Veterans Day

#famouswomen #veteransday #famouswomenveterans

Today is Veterans today and since I have wayyyyy more famous women than there are days on November, here’s a two-fer. “General” Tubman did eventually receive a military pension of $20 a month (and so it’s fitting that she will be placed on the $20 bill, now estimating that to come to pass by 2028.)

IN 1863, Harriet Tubman led soldiers with Colonel James Montgomery to raid rice plantations along the Combahee River in South Carolina. They set fire to buildings, destroyed bridges, and freed many of the slaves on the plantations. When slaves saw Tubman’s ships with black Union soldiers on board, they ran towards them as their overseers helplessly demanded that they stay.

Tubman, who will replace President Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill, is most known to Americans for leading hundreds of slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad. But she also played a crucial and pioneering role in the Civil War. In addition to being the first woman in U.S. history to lead a military expedition, Tubman—whom John Brown called “General Tubman”—was a Union army spy and recruiter. The use of former slaves as spies was a covert operation—President Abraham Lincoln didn’t even tell the Secretary of War or the Secretary of Navy about it. The man in charge of the secret spy ring was Secretary of State William Seward, who’d met Tubman when his house was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Venturing into Confederate territory, these spies would gather information from slaves about Confederate plans. Allen says, for instance, that slaves would tell spies where Confederate troops had dropped barrels filled with gunpowder into rivers to attack Union boats. Information gained from these spies became known as “black dispatches.” It was brave for any ex-slave to venture into Confederate territory (these people were not legally “free”; they were still fugitives under the law). And it was especially brave for Tubman to do so, since she was well-known as an abolitionist.

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Col. Ruby Bradley World War II and Korean War A survivor of two wars, a prison camp and near starvation, Colonel Ruby Bradley is one of the most decorated women in U.S. military history. Her military record included 34 medals and citations of bravery, including two Legion of Merit medals, two Bronze stars, two Presidential Emblems, the World War II Victory Medal and the U.N. Service Medal. She was also the recipient of the Florence Nightingale Medal, the Red Cross’ highest international honor. West Virginia native Ruby Bradley joined the U.S. Army Nurse Corps as a surgical nurse in 1934. In 1941, she was taken captive by Japanese forces while serving in the Philippines. She and fellow imprisoned nurses continued to care for their fellow prisoners, earning them the nickname “angels in fatigues.”

During her 37 months in captivity, Bradley assisted in 230 major operations and the delivery of 13 babies. “A lot of people died in the last few months,” she told the Washington Post in 1983. “There were several deaths a day, mostly the older ones, who just couldn’t take it.” At the Santo Tomas camp, the military and civilian captives dubbed Bradley and the other imprisoned nurses who provided them with medical treatment “Angels in Fatigues.” The POWs subsisted mainly on rice–half a cup in the morning and half a cup at night–but Bradley shared her limited rations with the children. “I’d save part of my food for the children later in the day, when they started crying and being hungry,” she said. Bradley also learned to be “a pretty good thief. I would take food and put it in my pockets for the children,” she said.

By the time the camp was liberated by the Americans on Feb. 3, 1945, the formerly 110-pound Bradley had shrunk to 84 pounds. In February 1945, U.S. troops stormed the gates of the Japanese camp and liberated Bradley and her fellow prisoners, where she had been held captive for three years. Bradley continued serving in the Army Nurse Corps after her release and then in the Korean War. She dedicated 30 years to the military, becoming only the third woman in U.S. history to be promoted to the rank of colonel.

I had an early morning CT scan appointment. The guy running the machine usually puts in the IV, but he didn’t like the look of my arm. He sent me to the nurse and two nurses and 3 pokes later I had a good IV.

After my appointment I met up with NIA ladies at Panera, then ran by the library and went home. The girls didn’t have school today, so they were watching TV. After lunch they went to the store and I took Jack for a Harriet hike at Ft. Logan National Cemetery.

Jack and I spent another hour at the dog park, where he found 2 people to throw a ball for him.

