Thursday, April 28, 2011

Baptism, Horses, Rube Goldberg and All Manner of Miscellaneous

This year, Palm Sunday was a very exciting celebration of the day Jesus Christ was heralded as King of kings.  Our sweet girl was baptized to show her faith in Christ.  She has been a believer and professed Christ since kindergarten, but the publicity surrounding a baptism has put her off. 

Our church had a baptism service at a pool in town.  It was so fun and such a celebration.  Our girl invited her girlfriends to join in the celebration.  It was so good to have some of them be able to join us.

Where would a girl be without precious girlfriends??

We have also begun the process of buying our first horse.  We are super duper excited.  Princess has decided to change riding disciplines from English Hunter to pleasure riding and trail competitions.  Part of the reason that she is changing is because riding in an English saddle is very difficult with Periodic Paralysis.  She handles it well now, but I am not able to have a strong enough "seat" (thigh muscles) to ride English.   Eventually, she will have more difficulty, too, and even now there are times when she is too weak to ride and jump fences.  We are planning to buy a Tennessee Walker Horse, which is a gaited horse.  Princess will keep the horse at her school barn as a 4-H project.  Caring for a horse 24/7/365 is going to be so much work, but we are excited.

 
Leaving our English barn means, of course, that we had to leave Leo.


Let me tell you how hard that was!! Mercy. We still miss him.




Princess had to make a Rube Goldberg machine, due April 21.  She chose to make an Egg Opener.  Good thing the King is an engineer.  They had fun building it together.  The best part?  It worked!  A steel ball was dropped through clear plastic tubing (not pictured) where it fell on the trigger of a mouse trap (bottom right).  The mouse trap snap was attached to a long steel lever with a pin attached at the top.  When the mouse trap snapped, the lever was thrust forward and the pin on the end popped a small balloon.  The coke bottle full of water rested on top of the balloon.  When the balloon was popped, the water weight in the coke bottle pulled on a pulley which was attached to a small sharp blade under the egg.  The egg was resting on a holder (see picture of Princess holding egg holder).  The pulley activated the sharp blade which pulled forward under the egg holder, cutting off the bottom of the egg.  A small tray was underneath the egg holder, catching the egg shell and the opened egg.  Tah-dah!




The King bought me a photography class for Valentine's Day.  I had a great time and learned a lot!  I have been playing with our camera and trying to apply all that I learned.  I am also learning to use Photoshop.  This bee is pollenating our cottoneaster plant in our back yard.  Cute, isn't he?