A Very Freaky Birthday

Abbie waited a while for her parents to finally get their act together. About 2 months actually, her birthday being 4th of June, her party finally executed and it's almost September. Anyway all good things take time, that's our excuse and we're sticking to it. We had something special in mind and Jasmines 'Nancy Drew' party had given us some ideas. So the stage was set with Abbie thinking she was to have a movie party and sleep over. Five close friends arrived, including Aaron the lone bloke, I had my eye on him I can tell you. The lights were dimmed, the movie started, the kids settled in. And then something strange happened... the movie hitched and jerked, static burst of the speakers, the picture jumped and switched... and there was Jazz, on screen, breaking into the movie... 'Guys, I hope you can get this message. I've been kidnapped and I need your help.' And so the real party began, Abbie and her friends had to solve the mystery and work out a way to get Jasmine back.Jo and I had arranged a series of puzzle games, including finding the password to Jasmines email, reading the message, finding clues in the basement, solving a jigsaw puzzle with a solution on the back and sending a coded SMS message to the 'kidnappers' (Jasmines friend Lara's mum, who actually had Jazz at her house) so Jazz would be released. This all went pretty well, Jacqui kept telling me that she was freaked out by Jasmine interrupting the movie and wondered how she did it :-). Then they settled in for burgers, ice-cream cake and plenty of popcorn to accompany the real movie. As is usually the case the sleeping arrangements caused the most hassle, everyone wanting to sleep together, including the now released Jasmine and her friend Lara. But they were lights out before midnight and were probably asleep before 1am. Deed done, parents having redeemed themselves, at least a little, and the planning for Cam's party now in our minds.Today I had promised Cam that we would launch his model rocket again. The weather is key because if the wind is up then it's pot luck where the thing will land. The bigger 'C' sized motors push the rocket up to around 900+ feet I would guess. When the rocket motor finishes it's burn it then burns smoke to allow you to track it for another 50 or so metres. After that the motors final duty is to fire a mild burst in the opposite direction and push out the nose cone and parachute. The body and nose cone fall seperately, the nose cone without any chute so it's a soft, 'nerf'-like thing. Also in the nose is an accelerometer that records the rockets max speed during flight and displays it on a LCD. We set off 3 engines today, one had an 'Err' on the display so I don't know it's speed, another I forgot to turn the darn switch on so it didn't record but one gave us a reading of 92.5kph. Not too bad.I need to buy some more engines and in scanning the Toys'R'Us website I saw another rocket that's 3 feet high and has 2 stages... mmmmm.....

Andy, out.