What a day!

Do you love our scoring "liters"?  What?!?  You didn't look at the heads and recognize that they are a decimeter cube, carefully cut and recut and wood glued and wood re-glued, nailed, sanded, painted, an ultimate labor of love that lasted longer than my second childbirth?  This was the Chemistry project for my stepdaughter this weekend, and let me say, WE better get an A!  The project in it's simplest form was make a decimeter cube with a grid and a label.  Decorate for extra credit.  Really be creative for extra-extra credit.  I am not a believer in extra credit for many reasons, #1 being that all children don't have resources like she does to get here...some to take her to Lowes and Michael's and spend $30, then to Home Depot when what we bought at Lowes was wrong, and thus another $12...no less than 8 hours of time of two parents tag teaming...parents who have a lot of tools and skills and a good saw and drill...and so on.  The world of extra credit just isn't a level playing field.  She decided to make herself in her soccer uniform, the other is her friend, who was also here for the duration.  Extra points for a creative name (that was me, the "Scoring Liters").  I truly don't know if she grasped the project idea from a chemistry perspective.  I truly hadn't planned to spend my Sunday on this project.  What did we get?  You might think two cute box headed soccer girls.  What do I think?  She saw I will come through for her in planning and getting materials, and sticking through it til the end, even when dad got frustrated.  I taught her to make yarn hair the easy way.  I showed her how to make a pattern, helped her saw and drill (dad helped there too)- but they did the sawing- so they know we believe they can do it.  I sewed little shoes out of felt in the simplest way, but you would have thought I bought her new Uggs.   I helped her take her idea and make it a reality, even though she could have made a box of paper and gotten an A.  We commended her for dreaming big, sticking it out even mid-day when she wanted to throw it away, and I know the dreams she has of Georgetown or JHU will probably become her reality in a few years.  Til then, she just came up and asked for help with government homework... :).  <3 my blended family.