A Baking Project With Mom

One day I was watching an episode of Phineas and Ferb, and I got the idea of making pretzels at home.  In the episode Doofenschmirtz told Perry the Platypus a backstory where he was kicked out of pretzel making because he couldn’t make them right.  I decided that it would be fun to make pretzels on my own, so I told my mom, and a few days later we finally got around to it.

We bought the ingredients that we were missing, which were bread flour and yeast.  We found a pretzel recipe, and I put the link at the bottom of this blog post.   Below are the pictures my mom took of the stages in making pretzels.  These pictures tell a story, why don’t you look at them?  I think it was fun rolling the dough snakes and twisting them into pretzels.  I found that I was good at that.  I think that the pretzels were delicious, and that my mom and I should make another batch.

If you want to make pretzels like I did, this is the link to the recipe I used.  I think you will have to do some shopping for some of the ingredients.  I hope that you feel encouraged by all this to make pretzels, and it will be worth it because they will make a tasty snack.

http://www.penzeys.com/cgi-bin/penzeys/recipes/r-penzeysSoftPretzels.html?id=wHR2VkUz

Canyon walk and trash pick up

On Saturday my mom and I went to the canyon to pick up trash.  I picked up some trash, but my mom did a lot of the work, because she was the only one who had a glove.  I think we should bring a glove for me next time we go.  In the canyon we found some trash, even an orange!  Below is some of the trash we found.

There were also some plants and animals that I saw in the canyon.  There was this green blanket of duck week over the water, and it completely covered it.  It looked so much like land that it was completely hypnotizing and my mom couldn’t leave it.  And I liked seeing the crayfish and fish swimming in the water at the oasis.  When we were walking I heard a dove and then I saw it for real, perched on a tree branch.  And last but not least we saw a lizard sunning itself on a rock.

I was really tired at the end and I wouldn’t have made it home if we hadn’t rested in a shady field.

Finding and dissecting an owl pellet

I found an owl pellet yesterday when I was looking for bugs on the roof.  There was this grey lump on the edge of the roof, and when I looked at the lump it had bones in it.  I realized it was an owl pellet.  I knew it was an owl pellet because just the day before my brother and I dissected an owl pellet that my brother’s teacher (Mrs. B.) gave us.  It was an amazing coincidence.

Owl pellets exist because when owls eat an animal they can’t digest the bones and fur, so they cough it up in a sausage-shaped pellet.  To dissect the pellet, we put it in water for a few minutes to help it come apart.  When it started coming apart my mom got out her forceps and started taking out the bones.  We found vertebrae, ribs, leg bones, and maybe a pelvis.  But we didn’t find a skull, which was disappointing.

We took a picture of the pellet and a picture of the bones we found inside.  We live next to a canyon, the only thing separating the canyon from our yard is a chain link fence.  We haven’t seen any owls, but we’ve heard them hooting.  We’ve also heard a mother owl making a clacking sound with her beak to her babies.  And now we have evidence of an owl sitting on our roof, so they might be closer than you think!

This the pellet that I found, sitting in a plastic tupperware.

These are the bones Mom found, spread out on a paper plate.

My three favorite TV shows on Netflix

I’m going to be introducing to you my three favorite TV shows that I watch on Netflix, and tell you I would recommend them to you.  The TV shows in order from favorite to least favorite of my top three are Johnny Test, Dr. Who (2005 season), and Phineas and Ferb.

1.  Johnny Test

I like Johnny Test because it is really interesting.  It is about this boy called Johnny Test who is perfectly normal, he likes playing video games, is really dumb, and loves junk food.  But his sisters, Susan and Mary Test, are geniuses.  They have a lab in the attic, and they have scholarships from the Porkbelly Institute of Technology to go to college, and they are only 13!  Their lab is full of these amazing inventions, but here’s the catch, they make Johnny test out their new inventions, and sometimes it goes horribly wrong.  Johnny likes to fool around in their lab.  One time he set their lab monkey, Lolo, free, and filled their lab with blue goo.  Johnny’s best friend is a talking dog named Dukey, who his sisters did experiments on, and he has a very human-like personality.

In the front row are Dukey and Johnny, and in the back row are Susan Test, Gil from next door, Johnny’s Dad, Mr. White, Mr. Black, Johnny’s Mom, Sissy (another neighbor), and Mary Test.

2.  Dr. Who

Dr. Who  is this time traveling guy who saves human kind from alien threats.  He time travels with his time machine called the TARDIS, and he always has a companion.  In two of the seasons it is Rose Tyler, but then she gets stranded in a parallel universe forever.  The bridge between the parallel universes gets closed and they get separated forever.  The Doctor can regenerate so he is immortal.  He changes his looks and his personality.  Dr. Who is interesting because he battles obstacles like Daleks and Cybermen.  It is an amazing TV show.

