Park Day for 2nd Grade

Here are some pictures Grant took at the 2nd Grade Park Day at the Hand-in-Hand playground using his Nintendo DSi game system and managed to email to me. He and Spencer are becoming quite adept with technology!!

Colonial Day for 4th Grade

The fourth grade hosted "Colonial Day" at school. They did short powerpoint presentations on their chose colonial occupation, which was a blacksmith for Spencer. I might point out that when you add up enough "short" presentations, the total can get quite "long".

Then we were treated to performances of the Virginia Reel. Spencer started off strong with the first song, but when it extended to two, then three songs, he quickly lost patience. He was partnered with his good friend Vivian who tried gamely to get Spencer to come around!

Spencer looking uninspired...

The Virginia Reel!


A much happier Spencer in front of his Blacksmith poster with Vivian

Slip and Slide

Celebrating the end of MY semester with some good old homemade slip-and-slide action with friend Vivian!

Spencer's Spring Concert

Spencer and Chris

Spencer with Alan Weinstein and two student teachers.

Whales

Smith Mountain Lake

This weekend we got a cabin at Smith Mountain Lake. I was racing in a sprint triathlon on Saturday but we also just very much needed a change of scenery and getaway. You can read the race report here and check out all the photos here, but I've pulled a few of the favorites out to post. The weekend was spent relaxing in or by the water, and with a bike ride through the state park.

This may well go down as one of my favorite photos of the year. The softness of Grant's face and silliness of Spencer just captures their essence!

The weekend came with its share of injuries. Grant fell off of one of the trees that was overhanging the water's edge and scraped his back pretty good. Then ignoring my pleas to "cease and desist" a game of catch with rocks, Spencer got whacked above the eyebrow which left a small, but nicely bleeding gash.

Smores make everything better!

On Sunday morning, Grant joined me for an early breakfast lake-side and we were joined by a very tamed duck that Grant named "Jiffy." Jiffy and Grant enjoyed a vacation treat of froot loops!

Crazy Hair Day

Grant agreed to a mohawk for crazy hair day!! This was my first ever creative haircut and it was pretty fun to do. He can pull it off too. Spencer declined, saying it would not be good for his "reputation". SO serious!!

Busy, busy

This has been an incredibly busy few weeks for me personally as the semester wraps up. Many things seemed to hit all at once.
The Y Wind & Solar project, after a year of planning and frustrations, finally unleashed and our circle of volunteers widened. I had NO idea just how huge and complex this project would become when I dreamed it up with Gail a year ago and got the $15,000 Community Action Grant to pull it off. Here are two recent news stories that came out to talk about the project:

Roanoke Times - http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/wb/243943
Virginia Tech News - http://www.vtnews.vt.edu/story.php?relyear=2010&itemno=306

Here are pictures of the turbine:


Earth Week took place April 19-23 and most of our year-long Earth Sustainability student projects culminated in some kind of activity during that time. These Action Projects were my responsibility for the year and we asked students to do podcasts, have Earth Day posters/displays (see photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/barbarabekken/ES4Cohort3EarthWeekSpring2010#, and we self-published a book of our work.

Pulling together the 164-page book in just a few days was quite a feat, but you can check it out here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/earth-sustainability-community-action-projects/10801705


In the midst of all of that, I had to pull together a conference presentation for the regional meeting of the American Society of Engineering Education.

It's been a wild ride, but fortunately things are winding down.