"like, molecules and stuff"

so last week, my friend lilcee forwarded me an emailed invitation that she'd received from the discovery cube museum where she has a family membership.  they were looking for families with kids ages 4-10 to come and join them for a fun morning at their second annual "winter wonderfest" - there's snow play and sledding with a little science up in the mix.  one of the local channels was going to be broadcasting live during their morning news show, and they wanted kids to be there to showcase the event.  i RSVP'd for me and the bean and added in my co-leader and her two kids, and received confirmation via e-mail not too long afterwards.  we had to be there by 7:30 in the morning, so we were out of the house by 6:00.

we somehow managed to arrive early and sat in the car for a bit, staying warm and watching the manufactured snow blown out from a truck parked nearby.  when it was time, we headed out and got our first close-up look at where we'd be spending the next couple of hours.

staffers welcomed us and brought us to the same room where mini cee had had her birthday party a few months ago.  inside there was a table set up with breakfast goodies, hot coffee and juice.

we hung out in there for awhile as other families arrived and checked in.  and then it was finally time to go outside and get started on some icy fun.

the reporter, marla tellez, was already set up in front of the camera, doing a teaser clip for the next hour's live broadcast.

our girls got pulled aside to stand at the table where a museum staffer showed them a few science experiments:

and my co-leader's son was chosen to do a little sledding with marla for the first broadcast.

 selfie time!

parents were asked to stand back out of camera range, so the kids were featured during the clip and marla was able to walk through the snow area on camera without having to maneuver around us.

while the cameras were rolling, i managed to pull up a live stream of the broadcast and caught these screen grabs of our kids.

pretty cool, right?  and when that first piece was done the kids got to play in the snow again, building a snowman and throwing snowballs at each other.

for the next hour, the plan was to talk to the girls and ask them what they'd learned from their science experiments.  here they were rehearsing what they were going to say:

the bean was nervous about being on camera, but she was pretty excited to be featured too.  the rep from the museum that was helping the girls was super encouraging and assured them both that they'd do a great job.  except that when they went live, they somehow got placed in the wrong spot and missed their chance to talk with marla on camera.  d-oh.

she came over to apologize for the mix-up, and then invited the bean to do some sledding with her for the last hour's broadcast.  in the meantime, we grabbed a selfie with her:

and the girls had a blast sledding down both the short and tall hills.

and true to her word, when the last broadcast began marla had the bean join her on the little hill and even managed to squeeze in a quickie chat with her, where she finally got to answer the "so what did you learn here today?" question.

here's the clip, captured by the hub who was watching from home.

and then down the hill they went.

by that time, it was well into the final hour of the morning show.  we were all done, and left at the same time as marla and the cameraman did.  we were all pretty hungry, and with roscoe's chicken and waffles on the way home, - well, yeah.

we had one more stop before we called it a day.  along with the rest of our troop, we'd adopted a couple of families from a local shelter and used some of the proceeds from our fall product sale to shop for them off of their wish lists.  we had a family with a mom and three kids, and another with a mom and two kids, and had managed to pick up at least two items for each person.  everything was packed up in the trunk, and so we stopped to drop off the gifts so that the moms could have them in hand with plenty of time to wrap them all up.

snow, tv appearances, roscoe's, and a good deed.  not a bad way to kick off winter break, i'd say!