Family reading night, turned soda geyser

Last Friday night was an activity called Family Reading Night an my kids school. They are having a reading competition at school and basically this month they are suppose to read as much as they can to win. They are competing against other schools and if they win they get to have a Jazz player come to thier school and an ice cream party. It must be a good incentive because the boy next door (same age as Ashlin) told me he has spent some extra hours reading because he really wants to win and meet the Jazz player. His mom at separate times has told me how little he cares for academics and reading and that he would rather, anyday, be outside playing basketball, or doing jumps on his bike or rollerblades off a ramp etc. My daughter enjoys winning as much as the next person but told me she does NOT care to meet any of the Jazz- but the ice cream sounds good. My kindergartener doesn't quite understand, but really likes winning and meeting cool people and ice cream too, so he wants to win.

Back to reading night. Every minute of reading done that night was to count toward this competition. It was Friday and my husband just got back into town late the night before and it sounded pretty nice to us to put the kids to bed and watch our Netflix "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." The last thing he or I felt like was going to the school. My kids were begging me and I knew once I got there it would probably be pretty fun. I also realized that since it was Friday not many people would go and so it shouldn't be overly crowded and that was a nice thought.

So we went. As a nice sidenote I was grateful when I got there because the sign-ups for parent teacher conference were still out and I had forgotten to sign-up that week even though I had been to the school like 5 times! So even if the evening did turn out to be a bomb, that would be worth it. :) The evening wasn't a bomb though. There weren't tons of people there, but just enough. The kids got to pick out candy like it was a movie theatre. Then we rotated to different locations around the school and heard some really fun stories. One was about how a little boy wanted an Iguana (it was cute- called "I want and Iguana") and they had a real iguana there for the kids to look at. We went on to hear several others "Bad Dog Marley" also cute and they got to hold stuffed animal dogs (Bonus: Alex's said "Yo quiero Taco Bell" when you squeezed it). A older man read part of "The Hobbit" and he used an English accent when he read and did a decent job, only I am not sure if he was actually British or not- I think when he said "thanks for listening goodbye" that he might have lost the accent. He might be getting his tutoring from Brittney. There were a few other cute books (in case you want ideas for your kids) "No Talking" a chapter book by Andrew Clements. Also, I can't remember the name but one was about a french mouse (no, not ratatouille he's a rat) and the lady dressed the part in a french princess-ish outfit and she used a pretty good fake french accent.

The kids each won a $5 coupon to spend at the bookfair which was open for shopping at the end of the night. This is our second bookfair this year-- we have a bookfair that coincides with each of the two parent teacher conferences, that way they know the parents will get to the school to spend money. It works and I always spend too much, kind of a sucker for books. The books they have there are always really good ones and they are usually paperback and pretty cheap. Plus the school gets like 50% of the profit. I was looking for "Twilight" -have you all heard of that New York times best seller about vampires?? Everybody I know has read it but me. They didn't have it. I do have a copy from the library now.

Each of my kids were very excited to go in and find something to spend their $5 on. Ashlin found a chapter book called "Lily B. On the Brink of Cool." It is all pink with a cartoon diva girl pictured on the front. Alex had picked out a really cute tadpole counting book (like the ladybug one if you have seen that) but he was willing to put it back along with anything else that I asked him to, AND his left leg if I was just willing to buy him... a scientific soda geyser kit he found. It was $15 (the price of 3 books) and it came with a tube of mint mentos (50 cents at the grocery store), a foam rocket that looked like it cost them 5 cents to make (cheaper looking than happy meal or dollar store toys) two types of salt- rock and table (both of which we have at home) and one last thing that I guess was what was suppose to make it worth $15. It was a tube that screws onto your soda bottle with a pin that holds the mentos up until you pull it out using an attached string, allowing the mentos to drop into the soda while you are far as the explosion immediately takes place. I bought it even as I watched so many parents around me say "no" to similar items and listening to others say "well you don't have enough money for that, how about this?" See, I'm a sucker. He did have $5 to put toward it...

Really I knew that Alex wasn't the only one who would enjoy it. All the kids would enjoy it, including the grown-up kids, my husband to be specific. He was pretty excited about it. He picked up 1 bottle of diet coke (didn't realize we needed LOTS more), which we now know performs the best for this experiment. We also tried non-diet sprite, and a bottle of seltzer water, which both barely put up a fountain at all. We have been fans of Mythbusters and others performing this experiment before and were excited to do it ourselves. I have video of it below you should give it a watch.