factor in lift.  Then it came time to build the display.

The science fair was last Wednsday.  It was really neat to see all of the different projects.  For grades 3 to 5, the winner in each grade would represent the Woodside in the school district science fair on February 19th.  All the kids at the school did a wonderful job and we are so proud of Sophie and Emma.  And guess what?

Emma won for the third grade!!!! So next Saturday, she will be showing her project at the District Science Fair.  Sophie is extreamly happy because she gets a ribbon for participating.  She and another 1st grader were the only ones to submit a project!!!

I will give an update next week on how everything goes.