So, we are members at the Philadelphia zoo and they offer these workshops for kids and their parents, aimed at teaching kids a thing or two, and involving kids with different animals. I tried to get to some last year, and just couldn't make it happen. So this year, I grabbed ones that fit dates that I was free, and didn't pay much attention to the names of the workshops. The first one I signed up for, a friend of ours took him (it was the saturday after Aaron's scare in the hospital, he was still on the mend and I didn't want to bring him out to the zoo) and Charlie learned about migration and birds and saw a few pretty great birds and made a bird house. This last time, I took him and turns out, the name of the workshop was "going buggy". Awesome! I HATE HATE HATE bugs! HATE them! HATE them! We (the parents) were asked to please refrain from making faces, saying nasty things, or generally freaking out over the bugs. I actually didn't think I could promise any of that! Well, let me tell you how great I did! The scorpion and turantula were kept in their crates...too old and dangerous to touch. Darn! then I held a large and long mealworm...creepy gross, but then we watched a striped possum (cute but smelly) eat the mealworms! Bonus! Then the grand finale...I had to know this was coming...a GIANT madagascar hissing cockroach. AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!
If you know me at all, you will know that I love sea turtles and hate clowns and cockroaches...really bugs of all kinds, but really cockroaches the most. They are disgusting prehistoric nasty things that have no predators and have no purpose! Well, the ones from Madagascar apparently feed the rainforest, but whatever, totally skeevy!
I was certain I wouldn't hold it, not would I let Charlie hold it, but by the time it got around to us, she talked about it so much and all these little kids were handling it, so why couldn't I?! Then Charlie started begging me to hold the damn thing. I did, the pictures above prove it. I asked the random dad sitting next to me to take the pics because no one would believe me without pics. Several moms told me I was bad ass. The teacher offered me a sticker. I can't freakin' believe I held such a big giamt gross bug!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Charlie asked me the other day about leaving water out, why it gets warm when it used to be cold, etc. I asked him what he thought would happen if we left a glass of only ice out...then we got an idea to do a science experiment!
We left the above glass of ice out on the counter for the night. I asked him before he went to bed what he thought would happen to the ice. He said that it would all melt into water. I explained to him that he just formed a hypothesis. He got excited and said, "I've never had a hypoptesis before, this is my first one!" So the next morning, we found the above picture...the ice had all melted. He was pretty excited to see the change!
Then we had an idea to put a glass of ice in the refrigerator. I asked him what he thought would happen and he said that it would melt a little. So, we left the glass in the fridge overnight and here's what we found...a little but of ice melted. 
