Pumpkin Chemist

It was so dark and rainy this morning, but these little cuties were as sweet and sunny as ever!

A few weeks ago, I started rooting a little offshoot of my plant to share with a coworker. It had grown lots of roots, and it was ready now, so I planted it for her today, and it looks so good!

We had to make an emergency run through the pumpkin patch on the way home. Addie had a hard time decided which one was the perfect one for her, because she liked so many of them. And Emmie had a hard time decided which perfectly round one was the best option for her school project.

But I gave them both a 15-second count-down, and they were able to make their final decisions. We were only there for about 5 minutes, since we needed to hurry home, but we plan to come back hopefully another time before the pumpkins are all gone. But at least we got one sister pic in the pumpkin patch this year, if nothing else!

I made tiny meatball sliders for dinner with a simple bag of Caesar salad. I made these for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and they were a huge hit with the whole fam. It’s a great meal for many reasons: 1: it’s yummy (everyone says so), 2: it’s easy (no chopping, just heating everything up), 3: it’s cheap (we can use half a bag of meatballs, and half a jar of sauce, and save half for later)! I did forget to do the garlic butter brushed on top this time, but still super yummy. Emerson ate everything on her plate, and Addison ate everything and wanted more, and Jeff and I both could have eaten one or two more sliders.

Addie didn’t want the bread part of the slider, but she did eat two whole meatballs and her tiny salad, and then had two more meatballs and another helping of salad. And that was great for her.

 

After dinner, I worked on washing up a ton of dishes, and Jeff and Emerson worked on making a special pumpkin project for school. She could choose an explorer, artist, character or scientist. She chose Rosalind Franklin, a chemist and X-ray chrystallographer, who’s main focus was her crucial work on the molecular structures of DNA. Though her contributions to the DNA structure discovery were not fully recognized during her lifetime, her X-ray diffraction images, particularly Photo 51, were critical for James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins to build the DNA double helix model, for which they later received the Nobel Prize in 1962, after Franklin’s death in 1958.

The pumpkin has Franklin’s short bob haircut, and a white lab-coat, paired with a beaded necklace you see on her in many photos. Then Emmie also drew the Photo 51 to go along with it. This is just a fun, voluntary contest the “gifted” classes can choose to participate in each year around this time. Last year, we helped her make Matilda!

We were able to read a little bit of HP before Emmie’s bedtime tonight, and both girls were asleep pretty quickly.

Since I already washed dishes earlier, I’m done with chores for the night, and now I am going to paint my nails and just chill the rest of the night. Well first, I gotta go get the baked potatoes out of the oven, that I’m baking tonight to save for dinner tomorrow, since they take forever and a day… But that means tomorrow’s dinner is already halfway done! Actually, we’re having last night’s leftover pulled pork, with tonight’s pre-cooked baked potatoes, so technically, it’s like two-thirds done already!