Weekend

#famouswomen

Hedy Lamarr – born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler 1914-2000

The Hollywood actress was an avid inventor and the person behind advances in communication technology in the 1940s that led to today’s Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth.

Like many famous stars of her day, she had a relationship with aerospace pioneer Howard Hughes. According to Dean’s film, it was more cerebral than romantic — she helped him streamline his aircraft design. In rare, long-lost cassette tapes from the 1990s, Lamarr describes her contributions to aerospace engineering: “I thought the aeroplanes were too slow. I decided that’s not right. They shouldn’t be square, the wings. So I bought a book of fish, and I bought a book of birds, and then used the fastest bird, connected it with the fastest fish. And I drew it together and showed it to Howard Hughes and then he said, ‘You’re a genius.’”Although better known for her Silver Screen exploits, She was a famous Hollywood star who would finish performing on set with Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, and Spencer Tracy, and then go back to her trailer and work on her inventions.

Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr became a pioneer in the field of wireless communications following her emigration to the United States. The international beauty icon developed a “Secret Communications System” to help combat the Nazis in World War II. The brilliant idea was called frequency hopping: a way of jumping around on radio frequencies in order to avoid a third party jamming your signal. Lamarr invented it in the 1940s for use as a secret wartime communication system that could keep the enemy from interfering with a ship’s torpedoes. She got a patent for it in August 1942, and then donated it to the U.S. military to help fight the Nazis. “When she gave it to them, [the Navy] said, ‘What do you want to do, put a player piano inside a torpedo? Get out of here!’ And so they didn’t use it during the Second World War. It was after the Second World War that it emerged as a way of secretly communicating on all the gadgets that we use today,” Dean explained.

By manipulating radio frequencies at irregular intervals between transmission and reception, the invention formed an unbreakable code to prevent classified messages from being intercepted by enemy personnel. The enormous significance of the invention was not realized until decades later. It was first implemented on naval ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis and subsequently emerged in numerous military applications. But most importantly, the “spread spectrum” technology that Lamarr helped to invent would galvanize the digital communications boom, forming the technical backbone that makes cellular phones, fax machines and other wireless operations possible.

Saturday we had plans, Dim Sum! We got there right at 10am and were in the back of the line, but we made it into the first seating.

We ran errands, went by the library, put up a shelf, got a new headlight and the girls and I went to a free concert – The Composer is Dead by Lemony Snicket.

James and I walked with Jack at Marcy park for a Harriet hike. My knees felt awesome!

Sunday –

#famouswomen
Sybil Ludington 1761-1839

A young American patriot, Sybil Ludington was just 16 years old when she made a night-time ride rallying Patriot soldiers.

Born in New York in 1761, Ludington was the eldest of Henry and Abigail’s twelve children. In addition to working as a farmer, Ludington’s father was a gristmill owner who served in the military for over sixty years, including during the French and Indian War. He was loyal to the British crown until 1773, when he switched sides and joined the Patriots in the American Revolution.

On April 26, 1777, Colonel Ludington received word from a rider that the nearby town of Danbury was under attack by British troops and needed help. At the time, Ludington’s regiment had disbanded for planting season, and his men were miles apart at their respective farms. With the rider too tired to continue and Colonel Ludington focused on preparing for battle, young Sybil rose to the cause. She rode all night through dark woods and in the rain, covering anywhere from 20 to 40 miles (estimates vary). By the time she returned home, hundreds of soldiers were gathering to fight the British. She was thanked by General George Washington himself, but it wasn’t until 1935 when a statue was erected in her honor that she was publicly recognized.

We went to church, Hannah worked the coffee shop, while I sat in on the next giving sermon. James grilled for lunch and Jack got a tiny cheeseburger.

Our Harriet hike today was from Belleview park to the dog park and back.

We watched some TV, made a post office run and saw this amazing sunset.

Things this week – CT scan, school, St. John’s music at noon, Pixar field trip, Union station jazz date night, Creativity club, Pupsgiving doggy day camp, youth group, RiNo pop-up field trip, TNO, HS skate, ortho, Sam’s going away at EG, ?, working at Riize and church.

