robots!

noah got stacking robots for his birthday. they are so cool.

nicholas was playing with them and learned about gravity, balance and (a)symmetry.

birthday boy!

noah's birthday was march 3. (the day after his cousin reilly's. they missed sharing a birthday by 2 1/2 hours.) we had his party on that saturday. i'm a little late with the pictures. :p

(i don't know why all my pictures have been coming out grainy *shrug*)

birthday boy <3>

he hid in the kitchen with daddy for the first half hour.

one he finally came out of the kitchen, he sat on my lap. haha


nicholas let noah open one present.

then he opened the rest.

i'm not sure noah will allow that next year.

he didn't get anything plastic!

his cake got contaminated with chili and little boy fingers. oh well. it still tasted good.

everyone had fun with the punching balloons.

nicholas in particular! lol

rain!

it rained last week. which is always exciting around here. we didn't even know it was supposed to rain. we just looked out the window and there it was. :p

noah was kind of confused

nicholas wanted a closer look so he procured a collection device.

it's not a beer cup at all.

noah got cold pretty quick.

nicholas kept playing.

zeer pot

i read about zeer pots a few months ago. it is 2 pots. one pot inside the other with sand and water in between. the water evaporates and cools the inside pot. you can put food inside and it acts like a refrigerator. they only work where the humidity is less than 20%.

our fridge went out on thursday. it didn't get fixed until monday. it was horrible. it's hard to realize how dependant we are on modern conveniences until they are gone. we have a mini-fridge but it only holds a few things. we had to throw out everything from the freezer. even food that didn't necessarily go bad because it all stank like rotting meat. gross.

if the small zeer pot we made today works out, we are going to put together a big one and use it, along with the mini-fridge instead of a regular refrigerator.

here is the pdf from the guy that invented it.

and an article from Science in Africa.

the set up (plus our sage and basil plants in the blue pots on the end)

sifting sand

we plugged up the holes with modeling clay.

pour sand in the bottom until the top of the small pot is level with the top of the big pot.

pour sand down the sides.

noah wanted to help.

fill it up with water.