Happy π Day!

We had this gift for Madison's math teacher, a Pi Day gift!  It's Pi Day, 3/14, and therefore we think about all things, which isn't a terribly huge holiday.  In fact, it's fairly obscure and nerdy, but it's still kind of fun!  Here's what I wrote in an email to friends, sending that along with the picture above.

    Circles are everywhere.  There are small the ones you see on pennies, or much larger ones like the planet Jupiter.  But one thing about all circles remains the same:  π.  

     No matter what size the circle, when you divide the circumference by the diameter, the answer is always, always, 3.1415926535, or π.

      It’s in everything in the universe.  It’s dependable, always there, and always the same.  It’s in the little things and the big things.  It’s like God’s signature on creation, a hidden little Easter egg that you just found!

Happy π Day!

     Of course, to celebrate, Mommy made this absolutely delicious pie, something that's become a yearly tradition!

Ironically, we've been reading a few issues of the comic "Wolverine," and wouldn't you know it?  There's a sentinel (one of those big bad robots) that is named "3.14."  Yes, crazy timing!  Also, we just got done watching "Night at the Museum 2," which has π as a big part of the story.  So π has been in our thoughts lately.

Tonight, as part of our π celebration, we played a few short games, one of which I got on the X-box before they purged all the independent games.  It was a π game, one that helps you remember all the digits of π.  Madison can now recite - without looking - quite a few digits of π:  3.1415926535.  She's almost to where Daddy is, which is 3.141592653589793.  That's about as far as I'm willing to memorize though.

We played Disney Infinity's western level where you have to plug in a three-digit code to escape from a level:  Merlin gives you a hint that this number is easy as pie to remember.  So Mulan and Ronan the Accuser (that's who we were playing as), battled shooting cowboy bad guys and plugged in the number for π, and finished that level.

Yes, we can't let a day as important as π Day go by without celebrating, right?  Of course, the bigger part of the day was not celebrating π Day.  I mean, there was this tonight:

Madison and the others were doing a bit of sparring, but a big part of this session was practicing form, which is like watching people do tai chi, but slightly more menacing.  Madison looks great out there though, really into it and wanting to perfect her actions.  She's doing very well!

She's wrapping up the third quarter of this semester tomorrow, which comes as quite a shock.  This is shocking, because that means there is only one more quarter of sixth grade left!  She's finishing this third quarter with a great performance though, with all A's once more.  She's doing astoundingly well.  She aced her test on Australia, and is doing so well with area formulas in math.  We're supposed to take her to Outback Steakhouse, she says, because she did so well on the Australia stuff.  She's never been and wants to go.  We'll get there - she earned it.  

In a surprising turn of events, we're not doing the "Lost World" series that Daddy has been working on all this time.  At least, we're not doing it in April, as expected.  So the dinosaurs will be sent to August or so, and in April and May we're doing an older series called "Miracles."  This is due to all the extreme work going on in April for the Easter Festival, and something else coming up called "Life is Beautiful."  It will be a pretty huge event, with some notable figures in attendance that I don't think I can talk about here, but you'll probably read about it on this blog after the fact! 

Anyway, with all the work elsewhere, we couldn't change our existing set.  And since it looks like Romans and architecture from 2,000 years ago, we think we can change the colors of things a bit, add a lot of palm trees, and maybe make this look a bit more like Jerusalem.  We're doing a series called, "Miracles," and we even have a guy that looks somewhat like Jesus to play that very important role.  It should be fantastic, and there are some great plusses to all this, despite the setback of doing all this work for some other series.  One advantage is a great emphasis on Jesus during this series.  Another great thing is how we can incorporate children more actors on stage, especially some of those from our "Acting Up" classes.  So as it says in Romans, everything does work together for the good of those who love the Lord.  A shift in plans is not a bad thing, and while we were really looking forward to the dinosaur series, this isn't a case of "making due."  In fact, this series, "Miracles" should be... well, miraculous!