Staging Christmas

While we were in Colorado, there was a sub-plot simmering just below the Christmas hub-bub. Before vacation, Ken decided that it would be really fun to build rockets together with extended family circles and then to have a grand launch date on open acreage. His idea turned out to be fantastic. Every family had up to three rockets they spent time constructing, painting and detailing over the course of the vacation. A LOT of work went into each piece, with some rockets requiring multiple stages and high skill levels. It was difficult to tell who was more excited about the rockets...the children or the grown men.


Ken and Grandpa probably spent the most time together on this project. At times, trying to make heads and tails out of some of the very cryptic instructions. Perhaps the most challenging was Grandpa's rocket that was quite large. There were a couple of times when the room erupted in laughter over glued mistakes and short cuts gone bad.


The launch involved the entire extended family with successful launches for all but poor Grandpa's rocket. How I wish we would have had a video running! The big black two footer struggled its hardest to handle its own weight, losing to gravity after 40 feet and hitting the snow nose first. For added emphasis, the booster then decided to pop off in delayed fashion, which had us all in stitches.

If you have the open space, this is a wonderful way to spend time with family. And the kids love it...especially the part about chasing down their rockets as they float back to earth.