The Mother Bear in Me...

I consider myself to generally be a pretty calm, collected person. I try to see issues from all points of view.  But every once in a while a seemingly small issue can take away that calm demeanor in a heartbeat.

My kids do science fair.  By that I don't mean that they spend a weekend putting together a project every year; they really DO science fair.  They spend their time with their dad learning engineering concepts and putting together complex projects.  My three older girls have won numerous awards from organizations for their efforts.

Recently we have hit a bump in the road.  That bump boils down to the distance of about one city block.  As my kids move into high school, they attend a school on the other side of the invisible boundary separating the Salt Lake Valley Regional Science Fair from the Central Utah Regional Science fair.  with the change to high school, the fact that we live one block from the border facilitates the need to change fairs.

This shouldn't be too big of a deal.  They do wonderful work; they can compete fine at either event.  There will be the minor issue of having to have two kids in Salt Lake and two kids in Provo competing at the same time, but we took all of that in stride, although with a grain of salt.  The clincher for me as a mom was when my second daughter applied to be on the student advisory board, and was declined simply due to that boundary a block from my house.

This kid has worked for years on science fair.  She has earned her stripes, so to speak.  But she cannot take a leadership position due to a simple technicality.  I understand rules.  I am generally a pretty strong rule follower.  But when the rules deny opportunities to kids who are trying their hardest, it is time to act.

Enter Mother Bear.  This Mother Bear hates confrontation, but sometimes there is a time and place for it.  I think those involved now have a better understanding of how random boundaries can change real lives.  The discussion is not over, but I think we have reached an understanding that something needs to be addressed, and that is a good thing.

Robotics today

I spent my morning teaching Robotics to Hyrum's fifth grade class. I love watching their little minds turn as they try to solve the problems and get things working. Their next learning expedition is on US deserts. We started out by talking about animals that live in the deserts. We are basing our robotic challenges on the desert habitat. Today the goal was to build a robot that could weave its way through our herd of "wild mustangs". Thank heavens for Wal-mart's $1.00 bin of animals. It gave us plenty of horses for our experiments.