rockets and rabbits

To celebrate Juliette Gordon Low's upcoming birthday, the Girl Scouts gathered at Palisades Park to make rockets and eat cake. We were instructed to bring a 2 liter plastic bottle, which was a bit of a challenge as we don't drink soda. So, after my long group run in town early Saturday morning, I stopped by the Conservancy to go dumpster diving. I looked through three different bins before finding one!

Once at the park, Leah decorated her rocket with stickers and markers:

All the parents were wondering how the rockets would be lauched. See the contraption below? A hose and an air compressor are routed through the same line, which is attached to a foot pedal. The spout of the 2 liter is screwed onto the nozzle of the water/air hose. The group counts down -- 3, 2, 1 -- and the Girl Scout slams her foot onto the pedal. For anyone who has never actually experienced this, I cannot emphasize how amazingly freaking fast and high these things fly. They then turn right around and come crashing down to the ground. It is a most spectacular display.

Leah waits her turn.

I wish I had a picture of a rocket in mid-air, but they shot up much too fast for me to even try, and once they reached their peak and paused for just a moment before dropping back down, they were too far up in the air to be snapped.


Upon landing, pieces of Leah's rocket flew off in all directions, but the kind lady with the tape assisted in putting it all back together again.

So that was how Saturday started.

A little later, we took both Leah and Neal to Paw Paw and Dee Dee's for an overnight campout. Their cousins Meredith and Travis were there, too. The kids ran around while the adults chatted, until suddenly Leah walked up to Lee and said, "Uh, Daddy -- we have a rabbit situation." In the meantime, Meredith and Travis were yelling, "Aunt Meg! Aunt Meg! There's a rabbit!"

Now, there are a great many rabbits where we live, so I assumed they had spotted a regular old brown rabbit with a cute little white tail off in the woods behind Paw Paw's house. I was wrong. This rabbit was gray and white, and was coming within inches of the children. This was not a wild rabbit. This was somebody's pet. And I'm guessing you can guess whose pet he ended up being.

Here he is, in our living room, eating an apple:

We're going to try to determine whether he already belongs to somebody, but, sadly, odds are that he was intentionally released. Which is okay, because he's just about the cutest thing you ever did see, and we're happy to have him.