Dinners this week – leftovers, navy beans and sausage with rye bread, date night (TV dinners for kids), cheese and tomato lasagna and salad, TNO (tamales for me, potstickers for kids), basil chicken with parmesan vermicelli and artichokes, meatloaf and smashed potatoes.

Smashed potatoes

24 ounces Dutch yellow baby potatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, pressed
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Lightly oil a baking sheet or coat with nonstick spray. In a large pot of boiling water, cook potatoes until tender, about 15-20 minutes; drain well.
Place potatoes onto the prepared baking sheet. Using a potato masher or fork, carefully smash the potatoes until flattened but still in one piece. Top with olive oil, garlic and thyme. Place into oven and bake for 18-20 minutes, or until golden brown and crisp.
Serve immediately.

 

Ride along, CBI field trip

#famouswomen

Rachel Carson – 1907-1964

When marine biologist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, she changed the way we think about the environment. Throughout her life, Carson showed talent in both writing and the sciences; Carson earned a master’s degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932 and began working as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. She earned a National Book Award for her 1951 book The Sea Around Us, but it was Silent Spring that launched her into a role as a literary celebrity and reformer.

Silent Spring exposed environmental issues to the U.S. public for the first time. Carson documented the adverse effects of synthetic pesticides for humans and wildlife, revealed that the chemical industry was spreading lies and misinformation, and accused U.S. officials of negligence in accepting the use of pesticides without fully examining the harmful effects. Carson’s book outraged the public and led to a nationwide ban on DDT, a cancer-causing insecticide. The Environmental Protection Agency also owes its existence to Carson’s influence, as her book caused citizens and the government to be more environmentally conscious.

School today – Practical math (combinations and permutations, also finished population regression models), Chemistry (periodic table), Forensics (footwear and tire marks), British Lit (writing to a prompt)

English (complex or flat characters), Algebra (functions), World history (China’s Song and Tang dynasties), Astronomy (inner planets), Earth science (Earth’s history), Criminal justice (evaluating justice ethics)

https://www.ptable.com/
https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-china/tang-dynasty
https://www.starchitect.net/
http://www.forensicsciencesimplified.org/fwtt/how.html

Hannah went for her afternoon ride along, Officer P had a good afternoon. They pulled over 2 cars, went to a 911 call, went to check on an abandoned car and responded to 2 hotel calls.

Hannah liked the officer and said the afternoon ride along was a lot better than the morning one. Jack and I went on a cold Harriet hike.

Thursday –

#famouswomen

Ada Lovelace: The First Computer Programmer
1815–1852

Ada Lovelace was the only legitimate daughter of Lord Byron, one of England’s most famous poets. Her parents separated shortly after Ada’s birth, and Byron left England. He died in Greece a few years later. Although she never knew her father, Byron’s legacy greatly influenced Ada’s upbringing. Her mother was paranoid that she would inherit her poet father’s erratic temperament, and made sure that she was tutored in mathematics and science.

At the age of 12, Lovelace conceptualized a flying machine.
After studying the anatomy of birds and the suitability of various materials, the young girl illustrated plans to construct a winged flying apparatus before moving on to think about powered flight. “I have got a scheme,” she wrote to her mother, “to make a thing in the form of a horse with a steam engine in the inside so contrived as to move an immense pair of wings, fixed on the outside of the horse, in such a manner as to carry it up into the air while a person sits on its back.”

When Ada was 17, her mentor Charles Babbage showed her the prototype for his ‘Difference Engine,’ the world’s first computer. In 1842, Babbage asked Lovelace to help translate an article about the plans for his newest machine, the ‘Analytical Engine.’ She appended a lengthy set of notes to her translation, in which she wrote an algorithm that the engine could use to compute Bernoulli numbers.

