February and March 2004

Welcome to the monthly installment of "Dickieville in action." 

Kate takes her finger, broken catching a tennis ball, with typical good grace

While Brie attempts to show her school spirit on "School Colors Day."

And Will tries his hand at a new Sport, LaCrosse (French for "Sport of Bruises").
Will's Birthday Party was at Boulder Morty's, an indoor rock climbing place.  I and Bill belayed the kids while they climbed... or dragged the kids up the rock wall if they didn't.  Meanwhile Sang Ok shot twenty minutes of video... holding the camera sideways.  "You can always tip the television on it's side" pointed out Bill helpfully.  Brie, of course, bagged climbing after half an hour and zero-ed in on a boy to "talk" with.  I had to explain to her that it was wrong, because while guys chat with guys and girls gossip with girls, when girls and guys converse it's flirting.  Period. Will on the wall... one of the few that consistently made it to the top without help. 

 
Brie and Dani climb the wall together... with advice from hecklers.  Me: "Brie, there's a foothold to the right"  Brie:  "Dad, that's Dani's head!"  Me:  "That's what I said, there's a foothold to the right."
One of Brie's school projects was the Marble run.  This project had several rules, but the basic concept was to (a) build it from recycled materials, (b) start a marble at the top and keep it going for at least 60 seconds, and (c) use a variety of different components, like a vortex, a loop-the-loop, a straight-away, a zig-zag, etc. etc.  This thing took well over 20 hours of effort by Brie, Natalie (her partner), and Kate.  It was pretty sophisticated by the time it was finished.  Brie named it "Vortex Fusion."  Click on areas, starting from the top, to see each component in more detail. 

You can see it in action here, but it's 8 meg and may take five or ten minutes to download:

Click on the Pic

All of the different marble runs were on display at the School.  The range, in creativity, effort, and style was impressive.

Artistic...

Marginally stable but lots of tape use....should have bought stock in 3M . . .

Interesting use of household furniture...

Lonnnnnggggggggg......Very long.

Titled: "You all laugh because I'm different, I laugh because you're all the same," interesting...

"The Two Towers," not only a cool name, this had elevators, catapults, and the kitchen sink!