H is ranked #8 in the State in 100 Back

Pretty cool! Of course, soon she turns 15 and ages up again.

Belated Short Video of the girls skiing

What Exactly Have We Been Doing Lately?

Well, the girls and D went skiing and tubing in Vermont:

The girls have been working on an art project that seemed to take forever -- it is multimedia with watercolor, pencil, and colored pencil:



They have begun learning how to draw figures and I hope to post pictures soon.

They have been swimming (a lot). They both are swimming a national competition this weekend:





They have been researching HPV and making a video (the last 30 seconds of the video is cut off for some reason):


They have been researching Ruth Handler:

And, in their spare time they have both read about 5 books in the past 3 weeks.

So --- even though we haven't been posting, we have been busy. In addition to posting weekly challenges and solutions at Think! and teaching some seminars on Government and Women's History, I have been working as a volunteer for the Endangered Species Coalition, creating and compiling educational materials for Endangered Species Day. I have also been doing some book reviews for the Allied Cultures Against Discrimination. I plan to teach another seminar on technology in April. D has been working hard and when home, he has planted lots of things in our garden: lettuce, carrots, onions, blueberries, and tomatoes. We are planning a family reunion for the T family to coincide with the Relay for Life in May. We have 3 happy survivors to walk in the survivor lap! So, that's what we've been doing. Maybe we'll get back to posting more regularly in the next few months.

Swimming and the Olympic Trials

This week the girls are at the University of Michigan at swim camp. They are swimming about 8,000 - 10,000 yards a day and doing some dry land as well. Other than enjoying hanging out with their friend P, the highlight was meeting the Olympians last night -- Michael Phelps, Kaitlin Sandeno, Peter Vanderkaay and others. We hope to post a picture of them with Phelps and Sandeno soon.

Whitewater Olympic Trials

We watched some of the events at the Whitewater Olympic Trials. It was pretty cool. Here are some pics.

Swim Against Malaria

So, for school, our mom told us we had to figure out a way to do something positive with our skills that would help others and then, miraculously our Aunt Debbie sent us this cool email about swim for malaria.

Malaria is the largest killer of children in the world. 1 to 3 million people die from malaria each year. 70% of the deaths are children under 5 years old
One child dies of malaria every 30 seconds. That’s equivalent to seven jumbo jets full of children dying from malaria every day. Malaria kills so many because...
Over 60% of the world’s population lives in malaria infected areas. Malaria-carrying mosquitoes feed on human blood. That’s how people get infected. People living in malaria regions cannot take malaria-protecting drugs. The drugs taken by travellers are too strong to be taken for any more than a few weeks. Malaria is preventable and treatable. The best prevention is to avoid being bitten at all. Sleeping under a bednet is the single most effective way of preventing malaria. Bednets protect people at night when mosquitoes are most active. We can help by supplying and fitting bednets (mosquito nets). Every £ 1 million we raise can help to stop almost 20,000 people from dying. U$ 5 buys one bednet, U$ 100 buys twenty mosquito nets and saves 1 child's life. Every net matters.

More than 250,000 swam on 3 Dec 2005 for the first World Swim Against Malaria. It is already the largest participatory swim ever. 100% of the money raised so far will buy 300,000 long lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) costing US$5 each. 600,000 (mainly) children will now be protected at night from biting insects. This will save the lives of 15,000 children. The first 175,000 nets have been or are being delivered and 125,000 are on their way.

So, in the month of April, we are swimming 100,000 laps (2,500,000 yards) for malaria.

We hope you'll swim too and get others to sponsor you or just donate some money to help kids in another part of the world. If you'd like to sponsor us or you just want more information, click the title above or go to www.worldswimagainstmalaria.com. If you want to see who has sponsored us or how many nets our sponsors have paid for, search for swimmin twin 1 and swimmin twin 2.

Update: We finished our swim and we raised $625 for 125 nets!!! Thank you for sponsoring us.

Posted by T and H

Atlanta History Museum

At the Atlanta History Museum, we learned the story of desegregation of schools, we explored the history of the civil war, we toured an old Atlanta home, we learned about the 1996 Olympics and we watched a blacksmith make a hook. It was all pretty cool. Here's more on what we learned:

Swan House
Owned by a wealthy businessman, te Swan House is an example of how one prominent family lived during the 1920s and 1930s. Philip Trammel Shutze was the architect for Swan House and its gardens, as well as for many other important buildings in the city. We thought the most interesting rooms were the bathrooms and closets. They were amazingly nice!


The Civil War
The Civil War ravaged America between 1861 and 1865 and changed our country like no other event in history. Over 600,000 people were killed. During the first part of the 1800's the North and the South grew in different ways. In the North, cities were centers of wealth and manufacturing where there were many skilled workers. In the South there was not manufacturing or many skilled workers. Most of the people were farmers. Money came from plantation crops, like cotton, rice, sugar cane and tobacco. Slaves did most of the work on the plantations. Worried about being taken over by the North, some southern states decided to secede. South Carolina was the first to leave the Union and form a new nation called the Confederate States of America. Four months later, six other states seceded: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana. Later Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee joined them. Jefferson Davis was elected as president of the Confederacy. In Charleston, South Carolina there was a Union fort called Fort Sumter. The Union soldiers refused to leave this fort, so the Confederates fired cannons at the fort on April 12, l861. This was the beginning of the Civil War. During the Civil War, Lincoln decided to write the Emancipation Proclamation in secret. He warned the confederate states that they should release their slaves but they did not . On New Years Day, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which freed all slaves. Later that year, on November 19, 1863, President Lincoln gave a speech at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where the Battle of Gettysburg took place. People had gathered at the battlefield to dedicate part of it to the men who had been killed in battle. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is remembered as one of the best speeches ever given. It was short and simple. The war didn't end though until Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House.