While the extent of her original contribution is disputed, her code is now considered the world’s first computer program. Lovelace foresaw the multi-purpose functionality of the modern computer. Although Babbage believed the use of his machines was confined to numerical calculations, she mused that any piece of content—including music, text, pictures and sounds—could be translated to digital form and manipulated by machine. Lovelace wrote that the analytical engine “might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations… Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of [mathematical] expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.”

After school we went to the CBI Forensic lab on a field trip with school (we use an on-line K12 school, Destinations Career Academy of Colorado.)

Jack and I went on a sunset Harriet hike.

Friday –

#famouswomen

Sarojini Naidu 1879-1949

Sarojini Naidu, also known as Sarojini Chattopadhyaya, was a famous Indian poet and a major freedom fighter who went on becoming the first Indian woman to be appointed the president of the Indian National Congress and the Governor of any state in India. Most of all, she was a noted child prodigy and a master of children’s literature. Naidu was given a sobriquet Bharat Kokila (The Nightingale of India) on account of her beautiful poems and songs. Some of her best books that established her as a potent writer include The Golden Threshold, The Gift of India, and The Broken Wing.

An active participant of the Indian Independence movement, Naidu joined the national movement taking Gandhi’s call and joined him in the popular Salt March to Dandi. With the Indian Independence in 1947, Sarojini Naidu was made the Governor of the Uttar Pradesh in the wake of her contribution to the movement.

We did school and I went to the doc to get knee shots. Wow, it was a bit painful at first, but by the evening it was better. Jack and I went to Chatfield for a Harriet hike.

Then we went to see the horses around Highlands Ranch.

Planetarium and Garden of the gods

Famous women

Irena Sendler’s heroic actions were forgotten by most of the world until 2000, when four girls at Uniontown High School in Kansas decided to research her life as part of a history assignment.

Sendler was a Polish Catholic, and her surgeon father raised her to think of the Jewish people as equals. When the Nazis invaded in 1939, she was working as an administrator in the Warsaw Social Welfare Department, where homeless people and orphans were provided with food and shelter. Sendler immediately decided, on her own initiative, to begin a covert mission to supply food, medicine, and money to any Jews in need of them. She knew this would be illegal under Nazi rule, so she signed the Jews up under Christian names. To keep the authorities away, she told them that anyone who was signed up to receive aid had highly infectious typhus. While the Jews lived under false identities, Sendler kept their real ones in jars buried under an apple tree in her neighbor’s yard.

Once the Warsaw Ghetto was established, the Jews inside began dying at a rate of 5,000 per month from starvation or disease. Sendler entered the ghetto daily disguised as a nurse, convincing Jewish parents to let her smuggle their children to safety. She is credited with personally saving the lives of 2,500 children, spiriting them out of the ghetto under false names and giving them to adoptive families, orphanages, and convents. She hid some in wheelbarrows full of clothes or food and gave one infant to a man to smuggle out in his toolbox. Others were taken out hidden in coffins and burlap potato sacks.

On October 20, 1943, the Gestapo finally figured out what Irena was up to and arrested her. They smashed her feet and legs until all the bones were broken, but she refused to divulge any names. They sentenced her to death, but her friends bribed one of the guards to let her go, and she spent the rest of the war in hiding. ​After the war she dug up the jars and used the notes to track down the 2,500 children she placed with adoptive families and to reunite them with relatives scattered across Europe. But most lost their families during the Holocaust in Nazi death camps.

We dropped Jack at puppy daycare and went to the Air Force Planetarium for the Eclipses and phases of the moon show. I had 13 families sign up (it was free), but only 6 show up (lots of excuses, but really when things are free people tend to wake up and go – oh, I don’t feel like driving, waking up my kids, etc.)

Anyway, the show was great, it was cool to see a visual of the phases of the moon and how eclipses happen. After the show we had another 40 minutes of general astronomy, the night sky, flying around to different planets and flying around Colorado with Google maps (but on a 50ft dome screen, so it looked neat.) After the shows some people stayed there to eat lunch, some came back for the next free show (Auroras), some went hiking. We went to lunch, then to Garden of the gods for a Harriet hike.

