Last days of Summer Vacation....

Yesterday we took Zac to go see the movie Kit Kittridge All American Girl. It was a great show. I would love to see more movies like this come out. Then we had our end of summer pool party. It was fun. The Harden Familly came and Zac's friends Chase and Holden's Family. The kids spent most of the 2 hours in the Lazy River. It was fun. I forgot my camera so this will have to do. Here is a picture of the pool fun area.

Today we took Zac to the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research promotes partnership in a collaborative community dedicated to understanding the atmosphere—the air around us—and the interconnected processes that make up the Earth system, from the ocean floor to the Sun's core. It was very interesting.

Then we tried to go to NOAA which is National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NIST which is National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The U. S. Department of Commerce Boulder Labs are scientific laboratories including NIST, NOAA and NTIA. Clustered on the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Boulder Colorado, these labs are the home of scientific research and engineering in the fields of electromagnetics, materials reliability. optoelectronics, quantum electronics and physics, time and frequency, earth systems, weather and telcommunication.

Although many people don't realize it, the NIST Boulder Laboratories make possible many technologies that are commonplace in everyday life. Just a few examples include:

Time: Watches, computer clocks, and other timekeeping devices are often linked to the world’s most accurate atomic clock at the NIST Boulder Laboratories. NIST official time is disseminated to such devices several billion times each day, and is used to time-stamp hundreds of billions of dollars worth of financial transactions conducted every business day. NIST Boulder precision time standards also underpin telecommunications systems, GPS positioning and navigation, electric power distribution, and TV and radio broadcasts.

Lasers: The performance of lasers used for everything from surgery to DVD players to making computer chips is assured by NIST Boulder measurements and standards.

Materials: From the atomic scale to the largest man-made structures, materials research and measurements at NIST Boulder help computer chips, medical devices, pipelines, and bridges work better and more reliably.

To take a tour of NOAA and NIST you have to go online and register and then when you get to the visitor center check in and go through security before you can go on a tour. It has very high security. So the next time Zac has a day off of school on a Tuesday we will have to plan to go on this tour. They told us the tour lasts about 2 hours.

Tomorrow we will spend the day with Jeff's parents and get Zac to bed early with school starting on Thursday. I can't believe that that summer has gone by so fast.