Bridge Building

It was one of those opportunities that's too good to pass up.  On a lazy Saturday afternoon, Alex and I had just watched a documentary on bridges by David Macaulay.  At the end was a brief clip about how to teach the concepts to kids.  They suggested using drinking straws and pins to build a simple bridge, then figure out how to make it strong.  I realized, "hey, we have straws... we have pins!"  "Alex, do you want to try doing that?".  "Yeah!"

So we spent about an hour messing around with building bridges.

First we started with a trivial bridge "deck" 4 straws wide.  We decided to use match box cars to figure out how strong the bridge was.  With our initial design, the bridge could only hold 2 or 3 cars before buckling under the weight.

The program described trusses.  The simplified version was, "Build triangles".  So we started off with just a single triangle

That helped a little, but we soon figured out that we needed to underpin the entire length of the deck with a truss.  Using the straws, it was really easy to see and feel how the structure was stronger -- and why.

We just kept adding car after car to the load test, until finally the cars started to fall off because there wasn't room for them all!  (Not because the structure was failing!)

By the time it was all built up, the bridge was absurdly strong!  We crammed at least 25 cars onto it, and afterwards used the kitchen scale to weigh them - nearly 2 pounds!

We had a lot of fun

Genevieve's 4th Birthday

Genevieve celebrated her 4th birthday with family and friends this year.
First, Aunt Ali, Uncle Eric, and Cousin olli came out for a visit. We had a lot of fun running around with Oliver. Auntie Ali baked Genevieve pink cake (yum!)

Aunti Ali and Dana work on pink cakes

Alex is eager to help unwrap presents

I'm not sure why Olli is covering his ears - maybe copying the cousins? Or maybe we had James Taylor cranked up too loud?

Aunti Ali puts together a flamingo mobile

Happy birthday girl

We tried several times to get a picture of all three cousins together.  Although they spent lots of time playing, it was nearly impossible to capture a photo.  Here, Oliver is not a happy camper

A week after Ali & Eric's birthday visit, we had a party for Genevieve's cohorts.  In all we had about 12 friends from school and elsewhere come over.  It was a beautiful day in the back yard, and we had pizza and cake, a wading pool, a pinata, and lots of fun running around.

Too fun! Marin, Dean, Lucas & Ever, Nora, Kaylin, Freida, Alex, Brendan, Elsa, Sawyer, Genevieve, Maia, Violette, Greta, Max, Reed, Julianna

Artichoke House!

At long last our house has been repainted!

When we moved in to our home at the beginning of 2011, we already knew the original paint was not in the greatest shape. Over the ensuing 2 1/2 years, the problem grew progressively worse, and we began budgeting for a thorough re-painting. This summer the time was finally right.  It turned out that all the other neighbors on our alley whose houses were built around the same time as ours had the same problems with their paint, so a bunch of us got together to do a "package deal" with a painter in town. It worked out beautifully!

At the same time, we took the opportunity to slightly change the color.  The original body color was a very brownish green called "Pitch Pine" (part of the Historic Colors of America palette).  Over the years that color had faded considerably, so that in many places it was a medium grey-green.  We decided to try a color not on the HCA palette.  It's Sherwin-Williams "Artichoke" which is a greener green.  (Note: Colors aren't really my "thing").  Meanwhile we kept the trim, punch, and door colors the same as their originals -- Yarmouth Oyster, Sandy Bluff, and Sayward Pine, respectively.

Here's the front (South) face of the house:

Here's the south-west corner..

The west side:

The North side..

And the east side:

We're very happy the colors, and the very thorough job the painters did.  Here's to (at least) another 10 years!