Back at home we made dinner and then Hannah went to Police Explorers. They were talking about theft, robbery, domestic violence and various other crimes. That’s two meetings down, three to go to be vetted to getting in the group and getting a uniform.

Zoo

Hannah has been getting out early and doing a 30 minute walk/jog since the 1st and going on a Harriet hike with me and she went to the gym the other night! I think the Harriet hike challenge was a good kick in the butt. I have more famous women than there are days in November, so I might end up saving some of them.

Fanny Cochrane Smith 1834-1905

Australia’s Advocate For Aboriginal Language Preservation.
Born on December 1834 in Flinders Island in Tasmania, Fanny Cochrane Smith was best known as an Aboriginal linguist. She devoted her life to preserving as much of Aboriginal heritage as she could. From 1899 to 1903, now in her late 60s, she used wax cylinders to record Tasmanian Aboriginal songs and speech, which to this day are the only original recordings in existence. Five cylinders were cut, however by 1949 only four remained as “A fifth cylinder, on which was recorded the translation of the songs, was broken some time ago”. Fanny Cochrane Smith dedicated her final years to preserving her heritage, her culture, and her history. You can hear a clip of one of the recordings here – https://aso.gov.au/…/music/fanny-cochrane-smith-songs/clip1/

Today was the Zoo co-op. We broke into groups and went around the zoo looking at animals and writing notes about them.

Then we gathered back as a big group and learned about Linnaeus’ classification system and we used this site ( https://animaldiversity.org/?fbclid=IwAR1AwagAE1oM9sGbGJwQFzsyWmSv1n6Aq9XRsJp8mQfdoPJg3gNI8yzkWdU) to find out the correct classification after we spent some time trying to classify them ourselves. We learned that a hippo is more related to a mountain goat and gerenuk than to a rhino!

We finished up and went to see some more animals before heading home. I counted the 2.4 miles walked as our Harriet hike.

Trunk or Treat, SNOW, Opera, Halloween, Harriet hikes, weekend

Sunday was Trunk or Treat at church, snow had started falling, so they made the decision to have it indoors. Jack went as a dinosaur and the girls were helping with the kids games.

Jack ended up sleeping on my lap for almost the whole time. James was settled in Vegas by this time, getting ready for the start of his conference. It started to snow, so after getting some groceries we stayed in for the night.

Goings on – James at conference, school, shovel snow…repeat, Fox theater DOTD show, Barber of Seville opera, youth group, Halloween party, Harriet hike co-op, art walk, Night at the Museums, church, working at church.

Dinners this week – Mac and cheese with chipotle chicken sausage, beef taco soup, grilled cheese and tomato soup, sushi and dumplings, chicken fajitas, tikka masala meatballs with fried garbanzo beans, grilling stuff.

Monday morning, I heard the traffic was horrible. Lots of wrecks, icy streets, we stayed home.

We got Jack’s photos in from the pet parade, this one is cute.

This one, not so much.

This one is mine!

Jack had a lazy snow day.

We didn’t get the amount of snow that they thought, only 4 inches or so. But, another round of snow was coming on Tuesday/Wed. It came earlier than people thought, so some schools started the day on time, but ended early. Some schools took a snow day and CDOT was telling people that if they could leave work early (or not come into work at all), this was the day to do it. We had nowhere to be, so we just chilled at home.

We ended up with a few more inches, so maybe 7 total. Wednesday was our DOTD show, but I had stayed up watching the news and Aurora and Denver both called a snow day for Wednesday, so I knew the show would be canceled – it was.

Hannah was aching to get out, so we went to the mall. Youth group was canceled, and I was wondering if the Opera would be too – but it wasn’t.

Barber of Seville was amazing. The singing, the acting, the set and costumes – brilliant. Our student matinee seats were $12/15 and I looked up the price of our seats for the next show, $225 each – who can afford that?!

Thursday we did school and went to the library for a Halloween party. The girls trick or treated with M at night and we went to the Mansion for last stop.

