Thomas Jefferson, Sleeping Beauty and birds of prey

Sleeping Beauty wants her freedom from King George.

If only this were a post about TJ and birds of prey joining forces to eat Sleeping Beauty! Unfortunately, it's not. This is just a summary of a few cool things we've done over the past week.

First, we flubbed yet another rocket launch. This is one of those vinegar-and-baking soda contraptions, and the first time we launched it it went up 70 feet -- cool! But subsequent launches have been not so cool, and Roger has ended up a few times with wet baking soda all over his clothes.

On Saturday I took the kids to meet some raptors, which are birds of prey. We learned the following: 1) that female birds of prey (like hawks, ospreys, eagles, falcons, owls, etc.) are larger than males because they do all the hard work, 2) that vultures are the smartest birds of prey (owls are actually quite dumb), 3) that the Eastern Screech Owl can play dead when it is in danger, even slowing its heartbeat to an almost standstill, and 4) that the most common cause of injury to raptors is being hit by cars. Why? Because people throw their food garbage out the car window, squirrels and other little animals (i.e. raptor food) scurry out to get it, and the raptors swoop in. Bam! So no more throwing apple cores and banana peels out car windows, folks.

And finally, Thomas Jefferson and Sleeping Beauty. In honor of Memorial Day we read through the Declaration of Independence and practiced writing with a quill pen like the Founding Fathers. Catherine immediately rushed to put on her Sleeping Beauty dress and colonial bonnet while Vincent buried gold doubloons in the backyard and used his compass to find them. Apparently his compass erred, because he ended up on the deck looking over Catherine's shoulder and asking, "What are you doing?"

To which Catherine replied, "Oh, just writing the Declaration of Independence."

FAIL!

Pirate Vincent stomped his boot-clad feet and threw down his compass. "You can't!" he yelled. "Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration, and you're not Thomas Jefferson!"

"That's right," replied Sleeping Beauty. "But I'm a princess, and I can sign the Declaration if I want to."

I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would say about that.