The Olympics
The 1996 Olympic Games changed Atlanta forever. For seventeen days, Atlanta was the focus of the entire world. Those seventeen days in 1996 represented a decade's worth of preparation in which Atlanta used no public money and incurred a total cost of $1.8 billion. They had to build roads, buildings, competition sites, and dorm rooms for the Olympics. There were 50,000 volunteers and there were 197 delegations that participated. 13,000 community heroes helped carry the torch to Atlanta. During that time, a bomb planted by Eric Rudolph under park benches exploded in Centennial park, killing 1 and injuring 111 others.

About Skiing

Here are some things we have learned about skiing this week: 1) There is a international leveling system for skiers that ski schools use to help determine what to teach you (we knew this before but got a refresher course), 2) To complete a rainbow jump you must go fast enough and keep your skis in a tight parallel, 3) To ski in powder, keep your tips up and make shorter turns, 4) To clear a jump you have to be moving fast and sometimes you have to skate to get enough speed then lean forward at the top of the jump and make a soft landing, 5) To ski moguls, pick your path and put your pole on top of the mogul and turn a short turn around it, 6) that's all we can think of right now!

Here is the basic leveling system: Skiing ability level is a way of classifying skiers based on what they ski, their skiing ability, and how well they ski green, blue, and black slopes. Here is a summary of the skiing ability levels: Level One skiers are first time skiers, Level Two skiers are beginners who are able to do a wedge turn both ways and are able to stop, but they cannot link turns smoothly, Level Three skiers are confident and they can stop and make round snow plow turns on easy beginner trails, Level Four skiers are intermediate skiers who can link turns at moderate speed. (Level Four is a transition level in which skiers will begin to ski more blue intermediate runs), Level Five skiers are intermediates who are confident on easy blue runs and ski mostly parallel but may at times use the wedge to begin a turn or to stop, Level Six skiers make parallel turns on blue runs but do not ski advanced trails (they also use their poles to time turns), Level Seven skiers ski controlled parallel turns and can ski very well on blue trails (they can also ski black diamonds but they still have to work on style on these runs and they can adjust the size and length of their turns and are learning to ski on a variety of different types of snow and terrain), Level Eight skiers ski with good technique on all terrain and snow conditions (they can ski moguls and black diamonds with confidence), Level Nine skiers enjoy the challenge of difficult ski trails and ski moguls, steeps, and other black diamond terrain.

We are now level 7-8 skiers! We can't wait until next year!

Turkey Trot

Today we ran in a 5K and came in 1st and 2nd. We didn't improve our times from last week -- we were tired from double swim practices yesterday.

We also learned: no one knows when the first thanksgiving occurred and it is disrespectful to Indian peoples to refer to the harvest feast of 1621 as the first Thanksgiving; the people who came across on the Mayflower were not pilgrims but separatists; the colonists were not innocent refugees from religious persecution and they knew that America was inhabited; the colonists did not land on Plymouth Rock; the pilgirms actually stole corn from the Indians; the settlers ate deer, wild fowl, dried corn and mashed pumpkin, fruit and berries (not fish, wheat, or potatoes of any kind). For more information about deconstructing the myths of the first thanksgiving, see www.oyate.org/resources/shortthanks.html

Our 5K pics

We ran in a 5K on Saturday after a 2 hour swim practice. We finished 1st and 2nd in the 11-14 age group for girls and 67 and 68 overall. Our times were just over 24 minutes but would have been a bit faster if T hadn't stopped near the finish line to get rid of some stomach contents! We plan to run in another 5K on Thanksgiving. There are only 2 pics because Mommy took a picture of our feet when we were crossing the finish line instead of our faces -- oops!

Learning on the Water

This past week, the girls learned to water ski (they had done it before, but they did it much better this time around -- T even let go with one hand!). They learned to sail (a bit but not enough to take off on their own). They learned some new techniques with oil pastels. And, they had fun doing all of this while on vacation!

Sports

We have finished a day of sports activities. The girls swam in a swim meet this afternoon, qualifying for State Championships and Sectionals. Then, we rushed to make the 2nd half of their soccer game. You might ask why. Well, T and H love sports. It is fun for all of us! And, :

1. As little as four hours of exercise a week may reduce a teenage girl's risk of breast cancer by up to sixty percent. Breast cancer is a disease that afflicts one out of every eight American women.
2. Weight-bearing exercises are necessary to establishing bone mass. Forty percent of women over the age of 50 have osteoporosis.
3. Girls and women who play sports have higher levels of confidence and self esteem and lower levels of depression.
4. Girls and women who play sports have a more positive body image and experience higher states of psychological well-being than girls and women who do not play sports.
5. High school girls who play sports are less likely to be involved in an unwanted pregnancy; more likely to get better grades in school and more likely to graduate than girls who do not play sports
6. Eighty percent of the female executives at Fortune 500 companies identified themselves as former "tomboys" - having played sports.