Friday was my Harriet Tubman co-op and the first day of Harriet hikes (Girl Trek and Walk2Connect are doing 30 days of Harriet hikes to promote the movie.) We read 2 books about Harriet, watched a video, listened to a song and did some worksheet activities. We talked about slavery, the North and South, the Underground Railroad, Talking quilts, codes and the things that Harriet Tubman did that she’s not really know for like – Union spy, a leader of an Army mission to free 700 slaves, a nurse, and a suffragist among other things. After eating some hoe cakes we went outside in the cloudy 34 degree weather and walked around the lake. This story is about the awesome trek some of the GT people made walking in the footsteps of Harriet Tubman.
https://ideas.ted.com/what-we-learned-from-walking-in-the-…/

I’m also going to be posting each day of the month about women that you should know, some of them may be familiar (like Harriet Tubman), some may have done great things – but you never heard of them.

My knees were frozen, so they didn’t hurt until late when I thawed out. We went home and Hannah went to a birthday party, Bethany had come home to visit and Grace and I gathered stuff for the Art Walk. It was only getting colder as we set up a table and Grace put her stuff on it. We got a square so it would be easier to sell things, because no one has cash anymore. She sold two mini-canvases before James showed up. Jack was wrapped up in my coat and falling asleep, but then woke up when he heard James. We grabbed some dinner from the food trucks and braved the cold for a bit longer before heading home.

Saturday -I wasn’t going to do Mrs. Ford today, but it’s appropriate because tonight is Denver’s Night at the Museums and if you haven’t been to the Black American West museum, it’s free tonight. Also, there was a tidbit in the news about her house (the museum.)

Justina Ford: Denver’s First Female African American Doctor

Justina Laurena Warren was born on January 22, 1871 in Knoxville, Illinois. Justina’s love for medicine was clear at a young age; she often dissected frogs and followed her mother, a nurse, when she saw patients. Justina went to Hering Medical School in Chicago. She married John Ford, a Baptist minister, in 1892. She continued her studies and graduated from medical school in 1899.

After her graduation, Justina was denied her medical license. The license examiner told her, “I feel dishonest taking a fee from you. You’ve got two strikes against you to begin with. First of all, you’re a lady, and second, you’re colored.” When she and John moved to Denver, racial discrimination prohibited Ford from joining the Colorado Medical Association or practicing in a hospital. So, she set up a practice in her home at 2335 Arapahoe Street.

Justina treated anyone who needed medical care, regardless of race, gender, language, citizenship, or ability to pay. Many of her patients were poor whites, African-Americans, and non-English speaking immigrants who were turned away from hospitals. Ford learned multiple languages to help treat her patients. Her patients paid her in goods, services, or money. It wasn’t until 1950 that Dr. Ford was allowed into the Colorado and American Medical Associations. Even then, she was the only female African-American doctor in all of Denver. Ford continued caring for patients until two weeks before her death on October 14, 1952. By the end of her life she had delivered almost 7,000 babies. Dr. Justina Ford’s house is now the home of the Black American West Museum.

We went to Casa Bonita for lunch and it occured to me that Casa Bonita and I will both turn 50 in just over 3 years. I had my 40th b-day party at Chuck E Cheese’s, so Casa Bonita would be a step up (I think.)

Sunday Hannah was so excited to bring her coffee painting to church (and to work at the coffee shop) that she and Bethany walked there, early, like super early, like no one was at the church early. So, James went and picked them up and they had coffee at Starbucks. Later, I took Hannah back to church and she made me a ghostly peppermint latte.

Phil was preaching on being generous.

Famous woman of the day – Wu Zetian – born 624 BC

She was the only female emperor in Chinese history. She used every ounce of her political skills and pulled Machiavellian maneuvers to gain and maintain her power. In dynastic China, Confucius deemed women unfit to rule. Nevertheless, Wu Zetian rose through the ranks in Chinese society. Wu’s intellect and beauty attracted Emperor Tai Tsung, who recruited her to his court as his concubine. After the emperor’s death, his son Kao Tsung succeeded him. Kao Tsung had been having an affair with Wu even before the death of his father. She became his second wife—a large step up from concubine—after his ascension.