The one on the left is Rose Tyler and the one on the right is the Doctor

This is another photo of them

3.  Phineas and Ferb

Phineas and Ferb is this amazing TV show about two brothers who make astonishing inventions.  It is summer vacation and they make these inventions for fun every day.  Phineas does most of the talking and he has a positive attitude.  Ferb is kind of silent, so people don’t know much about him.  He is really skilled at things like dancing.  They have three friends.  Isabella is a talented Fireside girl and she has a crush on Phineas.  Buford is a bully who is really big and muscly, and he is kind of dumb.  Baljeet is a really smart kid who does math and homework in summer and he gets picked on by Beaufort because he has no muscles.  They have a pet platypus called Perry, but he always disappears during their adventures because he is a secret agent.  They have a sister called Candace who always tries to bust her brothers.  She thinks she going to do it, but she fails every time.

The one on the far left is Phineas, then Ferb, behind Ferb is Perry, and walking angrily behind Perry is Candace, and then behind Candace in the order from left to right are Isabella, Baljeet, and Buford.

These TV shows are all great and I recommend them to everyone.

My 3 Favorite Memories of Camp

I have three favorite memories of camp.  The climbing wall that occurred on Tuesday was fun until I got scared.  Climbing is my speciality, so I liked being able to climb again.  Mr. Krueger was there and he got to the very top!  I was proud of him, but I was upset because I barely even got a quarter of the way up.  One of my other top three camp memories was Trees Class.  I liked Trees Class because I had a lot of good feelings during class.  I think that Ms. Fry was there, but I’m not sure.  The teachers said that the pine tree forest that Julian was famous for, had burned down, and there were a lot of little baby pine trees on the side of the trail.  It made me feel happy and relaxed to know that the pine forest was growing back.  I did Trees Class on Wednesday.  Outdoor Living was another class that I liked that happened on Wednesday.  Grizzly Bear and Ms. Fry were there, a girl called Aiden, and my friends Katie and Alex.  We made shelters, and even though our was unfinished I still think ours was pretty good.  It was made out of sticks, fallen branches, and bark.  These were my favorite memories because these were my three favorite classes.  They were my favorites because they were fun from my point of view.  I like to go outside and get down and dirty, and that’s what those classes were all about.

Some other memories I will take away from camp…well there are a lot of them…seven to be precise.  The first one is the physics talk I had with another girl, she was from HTMMA.  We talked about physics, Schrodinger’s cat, Stephen Hawking, and other stuff.  I liked it because I finally met another physicist.  The second one is archery.  I liked archery because I helped collect other people’s arrows.  I also liked the breakfast potatoes, they were so good that I had seven helpings!  Stealing Kermit was a game where Mrs. Awesome was the evil villain.  She stood facing away from us and Kermit was sitting behind her facing towards us.  We had to steal Kermit and get him to the other side of the fence, but there were a few obstacles.  After she said “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish” she turned around and if she saw anyone moving then they were out.  And if she saw Kermit was gone then she had three guesses of where he was.  If she was right and saw Kermit we had to return him, and if she got all three guesses wrong then we could safely get back Kermit for that time she turned around, but the next time wasn’t guaranteed.  Alex had the right idea to win the game, but no one would listen to her because they all wanted to be the one to have Kermit.  Mrs. Awesome saw Kermit every time and we had to return him.  Alex’s idea was the right one, and I knew it, but no one would listen to it.  Her idea was to have a crowd of people but only one of them would have Kermit, and then we would go back to the other side of the fence in crowd formation.  With an elegant speech I made sure everyone would listen to her, and then her idea actually worked, we got Kermit back to the other side of the fence and won the game.  Another memory is having the top bunk.  Of course, it was one of three top bunks, but it was special to me because I normally have the bottom bunk at home.  I got a good night’s sleep each night.  I think it was because I was on the top bunk.  The sixth memory is from dinner on Thursday.  I was just eating when they made the announcements such as who got bracelets and other stuff.  Then I was so surprised when they said one of the people who earned a bracelet was me.  I stepped up to get my bracelet.  I got it for my actions in Stealing Kermit, and I felt proud.  My final memory is from when they announced Cabin of the Week.  My cabin was second place.  The rest of my cabin and I stepped up, along with our neighboring cabin that had received first place.  We received a congratulations from the counselors, we got to sign the winning cabin’s towels, and we received our souvenirs from the camp store.  I think that some camp memories were great, and that is why I chose them.  In fact, camp was so great and had so many memories, that I nicknamed Camp Marston “Camp Fun.”