Family Fun...Saturday?

So...I've gone on at length about our summertime Family Fun Fridays. However, sometimes our Fridays get busy and fun activities have to be put off for other days...

...like Saturdays! In recent weeks, we've had not one, but two Family Fun Saturdays. Well, one-and-a-half, I guess; the fishing didn't last past the morning.

Yes, fishing! About once a year, the Arizona Game and Fish Department sponsors a "family fishing day" at the lake in our neighborhood. It's a man-made lake, but it's regularly stocked with fish, and I see people fishing out there all the time, regardless of time of day or season. On the family fishing day, you don't even need a fishing license, and fishing poles are provided free of charge!

The girls were so excited to go fishing; they have wanted to try it for a long time, and in the week leading up to this fishing day, it was almost all they talked about. Even during our long day of fun in Phoenix, the fishing day (which was the very next morning!) was always in the back of their minds. We didn't get home from our Phoenix trip until about ten pm; the fishing activity started at seven am the next morning. Guess who was bouncing on our beds to wake us up? Ugh. I was completely exhausted from the long drive the night before, and Nathan didn't much want to go on the trip (he knows very little about fishing and it doesn't interest him), but the girls' begging and pleading proved too much for us to overcome.

Luckily, my friend Rita had "volunteered" her two oldest boys as our assistants. Their house is right next to the lake, and they go fishing on a regular (sometimes daily!) basis. Tyler and Quentin met us close to their home, right after we'd picked up our fishing poles. They were invaluable in getting us set up (checking our poles, sharing their bait, offering tips on casting/reeling, etc.). They were very good-natured and patient with all of us...particularly Celeste, who doesn't quite have the motor skills yet to be a skilled fisherman.The boys probably thought Nathan and I were pretty incompetent, but they weren't wrong! We were very amateurish compared to them.

Lorelai and Celeste were beyond thrilled to go fishing...except for one little problem. Nobody caught any fish in the two hours we were there. This did not come as a surprise to me; I knew that much of fishing involves patience and luck. Also, I'd heard that the clubhouse hadn't even restocked the lake before the fishing activity (good planning there, clubhouse staff!!), so I suspected there wouldn't be a lot of fish to catch. While I was content to wait and relax, my girls got visibly more impatient, agitated, and frustrated as nothing nibbled at their hooks. I fear they have played too many video games, where "fishing" involves throwing your hook into the water, then immediately pulling up whatever creature you want.

At least the family fishing several yards down from us got lucky...very lucky, in fact, as they pulled out a ten-pound-plus catfish, one of the largest I've ever seen come out of this lake! I'm glad the girls at least got to witness that awesome moment. Sadly, though, that was the only awesome moment of the morning; as they walked away from the lake empty-handed, Lorelai was fighting back tears of disappointment. However, she insisted she wanted to go fishing again sometime; perhaps "next time" she'll have success! It remains to be seen whether I'll be up to taking her or not.

So that was our "halfway" Family Fun Saturday. The rest of the day involved all of us lounging on couches doing nothing of importance. But the following Saturday, June 14, was a Family Fun Day in every sense of the word! Nathan wasn't with us for much of the day because he was going on a temple trip to Mesa with the elder's quorum in our ward. Not "fun," exactly, but a needed spiritual boost. While he was gone, the girls and I decided to visit a couple of tourist destinations in our own backyard that we'd never seen before!

1. The ASARCO Mineral Discovery Center. Sahuarita sits next to several copper mines; the miles of stripped, tiered hills to our west will attest to that. One of them, owned by the ASARCO corporation, has a small museum just outside its borders, as well as a guided tour of parts of the mine. In the more than six years since we've lived here, we've never gone on the mine tour before (and we only live a few minutes away!). So we figured this was a good opportunity to do so.

We signed up to do the first tour of the day...a good thing, since much of it was outdoors and it was pretty hot, being June in Arizona and all. However, part of the tour takes place in a comfy air-conditioned bus, which we were all pretty happy about.

The tour wasn't too long, but I found it pretty informative (since I don't know much about mining or engineering). Each stop on the tour detailed the ways in which copper is blasted, hauled, and then painstakingly sifted out of the earth. It's a very elaborate process, and it was fascinating to learn.

 

First, we got to go peer down the big ol' hole in the earth, and see the enormous dump trucks that haul the blasted rocks up to the mill. We sadly didn't get to see one of those huge trucks up close, but we did get to hang out in one of its wheels:

After that we headed to the mill, where we saw the rocks being ground and crushed to pieces.

 

Inside the mill, we saw these huge spinning gyro-crushers, which further break down the minerals. They were huge and spinning very fast, and they were awesome.

On the other side of the mill were huge vats which strained the copper out of its accompanying minerals, via an emulsifying chemical mix.

Unfortunately, all the kids will probably remember about the mill (and maybe even the whole tour!) was that it was stinky inside. There was a strong chemical tang to the air (our tour guide said it was a mix of wood oil and sulfuric acid), and it was somewhat overwhelming at first. The girls held their noses and complained the whole time we were inside (which was about 10-15 minutes).

We had to cross a long walkway to get in and out of the mill; on the way, I saw huge vats marked "Milk Of Lime," and this long rectangular vat in which a molten coppery substance was bubbling.