Emperor Kao Tsung later died from a stroke, and Empress Wu began administrative duties in the court, eliminating and spying on those who posed an obstacle to her, and putting her youngest son into power. When her son stepped down in 690, Wu was crowned emperor of China. As emperor, Wu truly did effect change in China. She gave government positions to qualified scholars, reduced the army’s size, lowered unfair taxes on peasants, and increased agricultural production.

Bethany and Grace went to lunch by themselves, so James, Hannah and I went to Shake Shack. Back at home we watched some TV, went grocery shopping and James and I got out to my Harriet hike at Fly’n B park.

Dinners this week – rosemary pan fried chicken and risotto, beef stew, chicken quesadilla, cheeseburger macaroni, cheesy chicken and rice casserole, chinese chicken soup, black beans and sausage. (Chicken was on sale.)

Chinese Chicken Soup

2 tablespoons sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
2 teaspoons chopped fresh ginger root
2 tablespoons chile paste
1 pound chopped cooked chicken breast
1 quart chicken broth
2 teaspoons sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 cup chopped celery
1 (3 ounce) package ramen noodles (or egg noddles or any quick cook noodle)
1/2 cup chopped green onion

In a large pot, heat oil over medium heat. Cook turmeric, ginger and chile paste in oil until fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in chicken, broth, sugar, soy sauce and celery. Bring to a boil, then introduce noodles and cook until noodles are done. Serve garnished with green onions.

Goings on this week – school, taxonomy co-op at the zoo, HS skate, AF Planetarium field trip, Garden of the gods hike, Parker Police Explorers, GV ride-along (Hannah), youth group, CBI forensic field trip, dentist, Riize coffee shop, Mountainview coffee shop, church, HR concert band concert.

 

Week

It seems that there is little time these days. I wake up and it’s Friday, the week flew by again. Monday we had a Denver Police dept. tour, it was the video production area (and offices in that building, but it’s not THE police station, just offices.) It was cool to see the video guy in action, he taped the kids with a green screen and they got to add in the background. Hannah got a card from an officer and everyone got DPD dog tags, which was pretty cool.

It was Hallowteen night at the DMNS museum, Brad and Janet did not win the costume contest.

Tuesday we took Grace up to Keystone for the H2O science school. She was a bit nervous at being around total strangers, but then found out some of the kids were at the teen night and one girl used to be in our homeschool group. She ended up having a great time, making friends, getting to talk to water people, sampling and having some time without us. Hannah finally got to go to an Explorer meeting, they were working on combat care and tourniquets. She decided that Parker is a good fit and has to go to at least 5 meetings before getting her uniform and equipment. They let them wear fake guns on their belt and other tools on the belt to get used to the weight and feel of it, so that’s cool. I doubt there will be 4 meetings coming up (with breaks and they only go every other week) so it might be January before she gets her stuff.

Wednesday Hannah did school and then we watched the rest of season 2 of The Good Doctor and caught up on season 3. It started snowing right as I was dropping her at church. We ended up getting about 4 inches, but the roads were fine.

Thursday we did school and went up to get Grace. The road was fine with a few exceptions of packed snow on the road. I was worried about the road to the school, which was pretty snowy on Tuesday, but the plow had been by and packed it down (the road is dirt, so it never gets plowed to the bottom.) Jack had time to play in the snow before Grace showed up. We somehow made it to Westminster for the school Winter social in record time. Grace changed into her Janet costume and bam – they won the High school most original costume. The prize was an i-tunes card which Hannah turned into Psych the Movie and a few songs. We chilled for a bit, made dinner and then drove to the mall to walk around.

Friday I took James to work, we did school, grabbed water samples for October and drove out to Cottonwood farms. I wanted to wait until Tuesday, but it’s supposed to snow Sunday-Wednesday, so we went today. The corn did not grow this year for some odd reason, so the maze was easy for anyone over 3 feet tall. The girls picked out 2 big pumpkins and we took some pictures.