The Body Shop is being purchased by Loreal. Ack! Loreal still does animal testing because you can’t just stop that overnight you know. Slowly now, put the bunny down. He doesn’t like having make-up put in his eyes. I also suspect Fair Trade and natural ingredients are probably not part of the Loreal mission statement.

Tom’s of Maine, another company I really like is being bought out by Colgate-Palmolive. Same issues as above. Have you read the ingredients on the back of a Colgate toothpaste container?

All my good little companies are being eaten by conglomerates.

Stay strong Trader Joe’s and Patagonia!

Oh, we did put up some new pictures the beginning of March after my last post. :-)

We’ve been working on Astronomy for Science. Tim’s new telescope came at just the right time and they’ve been checking out everything from Saturn to nebula’s when the weather allows. Piper made a great picture of our solar system including the Great Asteroid Belt:

On Friday we went to the Museum of Science and got to see a 3D movie about Mars and the Spirit mission. We’re currently working on a lego Mars rover. Very cool! It’s for 10 year olds, but Piper is really doing a good job. I pick out the pieces (there are about a million, well maybe 900) and she follows the instructions and puts them together. I’ll try to post a picture when we complete the masterpiece.

This is a picture she did in her Abrakadoodle class. She seemed to enjoy this and has done several different variations since the class.

This is Sparkle. We just did her Spring sand change and she now has glow-in-the-dark sand. I don’t think she wanted her picture taken since she seemed determined to hide behind her grape vine.

Well…

We had a squirrel in our house. He chewed through the cardboard that was covering the fireplace hole in the dining room. We came home and I saw the bowl Piper had made me shattered on the floor :-( and couldn’t for the life of me figure out how it had had happened until I noticed the hole. It was a pretty large hole so we were pretty certain it wasn’t a mouse. Found her up in our bedroom closet. Luckily, when cornered she dashed directly back to the hole which is now caulked shut with one of my plates. Fierce guard do True slept through the entire thing. Piper has painted me a new bowl that we get to pick up on Tuesday.

Piper finished up her Olympic study and fun was had by all. We took all of her projects to Staples and made them into a book. Very cool! For a field trip we went skating. She’s still very conservative, but was definitely moving a little faster by the end of open skate. Seemed to have a lot more fun too.

We watched October Sky with Piper. That is such an awesome movie. We need more movies where the engineer is the hero! I see rockets in our future. :-)

Off to Antarctica next for school. Seemed to be a good fit given the penguin obssession. Unfortunately, I don’t think we can manage a field trip there.

This month’s Spider magazine illustrates how to make a Mayan pyramid out of index cards so I think we’re going to give that a go.

Piper started sewing a bear sleeping bag yesterday. It’s moving pretty slowly, but she sure does a nice job with her stitches.

I’ve been crocheting and Piper now has a Mommy-made hat and scarf. It should be up in the next batch of pictures. I’m currently working on a hat for Tim.

Tim is regularly singing the Sanibel song despite the fact that the trip is not until the end of April. He’s hoping for a new telescope to make the winter go a little faster.

Pictures are sorted and hopefully Tim will post them in the next few days. January only had 7 pictures. Yikes! Must have been the holiday hangover.