We also passed by these "ponds," as they're called, in which the copper element floats to the surface of the mucky mixture. It probably goes without saying by now that there were a lot of hazardous, dangerous spots in the mine. I thought it was fascinating, but I don't envy these workers their jobs. Later that day, a friend told me that if you take the mine tour at a certain time of day, you can actually hear the dynamite blasting from the pit, which occurs almost daily. Unfortunately, we weren't willing to wait around several hours to hear that happen...maybe we'll catch it next time!

2. The Titan Missile Museum. A haunting Cold War relic, this museum is the last remaining missile silo of the enormous Titan-class ballistic missles, which peppered the United States in the 1960s. A decommissioned ICBM still stands inside the silo; the 9-megaton nuclear warhead that once perched atop the missile has, thankfully, been disassembled. But it's a fascinating look at 20th-century American military technology, and a sobering reminder of the destructive potential of nuclear warfare.

By the time we arrived, the tour we'd planned on joining was already full, so we had to wait an hour inside the building. Luckily, there were a few small exhibits in the gift shop/main foyer to keep the kids occupied (including a video center with some hilarious 50s-era "duck and cover" commercials. Ah, such naive times). There was also an education center with some coloring activities and world maps that kept them occupied for a time.

The kids loved going down the steep, metallic stairs, deep into the earth. They got a little vertigo from looking down...

Awesome, super-thick blast doors

We spent a lot of time in the command center, which had a pretty sweet '70s vibe going on. We got to see the safe with all the launch codes, the magnetic tape command transmitter, even the keys that initiated the launch:

The rooms were also supported in part by these enormous springs, which made the whole underground base more shock absorbent, in case of a missile launch.

After the control room, it was time to walk down the narrow, forbidding corridor to see the main event:

 

Although the girls were more interested in the narrow, forbidding corridor.

For the most part, the girls behaved themselves, even though a lot of the technical explanations were lost on them.

Looking down at the missile from the surface

Staring into an old rocket booster

 Lorelai in particular was pretty disturbed by what she learned about nuclear bombs and nuclear warfare; over the last several days she has asked a lot of questions about them, and many of those questions have no easy answers. I remember being similarly disturbed learning about this stuff when I was about her age! I have had to quote her the Lord's words from the Doctrine & Covenants: "If ye are prepared, ye shall not fear." Hopefully she will realize that even though it's right to be afraid of total warfare, it's our place to be optimistic and live Christlike lives, and trust that we will be saved in the end.

3. Mad Science library presentations. I'm going to cheat a bit here, because the girls attended two of these presentations in one weekend in two different libraries...one on Friday, and one Saturday just after exiting the Titan Missile Museum. Interestingly enough, both Mad Science presentations were run by the same bespectacled, sandal-and-short-wearing, slightly nerdy college-age dude. He was a little soft-spoken and seemed a bit nervous giving a presentation to so many young, wiggly kids, but he still managed to impress the kids quite a bit.

The Friday presentation focused on magnets. Each one of the kids got a pair of fairly powerful, hand-held magnets, and they got to understand the forces of attraction and repulsion by placing those magnets close together. Later, the Mad Scientist set up a small "race-track" for magnetized marbles to slide along, propelled along by each other. He ended up letting each of the kids try it out; the most successful participants managed to launch their marbles completely off the track.

After everyone had a turn, Mad Scientist guy gave everyone a magnetic toy. It was a pole along which were strung three magnets that "floated" along the pole, repelled by each other and thus never touching. It was a pretty cool presentation!

On Saturday, the theme was "Fire And Ice." Since we were coming from the Titan Missile Museum, we missed the very beginning of the show; however, we still got to see a lot of whiz-bang science action. Our Mad Scientist was back, this time with different toys, including super-fast-burning materials. He'd light a piece of "flash paper" on fire, then throw it at the screaming kids...only for it to completely burn up in mid-air and never reach them. This type of paper burns almost instantly, leaving no smoke or ash. Handy for magicians!

Shortly after we arrived, our host moved onto the "ice" section of his presentation. As you might imagine, it involved a lot of dry ice. This substance is always mesmerizing for kids; they love all the steam, I guess. It was used in several different ways, including mixing it with water and dish soap...

...which created a thick froth, which the girls loved rubbing through their hair!

Perhaps the kids' favorite part was the "smoke bubbles," with the steam from the dry ice roiling around inside a stiff soap bubble. It was neat to see them float around and pop on the floor with a little misty "splash"...

 

So overall, it was a great week for learning more Science!

After the library activity, we went home and met up with Nathan, who'd just returned from his temple trip. Then we went as a family to the movie theater and watched How To Train Your Dragon 2, which was in its opening weekend. Our family loves the first How To Train Your Dragon film, and we enjoyed this one as well, although not quite as much as the first. The animation is a big step up from the first film; it's gorgeous and the action scenes are spectacular. The story is a little crazy and unorganized, but it mostly works and it's still fun to see characters we love on the big screen once again. There are a few intense scenes that may upset little kids; one scene in particular left Celeste and Aurora crying loudly in the theater! Hopefully they won't be traumatized on future viewings.

And after that, it was a quick dinner at Taco Bell, and then bedtime for the exhausted girls! Running to and fro on such a hot day (and spending a significant amount of time outside) certainly overtaxed us. We all took good naps on Sunday afternoon. But we all had an enjoyable Saturday. Who knows what the coming Fridays (and Saturdays) will bring for the rest of the summer?