The Science Fair Experiment

A few weeks ago, my science enthusiast (who clearly takes after her grandmother and NOT her mother in this area) informed me she wanted to enter the science fair. After my mom reminding me of a fairly easy yet successful project I did in the third grade, I decided even I could handle determining how water flows through a plant by using carnations and water tinted with food coloring. 

Knowing this generally only takes 12 hours or so, the procrastinator in me decided to wait until the weekend before it was due. So we went to Hobby Lobby and stocked up on supplies to make a beautiful display and then hit Wal-Mart for some carnations. They only had miniature ones so we headed to HEB. No luck there as the ones they had were already colored. But they had white Gerber daisies. Smugly thinking they would work, I paid for them and off we went.

My adorable child put food coloring in all of the vases I gathered from around the house and, of course, she chose some interesting colors like turquoise and purple - no standard red, blue, yellow and green for my child. After trimming the stems, we placed the daisies in the vases and finished our chores throughout the afternoon.

The next morning, we raced into the kitchen only to find plain white Gerber daisies. Thinking we must apparently need carnations, I raced back to Wal-Mart and purchased the miniature versions as that's still all they had. We repeated the ste

ps and off we went to school and work on Monday (please keep in mind this project was due on Thursday).

When we got home on Monday evening, we still had plai

n white miniature carnations. At this point, I'm beginning to panic. It's at this point that my precious child explains to me that they've moved up the due date and she must turn this project in on Wednesday instead. 

What?!?!

What happened next must have been comical...if you weren't in the middle of it...

Tay and I spent the next two hours getting her display board ready. (By the way, I'm no longer a fan of the glue stick...it took days to get all of it off of my fingers.) By this point, the tinted water had made its way to the base of the flower petals but wasn't moving any farther. So I put Tay to bed and left her with Dave while I scoured all of Waco for white, standard size carnations. At the fourth store I visited (by this time it was after 10pm), I found a small group of white carnations that were surely divinely place just for us - thank you, Father.

After buying the THIRD set of flowers for this project, I headed home and placed them in the tinted water for Tay and promptly passed out as it had been a long evening. Unfortunately, though, I couldn't sleep because I was stressed about this whole thing. At 3am I was up looking at flowers that still had not changed colors...

At 7am the red one was starting to turn pink - praise you, Jesus - and I left for work with hope and Tay's notes that I could transcribe for the written report. Dave came for lunch and promised me all of the flowers were turning their appropriate color and I breathed a small sigh of relief.

When we got home, they had indeed changed colors!! We finished the display, put the report in a cover, had some pics printed at Walgreen's and called it an evening. We proudly carried everything into the school the next morning and I just knew my little one was going to be rewarded with a blue ribbon.

Well, I was partially right...all of the students who entered got blue ribbons. Some simply said 'participant' or 'honorable mention' while others got ribbons for specific areas. Tay got the ribbon for 'good organization.' Anyone else find that rather ironic after hearing the story? Yep, that's all she got...well, that and a great meal at Cheddar's with Dave and my parents to celebrate. She enjoyed the process so it was all worth it, right?

Did I mention this was an OPTIONAL entry...she wasn't even required to participate. Next year she's going to enter the art fair instead of the science fair. It just sounds less tiring...