Motherhood And Exploding Bottles

Yesterday was Mother’s Day here, and I had a nice day. Nothing earth shattering, and I didn’t really spend a lot of time with my boys, but they remembered the day ❤ We were able to get to church, as well, so that was fun 🙂

Today was a school day… my Sweet Bean is in his last year of school, so he’s pretty much self sufficient with schoolwork. I’m just there to keep track, check everything’s going well, and pick up the pieces when necessary.
Today an important experiment had to be done. It’s for this term’s assessment, and it has had its problems so far. This was the last chance for testing and collecting data, so the pressure was on…
Due to various reasons, my Babe has been unable to drive us places as often as in past years, so that can make it difficult to get things done. We’ve had to rearrange schedules a bit to add in the time needed to get buses and walk. This morning we were down the road on the hockey fields, which was the closest area large enough to fire off a rocket (basically a plastic soft drink bottle with modifications). We got a lift down there but had to prepare to walk home, hauling everything behind us in a trolley.
Here’s the set up –

A contraption made from pipes, a foot pump for pressure, a bag filled with dirt to hold it all down, and a bottle with a tennis ball taped to the end and filled with varying amounts of water…
There were problems to overcome and modifications to make, and it seemed for a time that nothing was going to work. Eventually we got some good results, and had fun firing the “rocket” as far as we could.
We were hot, thirsty and slightly sunburnt by the end.
But I enjoyed being Mum, once again needed to play my part to help things run smoothly (I timed the flights and made suggestions to fix stuff). Biggest Boy was there to help – he kept Sweet Bean from meltdown, made good suggestions, provided “big brother” pep talks and made us all laugh.
Then we trundled off home for a late lunch and lots of water!